Zambia: Climate adaptation funds sow seeds of resilience

Beaming with smiles, Zambian farmer Mary Dimba points to a newly harvested crop of maize on her silo. The mother-of-four from Mpande village in Zambia's Lusaka Province tells how the beginning of the last cropping season was less stressful than previous ones.Funds that would have gone into buying seeds during the planting season paid for her youngest child's school books. This season she sourced seeds for free from the community seed bank."Per the agreed laws governing our seed bank, any farmer that borrows two kilograms of seed must return the same quantity or more so others can call on it in the next season," Dimba told SciDev.Net as she packaged seeds in plastic containers to send to the bank.In the past, Mary and others like her wished she could plant her local seed varieties but lacked the knowledge and skills to be able to select, process and store seeds from their harvests."We have different local varieties of seeds that require less fertilizer to grow, thrive in dry spells ...