Venue: GreenHill Lodge
Date: 22rd – 25th May 2023
INTRODUCTION
As a way of enhancing coordination and networking of stakeholders, government, partners and farmers PELUM Malawi and Churches Action in Relief and Development organized an AgroEcology (AE) Reflection Conference in order for the participants to share experiences, demonstrate success stories and progresses being made on the ground: farmer communities and civil society organisations (CSOs) are successfully advocating for policy adaptation at local level. The Conference’s aim was to foster exchange, coordination and motivation of organizations implementing agroecology or interested in doing so.
The overall objective of the conference was to increase visibility of the agroecological movement in Malawi. Specifically, the conference was to:
1. Learn from practical examples of a permaculture training centre and smallholder farmers as practitioners on the ground.
2. Share knowledge and promote inspiration from good practical examples.
3. Identify challenges and solutions of policies preventing farmers from transitioning to agroecology.4. Validate current advocacy efforts towards agroecology on different political levels and
5. Develop a long-term advocacy strategy that involves the action of farmer communities.
DAY 1. FIELD VISIT: Permaculture Paradise Institute, farmer fields
The day was spent appreciating the work of agroecology at Permaculture Paradise Institute (PPI), where the co-founder of the institution took the participants through the history and the work being implemented at PPI and households from the surrounding community that were trained. PPI is a social enterprise, demonstration and training center that promotes permaculture systems in Malawi located in Langa village, Mchinji district. Established in 2017 (February) PPI provides low cost social economic and ecologically sound trainings to local farmers, entrepreneurs, nongovernmental organizations as well as government. PPI realizes the need for promoting and uplifting the welfare of vulnerable Malawians and other vulnerable people for the purpose of strengthening their family unit, alleviating poverty, diseases and fighting all forms of economic, social, political and religious barriers together with the desire to curb the problem of illiteracy among the peasantry population in general through promotion of informal education. ‘We realize the need for promoting informal education in Malawi in order to alleviate current predicates and ecological chaos’ (permacultureinstitutemw.com). PPI, founded by Luwayo Biswick and his wife Grace Davison, helps to address hunger, malnutrition, poverty, adaptation to climate change, and environmental degradation. It also builds the capacity of the communities in terms of on farm income generation through crop and livestock production. To date, over 3,400,000 trees have been planted through PPI, covering up to 3,400 hectares of land. These are nitrogen fixing and edible trees. Communities in the country have also benefited from the institute through capacity building on AE and permaculture with the help of materials (such as wheelbarrows) to help them kickstart permaculture in their communities and households. Farmer visit: Bertha Jakelo
As a social enterprise, PPI trained and built the capacity of the community members in Kawere village in sub-TA Nkanda, empowering farmers with technologies in sustainable agricultural production such as agroforestry, manure making and permaculture as a whole. PPI found funding which was used to procure and install a solar powered pump in the village to support the home gardens and trees
nurseries which were established in the village as part of the project. This helped the farmers save time from waiting to draw water from the borehole that was being used.
One of the farmers trained by PPI is Bertha Jakelo. It has been one year since her training and she established a food forest that among others contains vegetables, fruit trees such as paw paws, that were already fruiting at the time. Her combining the vegetables with fruit trees were to reduce the watering time, trees benefiting from watering the vegetables. She has been working with other women in the village in reproductive services and nutrition sensitive agriculture interventions. A maize field combined with tephrosia vogelli was also visited. The perennial trees of ombwe (Tephrosia) which are used as manure, are incorporated into the soil to enhance the soil fertility. The community is said to have problems with wood for fuel, as the community members are destroying the trees and tephrosia is used as wood for cooking.
The day’s plenary: observations, lessons learned by participants
● It is possible to allow nature to regenerate itself through what has been seen at PPI and the community trained.
● Principles of AE can aid in agricultural production to achieve its goal
● Looking at what community members have managed to achieve after the capacity building provided by PPI, it is possible to do a household demo for permaculture
● Recycling using readily available resources at household level is helping to advance AE.
● In general, extension is focused on speaking and not practicing
● Extension on AE needs giving space and time because the benefits are seen after some time/years.
● AE needs to start with the vision before starting, should be a process and procedure.
● Also focus on pests and diseases for crops.
● Include AE in farmer field school as a way to advance AE
● Through partnerships with other organizations, the number of trained people rose from 20 to 12,200.
● AE is another component of production that can help in climate change adaptation.
● When focusing on AE, let’s not forget aspects of gender and inclusion.
● AE needs to be included in the Guide on Agricultural production for extension use
● AE should be a culture, not only for farmers but everybody should take part.
● Proposal development should incorporate AE as seen on the ground and should make sure ideas are shared according to how AE is happening on the ground.
