The aim of the mission was to carry out technical activities to support farmers and training in food waste management. In the first stage, farmers benefiting from the Beyond Cotton project in the districts of Misungwi, Magu and Kwimba took part in training on appropriate methodologies for biological control of agricultural diseases and physicochemical and microbiological analysis of drinking water.
The nutrition activities included making full use of food, producing recipes, and cooking workshops, good hygiene practices and assessing the semiological aspects, growth curve, anthropometric measurements and weight of the community, as well as identifying deficiencies, anaemia and oedema, all of which were carried out jointly with the local nutritionists in the districts visited.
The Beyond Cotton Project is a joint initiative of the WFP Centre of Excellence and the Brazilian government, through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency and the Federal University of Campina Grande , with financial support from the Brazilian Cotton Institute . Its objective is to support smallholder cotton farmers and public institutions in African countries in linking cotton by-products and intercropped crops - such as corn, sorghum and beans - to safe markets, including school feeding programmes.
In August 2019, the Beyond Cotton project organised the Participatory Workshop for Structuring the Logical Framework of the Country Project in the city of Maputo. To support these discussions, a Brazilian delegation with two experts in agronomy and nutrition from the Federal University of Lavras participated in a technical mission that included visits to schools and smallholder farmers in the provinces of Tete and Manica, the regions where the project operates.
The commercialization of cotton seeds yields more than CFA 70 billion annually for 300,000 farmers, generating indirect income for about three million people. Cotton is grown in dryland by almost a third of Benin's farmers and occupies about 20% of the cultivated area.