Women’s Coalition Of Zimbabwe (WCoZ)

Foundations for Farming began in 1982, not as a development programme, but as one man's fight to save a single farm from collapse. Brian Oldreive, a former tobacco farmer, had taken on management of a struggling property in northern Zimbabwe. Deep ploughing and regular burning had stripped the soil of its structure, erosion was washing away seed and water with every rain, and the farm's finances kept sliding backward no matter how much was spent on machinery and tillage. Facing failure, Oldreive turned to prayer, and became convinced that the answer lay in observing how soil behaves in nature: undisturbed, protected by a blanket of fallen leaves and grass, never turned over. Agricultural experts told him it wouldn't work, that it had already been tried and failed. He experimented anyway, starting with zero-tillage on just two hectares, farmed to the highest possible standard. The results were dramatic enough that within six years, the entire 1,000-hectare farm had converted to minimum tillage, and Oldreive went on to farm 3,500 hectares using the method, setting a national maize yield record that stood for two decades.

Recognising what this could mean for Zimbabwe's smallholder farmers, Oldreive began teaching the technique in villages near his farm. He quickly discovered that sharing a farming method was not enough on its own; early adopters faced jealousy and suspicion from neighbours who saw their success as suspicious rather than replicable. That experience shaped FfF's defining insight: sustainable change in farming is not just a technical problem, it is a problem of the heart, of standards, work ethic and character. FfF began partnering with churches, using both community structures and shared faith to support the deeper transformation the method required.

The approach proved itself far beyond one farm. In 2002, the Zambian government adopted Foundations for Farming's methodology at national scale with World Bank funding, and by 2004 Zambia had become a grain exporter for the first time in its history. In Zimbabwe, FfF partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from 2009 onward, and has since worked alongside the World Food Programme, UNICEF and USAID on multiple projects. The organisation has moved through several homes over the decades, from a local church, to the Resthaven retreat centre, and since 2013 to Clouds End, a former stable and racecourse on the outskirts of Harare that now serves as FfF's training centre and model farm.

In 2020, the Zimbabwean government formalised a nationwide partnership with FfF to roll out its conservation agriculture method to 1.8 million farmers under the name Pfumvudza, meaning "new season" in Shona. The impact was significant enough that Zimbabwe's President awarded FfF a Presidential Commendation in 2021 for its role in strengthening the country's food security during the 2020/21 farming season. FfF has since been recognised internationally, alongside research and farming institutions from Brazil and the Netherlands, with an FAO award for its contribution to sustainable agriculture.

Of the world's 608 million farms, 84% are smallholdings of less than two hectares, and many of the families working them do not produce enough food to feed themselves, let alone generate income. Smallholder farmers are consistently among the poorest people on earth, with limited access to education, electricity and healthcare.

The pressure on these farmers is intensifying. Over the past 40 years, more than 30% of the world's arable land has been lost to soil erosion, climate change, pollution, continuous ploughing and heavy fertiliser use. Population growth and unequal land distribution mean that expanding a farm's footprint is rarely an option, and mechanisation is financially out of reach for most smallholder families, often carrying hidden costs that outweigh the benefit.

In Zimbabwe specifically, the national average maize yield for small-scale farmers sits at around 1 ton per hectare, or by some FfF measures as low as 0.4 tons per hectare, a yield far too low to reliably sustain a family through the year, let alone build any financial resilience against a bad season.

FfF's core insight is that yield is directly proportional to standards, and standards are ultimately a matter of the heart. Communities across 39 areas that completed FfF's two-week training in Faith, Family, Farming and Finance now average maize yields of 8 metric tons per hectare, an eightfold increase over the national smallholder average. FfF's training teaches farmers to adopt what the organisation calls SMALL practices: simple, manageable, applicable and long-lasting soil conservation techniques, summarised in the mantra "On Time, At standard, Without waste, and with joy."

Central to the model is Pfumvudza, a planting system designed to answer one practical question: how much land does a family actually need to feed itself? Using FfF's spacing principles and the assumption that a family needs roughly a bucket of maize a week, the method calculates that a plot of just 16 by 39 metres, only one-sixteenth of a hectare, can be enough to meet a family's staple food needs for an entire year when farmed to FfF's standard. Farmers are guided through a precise seasonal calendar: clearing and mulching fields in winter, marking planting stations, applying lime and fertiliser by set dates, planting after the first effective rains, thinning, top-dressing, weeding and pest treatment at defined intervals, and finally harvesting, before immediately preparing the same plot's stalks as mulch for the next season. The result is a repeatable, low-cost system that smallholder families can manage without machinery, on land they already have.

FfF's teaching deliberately avoids handouts. The organisation's founding conviction, carried through four decades of work, is that giving resources to people capable of working creates dependency, undermines productivity and erodes faithfulness. Instead, farmers are equipped with knowledge, discipline and a biblical, character-based framework for stewardship that they can apply indefinitely, on their own land, without needing to wait for the next donation cycle.

Over 30,000 farmers and instructors have received direct training from FfF.

FfF's principles have been passed on to more than 3 million farmers globally through trainees who go on to teach others in their own communities.

Farmers who complete FfF's mentoring programme achieve an average yield of 8 tons per hectare, compared with a Zimbabwean national average as low as 0.4 tons per hectare for small-scale farmers.

In 2020, FfF partnered with the Zimbabwean government to bring its Pfumvudza method to 1.8 million farmers nationwide, contributing to a Presidential Commendation for the organisation's role in national food security during the 2020/21 season.

FfF's founder, Brian Oldreive, personally proved the method's ceiling by farming 3,500 hectares under conservation agriculture and setting a national maize yield record in Zimbabwe that stood for 20 years.