Farming
Why Farming?
The staple food of Malawi is nsima, made from boiled Maize flower. It is mainly carbohydrate and needs other nutritious foods to supplement it.
While focused on clean water found there was a huge need to help with irrigation and farming. Open pollinated seeds were unavailable and so we bought and developed the Lusangazi farm. It is primarily a research and teaching farm, where we try to grow vegetables, which may be suitable, from all over the world, but also looking closely at forgotten African plants, when we can get seeds. We use almost no artificial fertilizer but rely mainly on making compost and on growing green manure, like velvet bean, sunn hemp and tephrosias. We also avoid chemical pesticides by using a concoction of brews from local plants headed by tephrosias, aloe vera, tobacco and dahlia.
The hostel on the farm is where farmers come to learn about irrigation, compost making and seed production. We send them away with seeds, seedlings and hopefully a measure of inspiration and hope.
We have a passion to improve soil which is seriously depleted by years of chemical fertilizer and have just began training in Conservation Farming.
We have two greenhouses and produced over 15,000 seedlings of improved variety Citruses, Mango, Papaya and Avocado by budding and grafting, in 2011.
Teaching these skills to others is a big part of what we do.
We now have over 30 acres of land growing a variety of trees and crops.
You could help by donating seeds, knowledge, training or even money works well.
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