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Farmers in Balaka Celebrate Success of Sorghum Project, Boosting Food Security
Three-year project in Balaka to promote sorghum farming shows progress with high expected yields, writes Blessings Tambala.
Malawi-A three-year project launched in 2020 in Balaka to increase the growing of sorghum is bearing fruit, as farmers under the Utale Extension Planning Area (EPA) are expected to have high sorghum yields in this farming season as compared to the past years, writes Blessings Tambala.
The project, called ‘Strengthening Production and Marketing Capacity in Smallholder Farmers’ was launched by Churches Action in Relief and Development (CARD) with the aim of improving conservation farming and boosting food security in the district.
Through the project, 750 targeted smallholder farmers in the areas of T/A Mkhaya, Sub T/A Phimbi and Sub T/A Chakadza were trained in land management, and conservation farming and were provided with crop seeds including, maize, sorghum, and pigeon peas.
The project was introduced in 2020 with funding from Presbyterian World Service through the Canadian Food Grains Bank, after noting that Balaka is one of the districts that gets highly affected by dry spells and floods, resulting in low crop yields and hunger.
Dorothy Chipapi is one of the smallholder farmers being supported by CARD, and she laments that last year’s dry spells and floods affected their production.
"In the past, we have been struggling to harvest enough due to a lack of knowledge on which crop can do better in our area, because of its frequently dry spells, but with the coming of CARD, we have been trained to practice climate change adaptation farming as one way of boosting food security, and this year we are expecting to harvest a high crop yield," said Chipapi in an interview with AfricaBrief.
Chipapi adds that despite having some difficulties accessing fertilizers, farmers will be able to harvest more as sorghum farming does not require fertilizer. Mercy Chikaona is the project officer for CARD Balaka, and she says the main focus of the project is conservation agriculture, as Utale is a very dry area with unpredictable rains.
"In this project, we gave farmers starter packs of crops that persevere in dry spells like sorghum, also considering that sorghum can do well even without fertilizer," said Chikaona.
According to Chikoma, although the project looks to be making progress, it has been hard to change farmers’ mindsets from their habit of growing maize, even though their area is not conducive for maize but other crops like sorghum.
"When we started the project in 2020, most farmers were not cooperative enough because they were used to growing maize and did not understand that sorghum could be grown as a staple food. So we had to use cooking demonstrations to show them that they can use sorghum and maize interchangeably as a staple food," Chikoma added.
The district’s crop officer, Samson Chinkhadze, said, "The district crop estimation survey shows that the district will have a bumper sorghum yield as compared to any other crop."
Chinkhadze said, "This will help in reducing perennial hunger in the district."
The three-year project is expected to be phased out this year, 2023.