A field of onions
Ngagne Fall is a friend of Mansour (my host teacher) and he lives in a small village about 20 kilometers outside Louga called Ndiambe Fall (just like his last name!) He is an English teacher and a farmer, too.
(L to R) Ngagne, me, and Mansour
He has about an acre (un champs de maraichage) planted with onions right now. The people of his village help each other plant crops and all reap the rewards by enjoying local food. The field is surrounded by a thorny, living fence and lemon trees that protect the onions from wandering livestock. He said that he buys seeds each year, but those who can’t afford seeds, will buy a bundle of seedlings from people who have started seeds. Each of these onions was started as a seed and transplanted as a seedling, all by hand. He staggered the planting so that he will be able to harvest onions every week for a while. Each bed is fertilized with composted animal dung. About a ¼ of an acre can be harvested in a day by a group of people. These onions take about 5 months start to finish and then he’ll let the earth rest for a few weeks before starting peppers.
Next door, his brother has a more diversified plot of land including potatoes, melon, mango trees, lettuce, and sorrel.
Ngagne said that the only way that they are able to grow food in the sandy earth is by having a well. On the way to his property he showed us someone else’s field and said, “He was supposed to have onions too, but he wasn’t able to get a well.”
Ngagne has a well that was funded by a grant from Saudi Arabia and built by Chinese engineers. It’s 29 meters deep, took one month to dig by hand, and cost him about $275. (Teachers in Senegal make about $580/month for reference.) He said that normally people stop when they have about one meter of water, but it is better to continue digging so that you have a consistent supply.
Ngagne's well (un puit)
He has a pump that cost about $183 and fills several cisterns around the property for easier irrigation by hand. He says when he has paid for his electricity he fills up the cistern, so that when he doesn’t have money to pay for electricity he still has water for his crops. I asked him about using solar energy to run the pump and he said at this point it’s quite cost prohibitive, as a solar panel he estimates, is between $1830 and $5490.
A cistern among the onions
The beds are watered daily with buckets from the cistern by women.
Little lettuces being watered
Ngagne mostly sells his produce locally, but he takes it to the markets in Dakar sometimes to get a better price. In Louga, his onions sell for about 38 cents/kilogram and green peppers for about 92c to $1.84/kg.
I’m left wondering if every Senegalese farmer, like their American counterparts, require an off-farm job to continue farming and support their families.