(Before I write this blog proper, I have to say the most immediately memorable thing I recall as I think about Mr Sábado was how he splat a rat with his bare sandalled foot! That is what I saw him do, quick as a flash and with practiced efficiency, when in the corner of my eye I caught the sight of a big fat rat scuttling across the ground, shortly after I'd taken this photo. Astonishing though it was, that’s not going to be my main point today!)
Mr Sábado lives in Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, near the foot of Africa. When I visited him in 2012, he had two milking cows, a third heifer due to calve within a few months, and a little bull calf. All Jerseys (did I tell you they’re my favourite breed?). A big dairy herd by Mozambique standards!
I was there volunteering in a US-AID funded project to provide dairy cows to small scale farmers. The heifers were shipped in from neighbouring South Africa, and support was given to build a corral, provide feed, get them in calf and learn to keep and milk the cows. It was the training part which I was helping with.
Mozambique is a fascinating country. It was once colonised by Portugal (Nandos elicits a slight Moza vibe for me). It has a head count of around 22 million people, life expectancy is only 41 years, and most of the population live in a grinding poverty which is hard to imagine. Malaria, tuberculosis and cholera are all endemic and in some areas around a third of the population are HIV positive. The country emerged from a devastating civil war 27 years ago which destroyed what little infrastructure was in place previously. The country is at last a democracy and enjoys a stable enough environment to begin to take advantage of its large agricultural potential. Certainly, the land is green, fertile and very pretty.
The project was trying to kick start a dairy infrastructure from a baseline of nil. That is to say, although there were a few local very rangy-looking beef type cattle around, there was no pre-existing culture for milking cows or consuming dairy products, and so infrastructure and knowledge was practically non-existent. That's unusual for even the very poorest countries of the world, and in the case of Mozambique can be largely attributed to devastating loss of livestock throughout many years of war.
Whilst I was there, I was fascinated to understand why this particular aid project had focussed on introducing dairy cows, as opposed to other potential aid, or farming schemes. I learned a lot which was humbling, and which taught me to value cows even more. The three main aspects are:
1) Dairy farming is possibly the most effective way of lifting subsistence farmers out of poverty. Selling milk creates a good year round cash flow, compared with crops, for example. In addition, cows create capital; a cow is an investment which will grow as calves are born. Capital and cash-flow both potentially help to foster a kind of wealth creation for families and communities which have a hope of self-improvement through educating some of their children and by affording very basic healthcare.
2) Cows convert cheap forage into milk. In Mozambique, land is not the limiting factor (there is loads of good, fertile land in areas with good annual rainfall), but the ability to cultivate it, given that it is all done by hand with hand-tools, is very limited. So grass is abundant, at least at certain times of year, and only requires young boys to cut it (by scythe) for feeding to the cows, which is then converted into milk. No machinery is required and no time-consuming cultivation and weeding.
3) Dairy produce is a valuable source of nutrition (fats, protein, vitamins and minerals) for a local population in which nutritional deficiency is still rife. Pot-bellied children fed a protein-deficient diet of maize meal are depressingly common – the condition is called kwashiorkor.
Now, the challenges faced by this project were immense. I don't know how successful it has been - I suspect it's a case of two steps forwards, one step back. Another post for another day would be required to go into all those challenges. Never the less, learning from Mr Sábado's experience was a revelation for me, and made me realise that however big the challenge, attempting to introduce cows was all worth it.
Several years previously, Mr Sábado had been the eager recipient of another type of agricultural aid. In that case, he'd been encouraged to grow some sugar cane, which he duly did, and which he duly got paid for by the factory. The problem was that the money came in one lump sum. And what do men tend to do when money is burning a hole in their pockets, asked Mr Sábado? They go on the razzle! Mr Sábado was no exception, he told me ruefully, and he remained poor. The difference, compared with a cash crop, is that the money from milk comes in a daily trickle. Always enough to provide for essential needs. In fact better still, he explained, because his wife and daughter basically looked after the cows, the money went straight into their pockets and was consequently spent more wisely!
The glowing pride with which Mr Sábado showed me his little herd and his family was joyous to see. The Community Livestock Worker with whom I was partnered, explained that Mr Sábado's children looked healthier and probably had a better odds of survival than most of his neighbours' children, whose pot-bellied appearance was testament to the protein-deficient maize diet that was normal in that village. Milk and dairy produce, lest we take for granted, are life-enhancing sources of high quality protein. And us humans, especially children, need protein. Quite simply, for this family, if the protein didn't come from milk, it wouldn't come from anywhere else. And that was a truly shaming revelation: that whilst we consume more than we require, dietary protein is still a scarce resource for vast parts of the World's population.
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