Food Security

hello

On the left, you see Mozambique's unused land, on the right you see South Africa's land that is flourishing with oranges/sugar cane. These two pieces of land are 20 Kilometers away from each other. Why is Mozambique baron and South Africa Flourishing?!

I read a headline in the news paper the other day that made me laugh out loud, it said the following: "Guaranteed safety to feed Mozambique for the current year"
Or in my words: "We will still be net importers of food this year, meanwhile our agricultural potential as a country squanders"

The Department of Agriculture big-wigs in Mozambique that we have met with have made it very clear that the Mozimbican Government's number one goal is "Food Security". Especially after the food riots of 2010

Our project will be rice in Chókwè, Gaza, Moçambique; we want as many hectares as the government will give us! (The area we are looking at has 31,000 hectares that are not being used, however they can only get 1,250 available for us. The rest could produce much rice for Mozambicans consumption [186,000 tons per year!], but in 1985 the property was divided between families in the government [since Mozambique became a socialist satellite of the USSR everything belonged to the "state" hence if you were in the government you had a license to steal what the Portuguese colonizers developed with their sweat and blood and it was dubbed yours because it belonged to the "state" and you were the state] Anyway, what I am trying to say is HICEP, the government institution who is regulating the land won't give us land because there are many who have only set foot in Chókwè once in their lives who's parents were important government officials who would like to benefit off the transaction and could care less about the fact that their country is a net importer of rice (and every other cereal for that matter).

THAT SOUNDS LIKE FOOD SECURITY DOESN'T IT!!!

Aside from the difficulties we are having now I know the project will go forward, I am very hopeful that our project will do much good in Mozambique when it is in full swing, but that will not come without its difficulties. Chelsea and I are setting the foundation for our project in Chókwè, we are blessed with great supporters in the USA and a good team of South African and Swaziland Agronomists on the ground once Chelsea and I have done our work.

Other things that have happened in the last few weeks:

My heart is torn a bit; we had to throw a man in jail for allegedly stealing/mis managing $10,000 usd of company funds from the Cooperative that Chelsea and I are supervising. I went to see him in Jail today. Chelsea stayed in the car. The cop said "there are conditions to see him, give me 40 meticais ($1usd) so I paid him the bribe. I got to talk to him for a few minutes thru the window. All I could smell was smoke. There were 80 men piled in a 30 ft by 30 ft room with two hall ways and a bathroom. All the men inside acted and treated each other like animals. When I gave my friend in jail the treats and juice that we had bought at a local bakery he held them in his hand for minutes as we talked, I could see the handles of the plastic bag the pastries and juice were in from where I stood, then I saw a hand reach from behind him grab the bag, and my friend so naturally gave his bag to another prisoner. Goodness gracious. It doesn't feel good to have to throw someone in prison, justice just hurts some times I guess, in a way it is his mercy too.

We have done a lot of research in the last month since our focus shifted almost completely to this rice project. We have had to read a lot about the area where we are going to be investing. In 2000 there were some floods that absolutely destroyed the area (floods), so that was one aspect of risk analysis that we have had to study. As I was studying a few masters thesis' and searching for data and meeting with anyone who held a position of importance from the UN's agriculture department to the head of Maize in Mozambique that would talk to me; something very interesting happened. I found myself reading a book published in 1931 of wich I believe only exists a few copies in the world. It was a book that the portuguese wrote, a book of records of happenings in Mozambique, below is a page of the book I was reading:





As I was reading the book, It described the condition of the regadio in Chókwè, and it had a list of pro's and con's of the exact area that we are looking to get. My jaw dropped as I saw that 80 years ago the list that a Portuguese Engineer listed as pro's and con's of the area are the exact same today and all of the information that had been listed in this book written nearly 80 years ago was very relevant to our decision today.

Below are some pictures:

Chellie made me a cake on my b-day, Nutella/Vanilla frosting. Chel takes care of me :)

This is a picture of one of drainage ditches that we will have to rehabilitate in Chókwè. Before the flood of 2000 this thing was 6m wide and 3m deep. Farmers in this area get a yeild of 1.5 tons of rice per hectare, after we rehabilitate it that will be 6-10 tons! The beauty of irrigation.

Fishing boat in bilene. They dive and spear the fish then bring them to the boat; also they use nets.

Played a bit of Futebol after church, we had dinner at a friend's house who is also a member of the LDS Church and his son got mad at me saying 'dad doesn't let me play soccer on sunday'

Do you know your status? Picture taken at South African border entry point.