From Birds to Bees

Yerushalmi, who lives on a farm in Moshav Haniel northeast of Tel Aviv in the Hefer Valley, was actually born and raised not far from his office. But Yerushalmi says his love of nature and animals led him to study agriculture at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture after finishing his army service. After specializing in poultry and aquaculture, Yerushalmi combined developing his own small farm of citrus orchards and chickens with work as a regional instructor in poultry with the Israel Ministry of Agriculture's extension service.

"During my first five years with the service, before I went to Swaziland, I had gone out on a number of short-term on-the-spot missions for MASHAV to a number of locations including Kenya and Swaziland. Originally we (my family and I) were scheduled to stay in Swaziland for two years, but when my original contact drew to a close, I renewed three times. All in all, we ended up staying four full years," he explained.

The original plan was for Yerushalmi to establish a rural agriculture project in the Shibani Cooperative about 80 kms from the capital, together with his partner from the Swazi Ministry of Agriculture, Ms. Colani Simelani. The object: Provide local farmers in the outback with additional income by keeping laying hens. Layers are a cash crop requiring little investment; are suitable for small farmers; could lessen the risk in farms growing maize - particularly in drought years; and have a fair chance of competing for a piece of the market against food imports, Yerushalmi explained.

A small country surrounded on three sides by South Africa, Swaziland's farmers must compete on a far-from-equal playing field with South African agricultural imports from large farms, including hen eggs. But, at the same time, there is an advantage: Local residents can cash in on their next-door-neighbor's agricultural inputs and "piggy-back" on South Africa's agricultural infrastructure - including purchase of new laying stock and fresh feed from state-of-the-arts hatcheries and feed mills across the border. "We had to be small-scale to work but also on a high professional level in terms of quality of product in order to compete for customers in supermarkets and hotels," he says. "It was a real challenge. When we began 85-90% of the eggs were imported. By the time I left, South African imports were down to 65-70%."

"The system we established is what I would call a small 'moshav' - in the sense that we built a project center designed to provide instruction and buying and marketing services for the members, but we were careful to keep centralization to a minimum and autonomy of the family farmsteads at a maximum," says Yerushalmi.

The Israeli-inaugurated operation was based on an existing small-scale cooperative buying framework that had encompassed 161 members to buy certain agricultural inputs in bulk. When Yerushalmi left in 1996, there were 300 members with a much broader agenda that included a marketing network and introduction of two new sources of income - fish and bees.

Three months after the demonstration farm was set up, the individual farmers chosen to participate in the project began setting up their own independent operations. "One of the unique aspects of the setup is that all the co-op members are women," stressed Yerushalmi. "They serve on the executive committee, the steering committee and so forth that oversee operations, including decision-making at the central project, where most of the employees are men." The project led not only to increased income, but also bolstered pride and enhanced stature and independence of the women, he says.

"We began with 17 farmers. Setting up an independent operation took initiative to do something untried. Each began with 100 layers. The veterans are now up to 300 layers."

"It was decided to introduce poultry because of the relatively low cost to launch the project and the immediate income it afforded," he explained. "From the first day after receiving the hens, they began to return the investment in eggs, reaching full production within a month's time. Moreover, we endeavored to reduce initial costs as much as possible by constructing the poultry sheds according to set plans, but with self-labor and materials at hand - in the same manner and standards that dwellings are constructed." Some used cinder blocks. Other used rocks and wood. Some sand and mud bricks. And one woman even cast her own cinder blocks. "My aim was to provide a suitable interface between local building standards and new technologies - such as suspended laying cages and automated drinking cups," Yerushalmi stressed. Introduction of management techniques was flexible - geared to the local situation. Many of the farms chosen to participate were located in isolated villages along gravel roads with limited water supply and no electricity.

Although all the members bought bagged feed concentrates, introduction of artificial lighting to extend the day to keep the birds laying depended on the individual farmer's situation - financial and physical. Shlomo Yerushalmi disclosed that some had electricity, some rigged up gas lamps, some kerosene lanterns and some...candle power. Each poultry shed was equipped with a 100-liter storage tank for water to supply the drinking cups. The family brought water for the chickens in the same manner they brought water for domestic use. Some had a running water supply. Others used jerry cans. A few went on to purchase rubber garden hoses to reach the village pump. Credit extended to farmers was "recycled," allowing others to use seed money to start poultry operations, as well. Today there are 74 families in Shibani involved in the chicken cooperative. "For every loan that becomes available there are three or four cooperatives ready and waiting to take out a loan," he disclosed. "In Khutsala in the east - a more veteran project established in the mid-1980s, there is one farmer who began on a small scale who now has close to 10,000 layers - a serious operation by any standard," he says.

