Herbert Hoover’s slogan to woo Depression-era voters has poignant meaning in South Africa, where INMED has been making inroads in supporting struggling subsistence farmers. Our Adaptive Agriculture program has helped numerous farmers dramatically expand their harvests and incomes via innovative and environmentally friendly farming techniques. Our INMED South Africa team recently helped one family co-op improve the lives of their children by simply raising chickens. When our team met the family, the children had not been attending school because they could not afford to buy the uniforms. On one occasion, the children had not eaten in three days because their parents had spent the last of their money on seeds for a new crop.
Thanks for INMED’s program, this cooperative is now thriving, providing jobs, and the kids are all going to school and eating well. “We started them off with chickens as we were helping them improve their adaptive agriculture,” explains INMED President Dr. Linda Pfeiffer. “The eggs from the chickens gave them immediate income, as well as a consistent source of protein.”
INMED’s team has seen similar results among other farming co-ops it has helped. The Moshoeshoe cooperative, for example, was able to invest in 200 broiler chickens with earnings from vegetable and egg production projects funded by INMED partnerships. The co-op is now earning almost US$600 per month from the sale of its broilers—and the 47 children of the extended Moshoeshoe family no longer go to bed hungry.
