AGFAX: February 2010
Top price for best quality vegetables
Cephas Sinyangwe, Loma Dinga, Charles Mulenga and Alexandre Coupy: Communication Officer, Royal Livingstone Hotel, Extension Officer, ASNAPP, Vegetable farmer, Livingstone and Executive Chef, Royal Livingstone Hotel
Summary:
Small scale farmer groups from Livingstone in southern Zambia are using drip-irrigation to grow high quality vegetables on a year-round basis. The vegetables are supplied to two 5 star hotels at Victoria Falls, a major tourist attraction. A farmer, an extension officer and the hotels' executive chef describe how this has come about, and the benefits it has brought.
Suggested introduction:
What does it take to get top prices for your produce? Do you need to be a special farmer, or produce quality crops or have a niche market - or all three?
In Livingstone, southern Zambia, around 400 farmers have done all three! They now earn high prices for their vegetables, by selling to a top-paying buyer; a luxury hotel. The farmers belong to around 20 different groups, and many of them are widows, are blind or are receiving treatment for long-term illness. Georgina Smith reports on an exciting initiative which is now attracting interest from other hotel chains in Africa.
Tape in:
I'm in the kitchen of the 5 star...
Tape out:
...they bring me is the top quality.
Closing Announcement:
Alex Coupy, Executive Chef at the Royal Livingstone Hotel in Zambia, ending that report by Georgina Smith.
Making the most of it:
Why not do a vox pop of people in a vegetable market, asking them what qualities they look for when they are buying? Is price the most important, or do factors like ripeness and cleanness, also have a strong influence on their decision? You could investigate whether local hotels buy local. If no, why not?
Further information:
ASNAPP website - www.asnapp.org/
Transcript
Smith
I'm in the kitchen of the 5 star, Royal Livingstone Hotel, which is just five minutes from the famous Victoria Falls in Zambia. It's a top tourist destination and that noise you can hear in the background is some of the world's best chefs preparing fresh vegetables for some of the world's most demanding customers. These fresh vegetables are the reason I'm here. Previously flown all the way from South Africa, they now come from small scale farmers just around the corner.
Sinyangwe
It's an important partnership with the community. The farmers are helped with the necessary equipment, the necessary technology, the necessary expertise. They are able to produce the crops that they are able to produce and sell to this market.
Studio
Cephas Sinyangwe of the Royal Livingstone Hotel.
Sinyangwe
You realise that most of these vegetables are actually perishable. Being a high quality, high standard hotel, one of the best in the world, we need to maintain the best of quality, and freshness is one of the prerequisites of the food that we prepare for the guests.
Studio
Back at the hotel's kitchen I met Loma Dinga. She's an agricultural extension officer with ASNAPP, which stands for Agribusiness in Sustainable Natural African Plant Products.
Smith
You have just been into the kitchen to speak to the head chef, and in your hand you are holding an order, which you then need to take back to the warehouse. What have you got on your order list?
Dinga
Ok, this morning the Zambezi Sun they want potatoes, pumpkin, spinach, onion, tomato, cabbage, pepper, beetroot, carrot, watermelon, pineapple, banana and pears.
Smith
Wow that is a long list!
Smith
Are you going to be to produce everything that is on that list?
Dinga
This afternoon we should be able to deliver, we should be able to meet this list.
Smith
Fantastic. How do you meet that demand?
Dinga
OK, we have identified lead farmers. These farmers are the ones that get the produce from other farmers, then supply to the warehouse. They sell on behalf of farmers to Sun International.
Studio
Of course there have been challenges, as Loma Dinga explains.
Dinga
In the initial stage of the programme we had difficulties in identifying which seeds would suit this kind of a system. So it took us a year or so to really come up with the varieties that would grow nicely here in Zambia.
Studio
ASNAPP provide the technical assistance to farmers, to help them meet the hotels' demand. First of all, they advise on the variety of seed. And the farmers need to produce all year round, so they need technologies like drip irrigation. I asked one farmer, Charles Mulenga, what he'd learned.
Mulunga
How to plant, how to manage our fruits and vegetables. They show us how to spray.
Smith
Give me one example of something that you do now that you never used to do before.
Mulenga
We never used to do baby marrow, but we can be able to do baby marrow, and butternuts. We never used to do butternuts. They have introduced to us a lot of...we never used to grow red pepper but now we can grow red pepper and yellow pepper nicely. Most of these things we have started growing. We never knew them. We have just known them just now.
Smith
Where did you used to sell before?
Mulunga
We used to sell in shops in town, in Livingstone.
Mulunga
Too much competition. The prices were very low. But now we are very happy- the price for these things we are producing is good.
Studio
So we have spoken to the farmers involved and the people who give them the advice. Now let's talk to the chefs.
Smith
We are here in the kitchen. This is like the beating heart of the hotel, this is where everything happens. And you are in charge?
Coupy
Yes. So my name is Alex Coupy and I'm the Executive Chef of the Royal Livingstone.
Smith
This is where the food that the farmers produce ends up. So is it to high standard quality?
Coupy
The quality is excellent, and as well, what is nice is now, we really can get a lot of things on a daily basis. We can order everyday. I try to leave them alone on the Sunday, but sometimes it's difficult, I can't so I have to phone them as well. And it's nice, because you phone in the morning. Later in the morning you get it, or the afternoon. Fresh watermelon, sweet melon, apple. We really get it from here. Before we used to get a lot of tomatoes that were not completely ripe. Now we get the tomatoes, that, when they come, you can really cook it immediately. And now what they bring me is the top quality. End of track.
