Harvest: growing seeds Explanation text

Send a Cow supports poor families in rural Africa to make the best of their land, so that they can grow their own food and feed themselves all year round. Your task is to write an explanation of how families in Ethiopia grow their own food.

1.In groups write down what plants need to grow ?

2.Look at the picture and discuss all the different things the family can do to grow their own vegetables. 3.In a different colour pen write each suggestion on a separate strip of paper. 4.Sequence your suggestions.

5.In groups think about what they might find difficult in this process.

This family has no taps. They have to walk for an hour to collect their water, then they have to carry back what they need for the whole day. They need to be really careful about how they use their water. Send a Cow supports people with water saving techniques - they collect water during the rainy season, so that they have water for their plants in the dry season. They also add mulch to their soil which helps the water stay in the soil and not evaporate so quickly.

In Ethiopia the soil in rural areas tends to be very infertile as it has been over used without ever putting any nutrients back into it. Send a Cow supports people to add manure from their farm animals into the soil to make the soil really healthy. This allows the vegetables to grow 4 or 5 times more than they would normally. So families are able to grow enough food to feed themselves.

Once the vegetables grow they have enough to feed their family, and enough left over to sell at market. By selling their produce they are able to send their children to school.

Harvest: growing seeds Explanation text

Remember to include: Title: what’s it about? Introduction: general statement about the topic Information 1: where are you talking about? Information 2: what are the difficulties? Information 3: how do you sow seeds? Conclusion: Now you can see how…because…

When you have written your explanation text, do show us!