● Research is needed to be intensified on AE so that people have data as evidence on AE
Day 2: Agroecology Conference
Day two focused on sharing experiences, progress on AE and coming up on strategic direction for AE work. Presentations of successes and best practices on AE were done by organizations and farmer groups who came to the conference
2.1. Opening remarks: representative of the Principal Secretary (PS), Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Kefasi Kamoyo
He represented the PS, Mr Dixie Kampani and speaking on behalf of the Department of Land Resources Conservation. Thanked and recognised all the guests present, the media, environmental journalists including the organizers of the event. In his remarks, he emphasised that Malawi’s economy relies on Agriculture at about 23.4%, which gives the country employment up to 80%, food as a nation and a household. Most of the raw materials also come from agriculture. Every year, the
Ministry would like to see agricultural growth up to 6% but the past years agriculture growth have been slow and constant. African Union agreed that a commitment of at least 10% of the national budgets should go to agriculture in order to enable 6% growth in agricultural production. However, this year’s statistics have shown only 3.2% agricultural growth which is very worrisome. Agriculture meets a lot of challenges such as overpopulation as well as shrinking and fragmented land holding size or land size of productive arable land. The production practices are the same ones that are used by farming family that accelerate environmental degradation. The effects of climate change and shocks such as floods, lack of markets, and inaccessibility to farm inputs pose a challenge to the success of agricultural production.
The ministry is bringing other technologies to enable an increase in agricultural production including agroecology and that’s why with the partners involved the Ministry will work hand in hand to improve yields. Farmers are therefore encouraged to conserve water, practise agroforestry, make and utilise manure, and find other sustainable ways to improve the soil fertility. Soil loss rate is 29 tonnes per hectare per year. The Ministry is reviewing the agriculture policy to see if it is in line with agroecology principles. Therefore, it was important that what was discussed during the Agroecology reflection meeting, should be reflecteded in the agriculture policy. He therefore recommended that such convenings should be organized more often. The country would like to reduce the use of inorganic fertilisers that degrade the environment. The Ministry will provide the necessary support to advance the agenda on agroecology. He thanked the attendees for coming and declared the meeting open for deliberations to start.
2.2. EXPECTATION FOR THE CONFERENCE: below are some of the expectations that participants raised before the start of the conference.
1. Benefits from agroecology
2. The role of the youth in agroecological transition
3. Sharing of agroecology work from other organizations, share experiences
4. How the government is going to support and promote agroecology
5. Having one voice/message concerning agroecology
6. Get evidence on permaculture, pest management
7. To be clear on the leadership of agroecology movement,
8. Is agroecology and permaculture the same, or is it used interchangeably
9. Learn new ways of doing things, challenges and mitigation measures to pursue agroecology.
10. Draw joint advocacy plans/initiatives that are workable to pursue agroecology at a large scale (scalability, sustainability, practicality)
11. Find ways of advancing agroecology, all participants to share the deliberations with other when gone back to their areas of work.
12. To have a starting point of integrating agroecology permaculture and organic farming into the agriculture policy
13. stakeholders share strategies on financing of agroecology work on a large scale to support more farmers.
2.3. PRESENTATION OF AE WORK AND SHARING OF LESSONS IN AGROECOLOGY
1. Soils, Food and Health Communities Project
This is a participatory farmer-led nonprofit organization using agroecology methods to improve food and nutrition security in Malawi. Started in 2000, with just 30 farmers, the project takes a farmer-led
approach to make farmers learn from fellow farmers and exchange knowledge. It started focusing mainly on nutrition interventions. It was observed that most families had malnourished children due to different factors. They were being referred to the hospital. They were given Soy Corn Blend to feed their children to help improve the child’s health. The project started providing families with capacity building on health and nutrition interventions. Families were taught how to produce their own soy corn blend which is the same as what is given at the hospital when the kids are malnourished.
The project focused on food preparation, recipe demonstration and generally feeding regime for children. Much as the project started with 30 people in 7 villages, every year people saw the benefits of the interventions and joined the other families. The approach was to train farmers known as Farmer Research Team (FRT) who were chosen by the community members themselves. Every village has 2 FRs, a male and a Female. Gender campaigns and gender trainings were incorporated in the project as it was observed that despite the ongoing work to improve livelihoods at household and community levels, sometimes women could not have control and decisions on finance. The FRT members are also members of the care groups to help with upscaling of the nutrition interventions.
The project has done policy briefs on intercropping. Other activities are open days and seed and food fairs, local foods and seeds as the objective of the Organization is to retain the local seeds and during the fairs people benefit from buying and exchanging seed. 50% are women targeted for all the interventions under the project.
Challenges: The communities have been suffering from shocks due to climate change such as prolonged dry spells, floods, pests and diseases. However, the SFHC implemented a research project with Bunda College on how farmers and communities can be resilient from shocks through nutrition, crop diversification, mixed cropping interventions. Farmers used cultural methods to address issues to do with pests and diseases and did research using tithonia, tephrosia and many more. In another project, efforts on natural regeneration and replanting of trees were intensified. Farmers have been taking care of the stumps, and making nurseries for fruit trees and wood. Use of capacity building for farmers using the farmer research members, just by teaching them the whole concept of the project, who reach out to other farmers in their communities. 10,000 farmers have now been reached and the project is not scaling out to Dedza district, in Lobi EPA.
Limitation: Funding. The Project cannot reach a lot of people. So far, it’s using mass community meetings to reach a lot of farmers in the area government staff and other NGOs working in the same area. Sometimes other FRT migrate to other areas, even other countries. This means there is need for more resources to train more people in order to cover the gap.
