Ruuju crops are bad too

Ruuju crops are bad, too
By Teresa Mellish Feb 11, 2011

Earlier this week, Angus, Susan and I interviewed 6 randomly selected members of the Ruuju Womens Group about their crops.
The members of the Ruuju Womens Group have very small shambas- frequently an acre or two. They each lease pieces of land (often 5 acres ) outside their homes to grow field crops, especially maize and beans. This land is at a lower altitude.
They will get a crop at their home shambas- not as much as they expect, but still a small crop.
After we were done our interviews, we took a drive to see how the crops looked on their leased land. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was wall-to wall dried up maize as far as the eye could see. We drove 15 km and the lower the altitude the drier and hotter it got. The maize and beans crops were completely dry and there will not be any maize crop at all. At one of the farms we stopped, there were several women “harvesting” black beans. There were very few bean pods with beans inside and those with beans inside had only a couple of skinny black beans. However, the Ruuju Womens Group member felt she would get a few black beans for family consumption.
They did not get enough rain for a crop.
This is so different from last year when they had a good crop on these same fields.