A 30 year old mother Babelle Abena is a peasant farmer of a community called TENDOMA. She is a mother of six children with the husband, Babelle. She cultivated soya two years before the GROW Project but had no ready market. Last year she registered as client with CAPECS and cultivated 1 acre of soya. This year Abena cultivated 3 acres of soya. She has the concern in financing her soya production next year and supporting the family. In this regard Abena had joined the Suntaa Tietaa women group and takes part in their Village Saving and Loan Association (VSLA). Abena, through her participation in the GROW Project activities and realizing the value soya can add to her family, cultivated three (3) acres of soya compared to 1 acre last year. For Abena, her motivation factors for increasing the farm size were the supportive services of the husband, women group labour, and the ready market linkage information by GROW. According to her, “ ….. Last year I cultivated 1 acre of soya but due to poor rains I did not harvest even a seed, but this year I am very hopeful. My husband is very supportive too. Last year the CAPECS people helped us the get good market too. So I decided to increase my soya farm to three (3) acres……… ”

Babiele Abena is highly excited about the exceptional high podding rate of her three-acre soya farm. She is also pleased with the entire farm size, as the soya is just ready for harvest. She is so happy that she followed all the advice given by the field staff and planted immediately she was advised to do so. Now her soya is ready for harvest and she hopes she is the first soya farmer to harvest at this time in the entire Wa West District. “…. I got disappointed on the 1 acre soya farm that I could not even harvest last year but was highly motivated to cultivate again this year in rather larger size. As you can see the crops, my expectation is to harvest at least 20 bags, that I think would enable me recover last year production cost, support my husband to provide decent shelter for the family, supplement food nutrients and pay my children school/health bills…….. ”