Lifetime achievement award

Small scale farming is not really in fashion at the moment; food production it is argued, would better be done on a bigger, more efficient scale. In Zimbabwe, where Phiri lives and works, the take-over and break up of large, commercial farms has been attacked for its disastrous effects on national food production.

Zephaniah Phiri’s story is a challenge to this prevailing mood. It is the story of a man who has spent much of his life developing new ways to harvest rainfall and preserve his soil. While the Zvishavane Water Project, of which Phiri is the founder, has received international attention and funding, its founder has remained loyal to his small-scale background. As a boy, he says that he was not aware of poverty. His family had enough to eat and were happy. This kind of innocence and optimism runs through his tale. Ambition has led him not to make bigger and better projects but to find ways for more people to learn of his ‘water planting’ ideas.

Phiri was imprisoned and tortured for years, for helping Zimbabwe’s freedom fighters, and later set up one of Zimbabwe’s first indigenous NGOs, the Zvishavane Water Project, through which he broadened his range of innovations and his contact with farmers both in Zimbabwe and further afield. The New Agriculturalist