Hunger Season
The hunger season is that period of time when all the food from the previous harvest has been consumed, and the next harvest is still some time away. Even in normal years, many households face an annual reduction in the amount of food they have available. Typically the hunger season will coincide with the start of planting the new crop, or shortly thereafter. So farmers are faced with a shortage of food at the very time they are expected to perform their heaviest labor.
One way of mitigating the effects of the hunger season is growing some non-seasonal crops close to the family home, such as bananas in humid areas, or cassava where it is arid. As an example, a family that has ten banana plants producing fruit during the hunger season is unlikely to experience excessive hardship. Sweet potato, pigeon pea, and Moringa oleifera should also be considered.
Read more about this topic: Tropical Agriculture
Famous quotes containing the words hunger and/or season:
“Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Compare ... the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)