The project is collaborating with other organizations in country and internationally to advance its work, but there is need for more collaborations to be able to network and learn from each other and able to scale up these interventions.
2. Coalition for Women Farmers (COWFA): Ellen Matupi
This is a grassroot movement of rural women farmers in Malawi with the aim of achieving economic empowerment, being resilient and having enough to eat. How it started; the women saw that most economic crop produce such as tobacco was taken to the market by men. They would go up to 3 months without trace, which meant no support, even finances at household level during the time the men are away. This is why the group was formed to ensure independence in terms of food and finances. The women are led from structures from the levels at GVH, TA, District and national levels. During the Annual General Meeting, there are representatives from all districts. Its more vibrant in 23 districts where there are Action Aid offices.
COWFA has many partners training in women empowerment and building resilience. These include CISANET, PELUM, Permaculture Network, CISONECC, CEPA, OxFarm, LandNet and are also working in collaboration with the first lady of the Republic of Malawi. It’s a grouping of smallholder farmers, who feed this nation, as combining small farms, they can make up to a number of megafarms. Members train each other on reading and writing and numerical skills. It is understood that not many women are literate, that’s why the initiative is incorporated into the interventions.
The organization also works to retain girls at school. At household level, the women provide support by raising the kids and let the school girls go back to school. They also work to refer cases in terms of gender-based violence, based on the Violence Act 2016. The women lead in ending early marriages of girls and boys under the age of 18 and get the older people arrested involved in forced marriages. COWFA represents women farmers at local, national, regional and global levels where they present and discuss issues that affect them.
Challenges: The rising costs of commodities (maize skyrockets to 19,000 per pale), its challenging to find agriculture inputs, as they are expensive up to 70,000 per 50 kg of fertilizer. Therefore, farmers cannot cultivate so much due to the scarcity of resources. The markets are unreliable. At one point the organization discussed with the government representatives to move the financial year from November-December to March-April to enable the government to buy farm produce from farmers as soon as the harvests are done, but unfortunately, till May this year, ADMARC has not started buying the crop produce and vendors have therefore taken advantage of the situation and bought at very low prices, and smuggled to neighbouring countries. Climate change which caused floods affecting people’s lives, livestock and assets, dry spells, pests and diseases. Lack of extension services. Many organizations made organic fertilisers which were used in the last cropping season. But the extension services are always contradicting when launching a foliar fertiliser for example, 1 liter was said to be used on one acre of land while when advertising 1litre was equal to 3 acres. It is not known how much of nutrients are in the organic fertilisers which needs to be indicated during purchase.
Agroecology has been there, and as women farmers, they have been practicing it. Within the last government legislative periods, fertiliser and hybrids have been intensified which are expensive and unsustainable. However, it has been a total failure as all these chemicals and fertilisers have been destroying the environment. Therefore, farmers have gone back to organic agriculture, planting local seeds now, which is resilient to dry spells, have flavour and are considered to have medicinal purposes. There are seed banks established where farmers keep their local seeds, multiplied and shared with other members.
The organization has over 400,000 women farmers and thus needs an office to help with coordination. The government should consider machinery to be used for production.
3. Malawi Forum for Agriculture Advisory Services (MAFAAS): Charles Govati
The role of different platforms and networks that represent farmers at different scales of production has been seen to work in providing the necessary information to ensure sustainable production MAFAAS helps get resources and oversee the results which has also helped shape the seed systems to help smallholder farmers, find profitable markets and inclusive seed systems among others. It provides a platform where collaboration and transparency are strong, academically vibrant. There is a lot of free sharing of information. Helps in documenting information through MAFAAS which is then disseminated to the relevant stakeholders. As an agriculture advisory service body it brings together different players. Coming to permaculture and agroecology, Charles presented in relation to what he was experienced and observed during the previous day of the field visit. He emphasised on working
with nature, as it would also work with people, an ecosystem is supporting itself. There are also ways of doing permaculture and agroecology at a large scale that can be commercial, an example is Horizon farm in Lilongwe. He gave an example of syntropic farming, a farming concept that considers natural succession: from grasses, bushes and shrubs, pioneer species, primary and secondary forests it can take up to 300 years. Pruning and cutting the grass can restore the soils and shorten this process to about 20 to 30 years. The technique is focussing on the soil and indicator plants that show us the status of the soil. In commercial agriculture, the soil needs testing first, give the soil humus and all what it requires. Within the same strata there are a lot of crops and fodder for livestock. Other technologies are also incorporated such as drip irrigation, which is a good example of improved ways of modern farming in agroecology. This is one of the places that farmers can visit to learn and appreciate what Horizon and Kakuyu farms are doing. Kakuyu is making manure at a very large scale.
Unfortunately, the benefits are not gotten in a fortnight. But with time, agroecology and permaculture gets you far, taking care of nature, economically empowered, food and nutrition security. In all that’s said, there is farm saved seed, and we know women are the custodians of seed, farm saved seed which is used in permaculture and agroecology.
There are two activities per the strategy point chosen, and for each activity who is responsible, what is needed (resources) and the time frame clearly defined.
