Soils, Food and Healthy Communities

Lizzie Shumba and Rachel Bezner Kerr attended a policy workshop on soil fertility management and seed systems in Lilongwe, Malawi August 31-Sept. 1 2009. The workshop was organized by Bunda College of Agriculture and the Ministry of Agriculture… Read More

A participatory workshop was held in May 2009 with 60 farmer representatives as well as staff and representatives from the Ekwendeni Hospital AIDS Program. The workshop involved assessing challenges and achievements of the project over the last 3… Read More

Zacharia Nkhonya, Boyd Zimba, Rodgers Msachi and the members of the FRT have been pegging areas to collect yield data in 2009, and they have observed very healthy looking maize, and excellent legume fields. They think that the… Read More

A new article in the magazine National Geographic highlights the SFHC project as an agroecological alternative to the dominant model of agriculture of fertilizers, hybrid seeds and pesticides being promoted for Africa. The author, Joel Bourne, visited the… Read More

Lizzie Shumba, the Project Coordinator, has returned to the Natural Resources College in September, after having a break from her studies. Lizzie has been on ‘study leave’ since February 2008. She spent her ‘break’ helping write reports and… Read More

Analysis by the SFHC team and collaborating researchers of anthropometric data collected over 8 years indicates that project involvement has a positive, significant effect on child weight-for-age, which is an indicator of child nutritional status. A report on… Read More

The Farmer Research Team and SFHC staff have been busy grading groundnut and soya bean seed this past month. Over 3000 kg of soya bean seed wascollected from participating farmers, and the quality of this legume seed is high…. Read More

The Farmer Research Team members have started collecting the seed from farmers. New participating SFHC farmers were given a seed ‘loan’ which they have to pay back at harvest. This year’s groundnut harvest is not as good as… Read More

A farmer pamphlet committee was formed in February 2008, including 6 farmers from the Farmer Research Team and our new SFHC Young Professional Intern Laura Swift. The pamphlets, designed, written and drawn by the committee, will tell stories… Read More