What I said in the first installment of these vignettes bears repeating: high yielding varieties of manioc, peanuts, cowpeas and corn could  DOUBLE food production right now if they were adopted widely.  But first a farmer has to know about the new technology.  Then she has to believe it really is better than what she already has.  And finally she has to have the right seeds or seed cuttings to plant.  In the US that series of changes is helped along by county agricultural extension agents, farmer cooperatives, seed companies and university researchers.  In Congo the farmer is left to her own resources.  But a few dedicated Christians at ACDI Lusekele have taken as their vocation the ministry of helping their neighbors get hold of new high-yielding varieties.  There is no reason that God's provision for their food security and stable livelihoods should remain a secret.  Here's another vignette of how that vocation has made the difference for one family.

Tata Mukobo is small man, with a wooly gray beard and an engaging smile. He has two families. Years and years ago he married and quickly had a passle of young children. Life was poor and hard. Tata Mukobo scrabbled to feed his family. School was hit and miss for the kids. Difficulty upon difficulty finally broke up that marriage. The kids are grown, the oldest having kids of their own. They have settled into the familiar, demanding life of subsistence farming. Without education their options are limited.

After the demise of the first marriage, Tata Mukobo married a younger women. She expected to have children of her own -- and she did. A few years later Tata Mukobo and a few friends formed a farmer's association to do some cooperative farming -- knowledge, strength and security in numbers perhaps. In 2002 the association fell in with ACDI Lusekele in order to try 4 new disease-tolerant, high-yielding varieties of manioc. Armed with better planting material and regular advice on best farming practices from a Lusekele extension agent, the group surprised even themselves with a bumper manioc crop, easily 3 times what they had been producing before.

They moved on to a high-yielding variety of peanuts and much better harvest. In 2004 Tata Mukobo planted some new high-yielding oil palm trees and continued with the new peanuts and manioc. This year the palms are really beginning to produce nuts. Surpluses and new oil production mean that the family eats better and the younger kids, the second family, are going to school now. And Tata Mukobo has even recovered some ground for his first family. The youngest finally finished high school. Farming income paid for his first year of university, a new door of opportunity.