Malawi

Cows help farming families in Malawi become Hungry No More

Oct 14th, 2011 2:42 PM UTC
By Kelly Hauser

Many small farmers face challenges to earn enough money to feed their families and send their kids to school. A single dairy cow can raise a farmer’s annual income up to six times above the national average of only US$250, thereby lifting their families out of extreme poverty. Collectively, a developed dairy sector also helps reduce dependency on imports, thus making buying dairy products less expensive.

Donata Kuchawo is a 45 year-old married mother of five and caretaker of two orphans who turned to dairy farming because growing maize and beans alone was not enough to provide for her family. After turning to the Chitsanzo Milk Bulking Group,a dairy cooperative in rural Malawi supported by Land O’Lakes, General Mills and USAID, Donata has been able to pay for her kids to go to school, support her sister’s children and builda home.

In 2007, Land O’Lakes started working with farmers in Malawi, providing an initial investment of milking cows and a cooling tank. They introduced the unique concept of requiring farmers to give the first female calf born to another farmer as a form of loan repayment for the initial cow. Donata was one of these recipients. Her cow, named Zowari, produces about 30 litres of milk each day, of which four litres are used for home consumption while the remaining 26 litres are sold through the milk bulking group.

Every day, members of the Chitsanzo Milk Bulking Group deliver 30-40 litres of fresh raw milk per day by bicycle, then test and place it in large cooling tanks.The milk is stored in the tanks and picked up about every other day by Lilongwe Dairies Limited, which purchases the milk and processes it in Lilongwe, the country’s capital.

The Chitsanzo Milk Bulking Group has more than 260 members, of which 150 are women. The group not only helps farmers to access improved cattle feed, veterinary care and financial services such as cattle insurance and mobile phone banking, but alsodonates a portion of its milk to local child care centres and orphanages. The group additionally provides an important nutrition support system for small farmers and their families, as well as serves as an entry point for HIV prevention education.

Donata is such an inspiration and proof that when you give women farmers a few tools, entire families and communities benefit. She employs five people to help run the dairy business as well as tend to crops. Donata is also saving up for another cow. Her heifer is currently pregnant and she hopes it will give birth to a female calf. If it is a girl, she will be passed onto the next family on the waiting list.

To imagine that one cow could make such a transformative difference in a family’s life might be hard, but it’s happening every day in rural Malawi.

Malawi’s crops, under attack

Mar 30th, 2011 2:32 PM UTC
By Morgana Wingard

Rosette ravishes crops like peanuts or “groundnuts” as they’re called in Malawi like the plaque – its proliferating brown spots spread indiscriminately from plant to plant disregarding property lines. Every year Malawian farmers loose 21% of groundnut crops to this deadly pestilence – or approximately $9 million. In weeks a year’s investment rots under the scourge of these fatal marks.

To rescue these and other crops, the Chitedze Research Station (funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) is researching and developing new seed varieties that will be resistant to drought and disease. Investments in agriculture research and development averages a 43% return on investment and growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other economic sectors.

For Malawi, the path out of poverty starts with farms

Mar 24th, 2011 11:59 PM UTC
By Emily Alpert

Emily Alpert, a senior policy manager at ONE, is reporting on agriculture programs live from Malawi.

When I woke up this morning, it was gray, cloudy and smelled distinctly of rain. While this might seem like a gloomy day when staying in bed might be the preferred option, rain here in Malawi is a lifeline for millions of smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture –- and rain -– for their livelihoods.

Over the next week, I’m going to be learning about a number of agricultural development programs in Malawi. Some are part of the US government’s Feed the Future Initiative. Others are funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. What I’m fascinated by is the opportunity to learn about how all the programs put together, from research and seed development to marketing and trading, make up the agricultural value chain. Not to mention, the importance of linking all of these components together to generate improved farm productivity, income, growth and eventually poverty reduction. At ONE, we call this the “multiplier effect.”

If you take a look at ONE’s infographic on the multiplier effect here (see image above), this is how I envision the sites I’m going to visit this week will fit into the cycle:

The W8 shows that change is possible

Mar 18th, 2010 3:13 PM UTC
By David Cole

Dorothy Ngoma © Oxfam

Dorothy Ngoma is head of the National Organisation of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi and she’s telling leaders to help the world’s poorest people.

Dorothy is a member of the W8, a group of 8 extraordinary women from all 4 corners of the world who are campaigning for health and education for all.

As Dorothy puts it:

“Health and education have been recurrent themes in my life. I feel these issues personally. I’ve seen many women dying due to the weak health system in my country. Poverty is a massive problem in Malawi. 14 million people live in Malawi and 70% live below 1 dollar per day, they struggle to survive. There are only 200 doctors in the whole country. When I told that to a press conference in France a gasp went round the room.

Because of a lack of skilled midwives and doctors 16 women die daily due to problems related to pregnancy and delivery. 22 people die daily due to TB, while TB is a curable disease. Malawi has 1 doctor for 65,000 and 1 nurse for 3,500 people. An impossible task.

People often don’t go to hospital until they have something really serious, simply because they don’t have the money. Sometimes, people don’t even have money to get on the bus to get to hospital.

In Malawi we fight against any sort of diseases: TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS, cholera, dysentery, we have the problem of dirty water. It’s a sick community. Nurses are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We have to lobby for more nurses and we have to work hard to stop nurses leaving the industry or leaving Malawi, due to the heavy job.”

Along with the other members of the W8, Dorothy is working to spread this message and let others, especially decision makers, know about the issues. Better education and health for all is possible, but only with more resources. More doctors, more nurses and more midwives.

As Dorothy says, “We need to speak up both at the local level and at international level. We need to tell people what’s wrong and how to change it.”

Thanks to Dorothy and the other members of the W8 we know that change is indeed possible.