Gabriel Msumba lives in Wakhalika Village with his wife and 2 children. Being a subsistence farmer, he relied on cassava production before switching to maize after facing challenges in acquiring enough fertilisers and chemicals. This continued, however, and Gabriel went on to start a business in the local fishing industry as well as transportation, carrying people or cargo to and from the nearest city Mzuzu.
Although this brought some financial security, they struggled to find enough food for the wider family who also relied on them. With the children soon moving from primary to secondary school, Gabriel and his wife will have to begin paying tuition fees which puts further strain on their finances.
Consequently, the family lack enough money for long-term food security, especially given their business can often leave them with nothing to buy food. If Gabriel and his family were still able to produce maize on a larger scale then this wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but with the price of fertilisers and ongoing conditions of severe drought, this proved too difficult doing it alone.
Maize is the preferred staple of most of southern Africa, supplying two-thirds of the national calorie intake in Malawi. Nine out of 10 farming households produce maize and devote over 70% of their land to growing it. Families like Gabriels rely on growing staples such as maize and corn, however, the current drought in Malawi has seen about 44% of corn crops fail or be affected, and 2 million households are directly impacted.
After seeing their neighbour successfully produce greater yields of maize in the 2022-2023 growing season by utilising organic manure known as Mbeya, Gabriel became curious. He found out the neighbour, Mrs Towela Msisya, was one of the farmers who were trained at Temwa’s Farmer Field School (FFS) in October-November 2022. She is a member of Kakhulukulu FFS in Chilembe Village, where she learnt to effectively produce Mbeya.
“I can see my family being food secured because I am expecting to harvest more than 50 bags of maize on 3-acre land which I have used 13 bags of Mbeya. My farmland is steep and there are gullies and I believe I am losing a lot of manure through runoff. I am yet to learn from Mrs Msisya on how I can control the runoff because she has promised to help.”
Gabriel’s family was trained by Mrs Msisya through peer learning, with plans to join Kakhulukulu FFS and learn more about sustainable and more effective agriculture practices to produce greater yields.
“If this intervention continues in this village then a lot of us will be served from hunger we have been facing in the past years. Most farmers are not aware of the effectiveness of manure and other things that the farmer field school members are learning. With peer learning I believe we can reach out to many because as of now I have also trained my neighbour on manure making and she has a quarter acre of maize where she has applied Mbeya and the maize is so brilliant.”
Read more about the Farmer Field School project here.