Msonge Organic Family Farm
SPREADING THE WORD ON ORGANIC
FARMING
The Msonge Organic Family Farm is a success story in Zanzibar with more and more people signing up to receive doorstep deliveries of its just-picked, wild-grown fruit and veg. Its ambitions don’t stop there, with its founder, Dr Mwatima Juma, aiming to spur the entire island into embracing organic farming. Mark Edwards meets her.
D
r Mwatima Juma was instrumental in introducing the term organic farming in Tanzania. As chief of the Tanzanian head office of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the chairperson of the Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement she helped put in place the standards the country’s farmers are required to meet to get their produce certified organic for the lucrative export market. However, the organic movement only gave a name to sustainable farming practices that many Tanzanian farmers have been familiar with for generations. Certainly, Dr Juma has been
immersed in the wild way of farming since she can remember. She was raised on her father’s farm in Shakani on the Fumba Peninsula in the southwest of Zanzibar Island. It was an idyllic natural playground to grow up in, with the young Zuma free to roam its 15 acres, fashioning toys from the branches of trees and picking fresh mangos and bananas to snack on. In time, though, she began to help her father, Abdulah Juma, and his team and her attention was drawn to the all-natural farming techniques they would employ such as using manure from the farm’s kept chicken and cows as fertiliser for new vegetable growth and rotating crops to preserve nutrients in the soil.
Organic farming advocate – Dr Mwatima Juma (above left)
The farm is her father’s half of a 30-acre plot that he purchased together with his brother. The land was then spilt equally between the pair with Juma’s father – a nurse by trade – setting up a trust so that his children and extended family would share ownership of his farm in the years to come.
Family farm While Juma’s uncle sold his share of the land to housing developers, her father intended for his farm and the nine-bedroom house built on site to remain as a source of food, income and a rural haven for Juma and her siblings away from the temptations of the city. However, another of his airtanzania.co.tz / 15
