The Rural Voice, 1986-04, Page 9Janet and Don Caldwell
Caldwell, the complex as a whole
has never had a crop failure, and
has seldom been faced with the
minimum moisture requirement.
"Usually we have three feet of
moisture by the end of the rainy
season. Hopefully the crop is eight
inches high by the time the dry
weather comes."
All machinery and initial spare
parts are shipped to Tanzania from
Canada. The Tanzanian govern-
ment is responsible for fuels,
lubricants, trucks, seed grain, and
employee housing. Twelve tractors
ranging from 105 to 285 hp are us-
ed on each farm along with four
42 -foot chisel plows, a 24 -foot
double disc harrow, and a one-way
disc for the seeders. A 15 -foot
plow is used for breaking land.
"The chisel plows help keep trash
on top of the soil, preserving the
topsoil. The heavy rains create
water erosion, says Caldwell. "A
lot of the land is on a gradual
slope, but the slope may run for
two or three miles. We've put in
grass strips and the farm is nearly
all contoured with grass strips."
To avoid erosion, the grain stubble
is never plowed until the rainy
season' begins.
With the exception of two
craters taking up forty acres of
land, and several wet holes, the re-
mainder of the 10,000 acres is
workable. The breather pots from
a major volcanic eruption left
craters 300 to 400 feet deep.
Because of their depth, water
always remains in the craters, and
local livestock are watered from
them when other water sources dry
up. Unfortunately, the water is
often salty, and the descent into
the crater may be too steep for
livestock.
The dry season has its draw-
backs, retarding plant growth and
water supplies, but there are also
advantages. Combining begins in
June and continues through
August. As the grain comes off the
combine, it is bagged in 90
kilogram sacks and piled outside.
"When we harvested the crop, we
just bagged it and piled it outside
because we knew that it wasn't go-
ing to rain. It's hard to believe, but
it clouds up and there's thunder
and lightning, but it doesn't rain,"
Caldwell says. Thousands of bags
of wheat are stored outside, but
they're always sold before the
rainy season comes. The grain, a
combination of Tanzanian, Cana-
dian, and Russian hard wheat
strains, yields from 23 to 29
bushels to the acre over the entire
complex. Twenty-nine bushels to
the acre is also an average yield in
Saskatchewan, according to
Caldwell.
All the wheat is trucked 250 km
to the city of Arusha where it is
milled and distributed to be made
into bread.
An armed guard stands a
24-hour watch over the wheat bags
until it is trucked out. Wheat sells
for a premium on the blackmarket,
and unguarded grain would readily
be stolen. Caldwell recalls an inci-
dent when a local Barabaig
tribesman decided to supplement
his income (the average Tanzanian
earns $60 a month) with some
blackmarket money. Employed as
a combine operator, the Barabaig
unloaded a bin of wheat in a bush
area on the farm, where his fellow
tribesmen quickly bagged it. They
were caught and the wheat was
returned to the main storage area,
but had their plan been successful,
the tribesmen would have received
$500 for a 90 -kilogram sack on the
black market. That's nearly ten
times the $60 price paid by the
government.
According to Caldwell, the
APRIL 1986 7