Local Resilience & Empowerment with Sustainable Agriculture

Despite the global challenges this past year, Harvest Malawi’s agricultural programs alongside Naturally Africa Volunteers continued as a direct result of donor support (Thank you!). Over the past year, we were able to successfully cultivate crops, mitigate and adapt to the threat of floods, and launch a successful agricultural education program in Nkope Village and surrounding communities. Some exciting updates on the agriculture project can be found in the information and pictures below.

Agriculture Planting Update

Over the past year and a half, we have supported the ongoing delivery of the Nkope Village agriculture project, with the aim of diversifying crop production for improved food security, nutrition and income generation for smallholder farmers. Over this time, the project has developed to incorporate permaculture techniques, including planting several varieties of fruit trees, cassavas, chilies, dry season maize, and mixed vegetable crops. Additionally, we have supported the construction of a model homestead and gardens to demonstrate sustainable living and permaculture practices to local communities.

In 2021, we planted sweet potatoes, onion, sugarcane, okra, and sunflower on one hectare (1 hectare = 2.5 acres) of land. We also planted sunflowers as a trial cash crop for the season because of its high local value for making oil. Due to bad flooding in our region, we also planted rice as a back-up on the areas where water was standing and 100kg of rice was harvested by locals.

The water table remained high into the 2021 dry season and waterlogging caused ongoing challenges. Despite this, we grew eggplants, maize, cassava, tomato and onion crops. Additionally, due to the high water table on most areas of the land, we also introduced sugar cane and bananas to the plan.

The 2021 rainy season was difficult for the program due to global issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and floods that hit Malawi. After last year’s extreme high water, we felt it best to monitor the situation this year and have dug 200 meter swales in the worst affected area to alleviate the flooding and waterlogging. Additionally, we planted another area with okra, eggplants and sugarcane, as this can be done at very little additional cost.

Additionally in September 2021, new connectors were purchased and installed to maintain the drip irrigation system. In 2022, planting activities are continuing to develop and further updates on this year's rainy and dry seasons will be provided in the upcoming update.

Photos from the 2021 harvest can be found below:

(Pictured: Onions, chiles, bananas, planted maize, eggplant, & harvested sunflower)

(Pictured: Harvested sunflower field prepared for planting, harvested maize, and swales to mitigate negative effects of flooding)

Agricultural Education Program

To complement planting efforts, we also supported the launch of an Agroecology and Permaculture Training Course that ran from August 2021 to January 2022. Before launching the course, we gained baseline information to monitor future progress by issuing an agriculture and nutrition baseline survey of approx. 600 households prior to the planned subsistence farmer education program in 2021.

The course was carefully planned to teach and train communities to farm using more sustainable agricultural practices due to high levels of land degradation in Malawi. The course covered topics including human nutrition, environmental sustainability, soil health and conservation, crop rotations and types of agriculture, permaculture zones (field and homestead), animal husbandry, green manures and composting, pest and disease control, water management and irrigation, field and home visits, and more. To complement coursework, the course provided community members the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the field to develop and design their own sustainable agriculture plots and collaborate with each other to support/assist/share challenges and solutions. As such, communities were trained with the “learning by doing” approach to ensure that practical learning was able to reach individuals. Throughout the course, over 50 people were trained.

This year, we will be launching the same training course with aims to also develop a new part of the curriculum focused on business development, agricultural markets, and agri-preneurship. Through these trainings, we hope that local Malawians can be better equipped to strengthen their local economies, enhance their livelihoods, and improve nutritional outcomes in their

Photos from the 2021 agriculture education program can be found below:

Thanks so much to all our donors for making all of this possible!