Soils, Food and Healthy Communities

In the upcoming month, the MAFFA project will be holding farmer exchanges within both the north and central regions, as well as between the two areas. Farmers will stay for around one week with their host households, to learn from other communities. The goal of these exchanges is for MAFFA participants to trade knowledge in farming techniques and experiments done in in other areas. As households have conducted experiments through MAFFA on a variety of topics in the past three years (including experimenting with different planting methods, introduction of more crops such as sorghum, millet, cowpea, tree-planting, residue incorporation, compost manure and so on, there is a lot of experience to be shared. We hope this will encourage further experimentation and sharing. The Farmer Research Team is helping to organize this event.

We are happy to announce that our second Youth Community Promoter, Cristina Hara, has returned from maternity leave! Cristina is happy to be back at work and looking forward to 2015’s activities.

More Objective 4 of MAFFA news: the Youth Clubs in the Ekwendeni region have expressed interest in growing the crops used in their small business initiatives.  The youth clubs have been developing food businesses with a variety of products (breads, juices, doughnuts, groundnut and sweet potato fritters, etc) to sell as a source of livelihood in local areas. Previously they have bought locally rather than grown the ingredients. The MAFFA youth promoters and the rest of our team will be investigating opportunities for youth agriculture in the coming months.

Sidney Madsen’s visit to Malawi has gone well so far; after several weeks in Ekwendeni in the Northern region, she will soon be traveling to Lobi in the Central region to continue her research. Sidney has been staying with participating farmers and FRT (Farmer Research Team) members in Chimbongondo and Kabwanda areas, among others, to study and evaluate MAFFA’s participatory approach. Sidney has worked closely with Sume Mbewe, our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer. She intends to hold project meetings using the Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation method, to introduce this format to the MAFFA team. We are delighted that her trip has been enjoyable, efficient and successful so far. (See more about Sidney Madsen’s work with SFHC here: http://soilandfood.org/?p=258)

Gender training: In January, several days of training and discussion were held in Lobi on gender equality. As Objective 5 of MAFFA focuses on giving women increased decision-making power over agriculture, food security and income, this is an important component of our work.

Nutrient cereal analysis: In Objectives 1 and 3 of MAFFA  (See http://soilandfood.org/?p=133 for a summary of MAFFA’s objectives): Alongside Dr. Trust Beta, three research associates at the University of Manitoba, from China and Korea, have been analyzing samples of legume and cereal varieties sent to them. Their goal was to perform a thorough nutrient analysis of the many varieties grown and studied through MAFFA; the results so far have been positive. Their findings will be presented at the American Association of Cereal Chemists, in Minneapolis in October. Stay tuned!

As of December, SFHC and other partners have completed seed distribution to the 4000 new participating households of the MAFFA (Malawi Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology) project. This year’s seed included a range of varieties of pigeon pea, groundnut (peanut), bambara groundnut, beans, and for the first time, finger millet! Finger millet, a drought tolerant and nutritious grain, is pest resilient and useful for years of inconsistent rain, and good for combating child malnutrition.

We based our selections on what we learned from the seed fairs held in August. Fairs were held in both locations (Lobi and Ekwendeni), where farmers brought and displayed their preferred local varieties of several crops. An informal discussion was conducted to decide which varieties farmers were most interested in, and once we had chosen which ones to distribute, households selected their preferences. This is the first year that we have been able to learn from farmer knowledge through the seed fairs, and we are excited to see the results in the coming season.

In January, young collaborating researcher Sidney Madsen will be traveling to Malawi to study and evaluate MAFFA’s participatory methods. She will also be working to set up a new participatory system of Monitoring and Evaluation for our project. One of our objectives for the MAFFA project is to expand and improve our participatory approach within the Farmer Research Team (FRT) and throughout broader project management (Objective 2 of MAFFA project). We are working towards inclusive processes with the FRT groups contributing to the project, in order to create a socially just, participatory, democratic method of project organization. Sidney will be spending seven weeks in Malawi, visiting both locations, Lobi and Ekwendeni during her stay. Her visit and research is funded by the grant from the Canadian government as well as funds from Dr. Bezner Kerr at Cornell University. Safe travels, Sidney!

On March 3, we organized a workshop in Lilongwe, directed at policy makers who have an impact on governmental policy in Malawi. The aim was to share our research findings from the past 15 years, and present seven key policy recommendations.

Twenty-five representatives from government, the FAO, UNDP, World Bank and academia attended. There were several presentations, including a review of our findings on smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change, farmer experiments for climate change adaptation, and our recommendations. Four participating farmers also spoke: Esther Maona and Tinkhani Gondwe, from Ekwendeni, and Samuel Mtika and Miriam Nkhoma, from Kasungu District. They each described their own methods of adaptation. Miriam Nkhoma especially mentioned how pleased she was to find experiments led by farmers happening in her community. The addition of the farmer speakers greatly impressed those attending, and much of the questions and debating after lead from what they had to say.

Active discussion ensued! We are encouraged by the response.

The workshop appeared in an article in The Nation Malawi, link below:

http://mwnation.com/scientist-urges-malawi-adopt-climate-change-strategies/

As part of an 11-day visit to Malawi to assess the food and agricultural security of the country at large, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food visited the MAFFA office in its newest site in Dedza. A recipe day was held with many delicious (and nutritious!) dishes, and several project members had the chance to speak, including farmer promoters, staff and some collaborators from Chancellor College. In his report for the government of Malawi, the project was highlighted and cited multiple times as examples of possible improvements for the country at large! The report is included here:

http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20130722_malawi_en.pdf

An article by the United Nations News centre about the visit is also included for those who’d like to learn more:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45467#.Ue6qIFMVkeM

Lizzie Shumba, the project coordinator for SFHC, arrived in Canada May 29 2013, and presented at the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s General Assembly on Friday, May 31. She will be presenting at 6 different churches in Canada as well as a conference in Winnipeg on ‘Fighting Hunger’. Two community promoters, Mr. Malumbo Mithi and Mrs. Esther Maona, who have worked with the project since the beginning, accompanied Mrs. Shumba. They were all warmly welcome by the Presbyterian World Service and Development staff, who helped to arrange their trip. Lizzie’s talk can be viewed at the following link, at the 1 hour 5 minute mark:

http://www.livestream.com/pccgeneralassembly/video?clipId=pla_51849559-fafe-483d-8e8d-26393e5e6670

In early July, Edundu SFHC participants hosted a Recipe Day for farmers in the surrounding villages. Recipe Days are held as an opportunity for farmers-men and women- to get together to cook and exchange their own recipes, farming tips and stories, and enjoy themselves in the process. We are pleased to say that there were 29 women, 15 men and 30 children (5-12 years old) attending. Both men and women took part in preparing and cooking soy milk, bean meat, futali (made from sweet potato), sorghum porridge, sorghum doughnuts and many more dishes. Rogers Msachi, our long-standing community promoter, encouraged couples to work together in food preparation and child feeding as both of them have gained knowledge on how to make different foods from the locally available farm produce. Mr. Emmanuel Chilanga, a Masters student at Western University and collaborating with SFHC, studying Recipe Days, also actively participated. There were many innovative and delicious dishes shared, and it was a fun, successful day.

Farmer promoters have been out in the field all week, doing teaching and demonstrating of legume crop residue burial in the new participating villages. The promoters visited all 20 villages, and did teaching on nitrogen fixation, the role of legume residue in improving the soil, and the importance of early incorporation. Some of their training built on a workshop on legumes and nitrogen fixation they had with Mary Parr, a collaborating graduate student, earlier this year. In some of the villages they visited, farmers had already incorporated the residue, which was exciting to observe.