Quality and Sustainability

By George Z Goliati  Pic: Midule Farmers Organisation (cooperative) members pausing after presenting its strategy to the Agricultural Extension Development Officer   Poor and hungry while sitting on a money and food basket   We are smallscale farmers from northern parts of Traditional Authorities (TAs) Makata of Blantyre district and Chitera of Chiradzulu district, and south of TA Mulumbe of Zomba district.  Our villages are endowed with streams that include Midule, which originates from Chiradzulu, and Mlombozi, which originates from Zomba. The villages have been supported with three irrigation schemes covering about 60 to 70 hectares. The streams, the schemes and other wells provide an opportunity for irrigation farming.  Contrary many of us are plagued with food insecurity every year and recycling poverty. Even though the average landholding size is below 0.5 hectares per household while some have more than 1 hectare, we are unable to use our land...

By George Z Goliati  Pic: Domwe solar-powered irrigation scheme where only 1 hectare out of 6 is utilised Continuing the journey to test the model   Due to accessibility issues, a replacement host had to be identified in Blantyre district. Chipande Extension Planning Area proved to be ideal when compared to Mtonda which also has farmers with irrigation schemes in Blantyre, as indicated by the District Agricultural Development Officer. Experience in Chikwawa showed that establishing new organisations is relatively expensive. Therefore, existing farmer organisations were targeted. Domwe irrigation scheme committee which had also recently registered as Mwanje cooperative was approached on 2 September, 2020, after linking with the Agricultural Extension Development Coordinator. There was love at first sight. The chairman and one of members met gave a very promising impression in their response to feasibility assessment questions. No time was to be taken, there was no n...

By George Z Goliati  Pic: Self-motivated farmers from Chikwawa district, the first group of farmers to be met during the journey to   test the model e3 anchor farms model methodology: what will it involve?  The e3 anchor farms model methodology has 10 main stages, from identification of a potential or weak farmer organisation to marketing. The stages are divided into two main phases while each stage has sub-stages. The first phase would involve once off engagement and partnership development as first stage, which would end with acquisition of a solar-powered projector and tablet smartphone and other assets, while the second would involve repeated process, that is, value chain or market identification, business planning up to actual marketing or sales.  The first stage includes (i) identifying a weak or potential farmer organisations with existing underutilised warehouses, irrigation schemes, and land, and vulnerable farmers, (ii) partnership investment fe...

By George Z Goliati Goliati  Pic: One of small-scale irrigation schemes in Malawi   The Government of Malawi (GoM) through the Ministry of Agriculture, with support from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is implementing the Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP). The SVTP is a 14-year program (2018-2031) which will be implemented in three sequential but partially overlapping phases. The SVTP will irrigate 43,370 hectares of land by abstracting water from the Shire River at Kapichira and conveying it by gravity to the irrigable area in Chikwawa and Nsanje districts through canals. This will ensure a more consistent supply of water to farm lands throughout the year.  Two of the five SVTP guiding principles include allowing farmers who want to participate to organise themselves and consolidate their land, and allow for private investments in partnership with land owners and users. The e3 anchor farms mod...

By George Z Goliati  In search for a host for the test-phase of the e3 anchor farms model, the Smallholder Irrigation and Value Addition Project (SIVAP) was the first to come in mind. 7 value addition centres (VAC) were constructed under the SIVAP in 7 districts across all regions in Malawi. The underutilization of these VACs was learnt earlier on such that it was found useful and exciting to test the model on one of them. The nearest was found in Chikwawa. This is Thabwa value addition centre located at Thabwa trading center in Chikwawa district. At the same time, we have just learnt about Shire Valley Transformation programme (SVTP). As such, Chikwawa became an excellent destination. The SVTP is another upcoming opportunity and sounds very familiar and corresponding with the e3 anchor farms model. That's not enough, the journey also taught us about another underutilised opportunity. This is the underutilization of irrigation schemes. Even if that wasn't enough, we...

By George Z Goliati  Graphic presentation of the e3 anchor farms model   Just to emphasize, AfriCan Explorations is the developer of the e3 anchor farms model, which is an agro-trading social impact business model. As a means of production or service provision of its developed models, AfriCan Explorations is designed to establish separate business enterprise. In this case, if the e3 anchor farms model proves viable, AfriCan Explorations will establish a social enterprise to be named Umodzi Farms.  Umodzi Farms will operate as an integrated agro-commodity aggregator using the e3 anchor farms model. However, the model will be developed in a manner that it attracts other agro-trading business entities to use it so as to upscale its impacts in Africa and of course improve quality of its delivery through competition. Umodzi Farms is envisioned to be a reliable supplier of export quality agro-commodities from sustainable farms and highly motivated and efficient farm...