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Night Is Expanding Her Farm and Increasing Crop Yields in South Sudan

on  December 8, 2022

Along the Imatong Mountains in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria state, 46-year-old Night lives with her husband and two of their children. 

Night is a farmer, and she used to buy whatever seeds she could afford from the local market. The seeds she could afford were typically low quality, leading to low crop yields and food shortages for her and her family. 

Night now participates in Empowering Leaders Through Nutrition-Smart Agriculture, a joint project implemented by Rise Against Hunger and partner Lift Up the Vulnerable. The project focuses on increasing crop production and dietary diversity for Hope for South Sudan, a local school and orphanage near the city of Torit, and its surrounding community. 

As part of the project, Night has received seeds from the school. She also received training on modern planting techniques and recommended spacing between plants. Since adopting the new farming methods and planting the higher-quality seeds, Night has seen an increase in her crop yields. She said, “There is happiness in the family because of enough food production and no food shortages.” 

She is able to grow twice a year, producing enough food to feed her family as well as sell some to pay for the family’s other needs. Due to conflict in the country, they have three other children attending secondary school at refugee camps in Uganda, and Night and her husband are using some of the profits to pay for their school fees. 

Night has also seen the project impact her community. She said they work and learn together, which has helped maximize the community’s workforce. The community’s agriculture planning and post-harvest control have improved. As Night’s crop yields have improved, she has increased the size of her farm. She said “having enough food stored” for her family is one of her proudest accomplishments. In the future, she plans to further expand her farm to grow even more food to provide for her family and sell for profit.   

Rise Against Hunger is committed to supporting Night’s goals — as well as the dreams and nourishment of the people we serve around the world — and you make this work possible. It starts with a gift. Donate today to help provide access to nutritious food and the promise of a better future to those affected by food insecurity. 

About the Author

Hannah Payne is the Public Relations & Communications Manager at Rise Against Hunger. She facilitates communication between Rise Against Hunger and the media.

More Posts by Hannah Payne

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.