“I have been farming for 50 years and what do I have to show for it?” asked Shahadu Nayi, a smallholder, subsistence farmer in Ghana’s arid Northern Region.

“The students are learning about new crops and approaches that we, their parents, don’t know.” Mr. Nayi has nine children. His youngest was a member of the 4-H Club in the local junior high school where he learned new approaches, including rotational cropping systems, drip irrigation, fertilizer application and the importance of growing nutrient-enriched crops such as orange-fleshed sweet potato. A few years ago, during harvest, Mr. Nayi’s son helped him on the farm as extra labor. In the middle of the exhaustive, backbreaking work, his son exclaimed, “Dad, you shouldn’t mix all the crops together! When you grow maize, grow maize. When you grow cowpeas, grow cowpeas. Then, you will get better yields.” Mr. Nayi had seen the increased production yields of a rotational mono-cropping system on the school’s 4-H farm, so he listened. “As a farmer, the students formerly learned from us. Today, we learn from the students.”

For the past three years, Mr. Nayi has planted his crops in rows, rotating them annually according to the new method. “Previously, when I was farming under the old method, my family would run out of food before the next harvest and I would need to purchase food at the market. Today, with the method I learned from my son, I produce enough food to feed my family for the entire year. For 50 years, I spoiled the soil because I did not have the knowledge to conserve it. If I had been in 4-H when I was young, today I would be a rich man.”