Shlomo Yerushalmi said that as a matter of course, he, like other long-term emissaries, took on a host of short-term missions. In addition to his work in Swaziland he also conducted brief sojourns in other countries - conducting feasibility studies or examining a specific problem that could use his expertise - including South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique.

"Wherever you go, you travel through an area to meet a specific need, but you continue to look at things with 'agricultural eyes.' That's how we got involved in raising fish and then bees - although I was called in as a poultry expert and had no experience with either fish or bees."

Yerushalmi says the idea of using leftovers from the poultry as food for fish was almost a natural outcome of the kind of thinking a lot of Israeli experts, not just he, have. "I think we are less bound to a set plan or a 'right-way' of doing things. Or sticking to what we were sent to do. We're more spontaneous. I spent a lot of time out in the field. Israelis are not afraid to chip in and wield a monkey wrench or simply improvise a gizmo from what's there. You have to know the theories but also to offer them practical solutions."

"I for one saw my goal as not just 'to grow chickens' but to look for ways people could increase their incomes under local conditions." The success of the first project, however, served as a catalyst for the second.

To launch the first small-scale "commercial" fish project the Swazi Department of Agriculture brought in equipment to dig a 600 sq. meter pond at the project's central farm and service center. Water was pumped into the pond and replenished every few days from a nearby river. The two sections of the pond were stocked - one with carp, one with catfish.

To set in motion the establishment of a food chain, measured amounts of chicken manure are added to the water. And the catfish - which will eat almost anything - are fed a diet of "hamburger" made up of waste materials from the chicken business that would normally be discarded and chalked up to amortization. There was no reason not to "recycle" broken eggs from the grading center, any spilled feed concentrate swept up from the floor at the central supply depot and any dead chickens from the 2,500 layer demonstration farm. The chickens were ground up in a simple meat grinder Yerushalmi bought!

The result: "free" fish. While perhaps not working according to the agriculture manuals, the project has turned 5 gram fry into 800 gram and one kilogram fish by the end of the year - a "green" enterprise all around - ecologically and economically. Likewise, chicken manure is bagged in empty feed sacks and sold to vegetable farmers for a profit. Nothing goes to waste.

The bee project grew out of the same philosophy of constantly seeking more cash crops to increase the income of small farmers - agricultural branches that will involve a minimum investment and are suitable for many farmers. "A five-day visit by Sheike Stern, an Israeli expert in beekeeping, excited my imagination," recalled Yerushalmi. "It was a solution that required almost no investment and that I could offer any farmer anywhere - without being tied to a central service center like with the fish. With bees, each farmer could have his own source of extra income he must nurture and protect, independent of others."

"Bees had tremendous potential, but the farmers had a natural reluctance to deal with bees," he recalled. No wonder! The project was based on capturing wild bee colonies in flight, not importing Australian bees as had been done elsewhere in Africa. And African bees are ferocious, not docile like domesticated bees.

Working closely with the Swazi Ministry of Agriculture's chief beekeeping expert, Daniel Nkhambule, the bee project was launched. Each participant began with four hives - two conventional commercial beehives purchased in South Africa, and two more built by the participants from materials at hand at nominal cost, left over from local logging operations.

How does one capture a wild bee colony? With utmost caution...

"Protective gear was provided by the project," Yerushalmi explained. Aspiring beekeepers hung catch boxes during the migration period, baited with propolis to attract a passing swarm of bees to set up house and begin making a nest. At night the aspiring apiarists moved the container with the bees to a larger box - the exterior walls of a home-made beehouse built according to commercial specifications, hoping the colony would accept the change of venue and not fly off to seek more natural accommodations.

Since Shlomo Yerushalmi's return to Israel, Daniel Nkbambule has taken the project under his wing and he himself came to Israel to participate in the course on Beekeeping for Honey, By-Products and Pollination held at CINADCO's center at Kibbutz Shefayim (see article in this issue, How Sweet It Is).

Looking back on four years in Swaziland, Shlomo Yerushalmi says the experience both gave him a new perspective - appreciation of things he took for granted, and left him with a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

"You see that a project you helped launch takes off and gains momentum. It was a very creative process. You see how your efforts fundamentally effect the lives of other people - not by words but deeds. You see how the extra income makes it possible for a family to attain something basic that they needed. For one parent to send a child to school. For another to bring electricity into her home as a result of bringing electricity to the hens. These are things of significance that go beyond the satisfaction of sharing the agricultural know-how you have."