Update on Banana Project 🍌

The banana project is designed to give families a simple, sustainable way to strengthen both food and income security. Whilst inspecting the farms of women we supported in Cohort 2, we also visited farmers from Cohort 1 and were very excited to see their progress.

Quick reminder on banana trees: you do not plant a banana, the trees send up shoots that are called saplings, which are clones of themselves. Once the tree has produced fruit it will not produce more, so needs to be felled, chopped up and used as mulch, as the trunk is full of water. The saplings will grow before the tree flowers and starts producing fruit, these need to be chopped down as they compete for water and nutrients. Only once the tree is in fruit do you allow the saplings to grow and ideally no more than 2, so there are never more than 3 in the hole in which the mother plant was planted.

We visited 3 farmers from cohort 1 to find they now had larger plantations. From the 10 trees we gifted, one has 28, one 30 and one had over 30 but was not sure!! These are the 3rd generation of trees. The farmers each had different levels of consumption and sales, but most agreed that 20% of their crops covers the cost of the water used to irrigate the trees and at Tsh 20,000 bunch (wholesale), they can make good money for very little work, money that helps with life’s daily expenses. So they now have greater food and income security. Excellent news!

The farmers we visited in Cohort 2 were all tending their trees nicely and receiving mentoring from the CASO. They are expecting their trees to flower in the next couple of months and fruit in early 2027, and all we met have plans to expand. All agreed water was a problem for them, but this is more about cash flow than availability, as they are paying the water before the harvest, obviously, at about Tsh 3,600 per month.

We are really pleased with the progress for both Cohorts, knowing that 200 households (1,000 people) are benefiting from this project.

Thank you to all who are supporting this project 💖💪🏾