Africa: An Enduring Commitment

Malawi is fondly known as the Warm Heart of Africa, symbolized by its ever-smiling people. But traversing the countryside, where the majority stay, one cannot miss ravaged vegetation, ever declining soil fertility, gaps in agronomic best practices especially for non-traditional crops like soya beans and sunflower, inefficiencies in the market and value chains, and few effective farmer organizations. The Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI) looked at these challenges and turned them into targets of opportunity by carving out the an "anchor farm" business development model. This project supports the government of Malawi's ambitious program, Recently, the African Green Revolution.

Smallholder farmers in Malawi face obstacles to prosperity from low productivity due to poor agronomic practices and disorganized markets. The anchor farm model helps individual farmers navigate the markets by identifying commodities that have established markets with growth potential. CHDI then organizes large groups of local farmers to run a commercial farm to produce crops that can enter the identified market.

In Mchinji district, Malawi, CHDI has established an anchor soy farm by linking a commercial farm to hundreds of surrounding smallholder farmers. CHDI has provided smallholder farmers access to improved soy seed, training and monitoring of advanced agronomic techniques, and access to a domestic, bulk buyer of soy. As a result, while non-project farmers were selling their soy beans at $0.20 to 0.30 per kilogram, project farmers sold their soy for $0.60 per kilogram through a purchasing agreement CHDI negotiated with fisheries. With the increased income from this sale, one local farmer, a single mother, Ifienia Kamulaza, managed to support her children in secondary schools and used part of the sales to build an improved house.

After CHDI's successes with the model, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is providing a grant to CHDI to expand the project to 21,000 farmers by 2013. During the expansion of the project, CHDI will educate farmers on the importance of soil fertility management, crop rotation, and conservation farming with fertiliser trees. With the AGRA support, CHDI's work in partnership with local farmers has just started!

Austin Ngwira is the director of agriculture for CHDI in Malawi.