Agroforestry project

This project primarily targets small scale farmers who form over 70% of the region’s population and 65% of them being women. The specific area will be In Mphita community Traditional Authority Mkanda in Mchinji district, which have been identified as priority area for the proposed project period.The target project geographical area preferably would be located within traditional authority Mkanda to the south of Mchinji. The Central Malawi region is among the first regions to be inhabited by the mankind because of its favorable climatic conditions for agriculture and aforestation. The areas main economic activity is farming. Population pressure has over time forced Land fragmentation and exhaustion of the soil because of continuous cultivation. The high population cause high pressure on land and other resources like forests leading to their decimation and consequently ruining the entire environment. With these impacts, farmers can only rely on low producing pieces of land making them vulnerable to food and nutritional security-the worst aspect of poverty and climate change. Most holders range between one hectare of land and below one acre.

The Goal of the project

This project aims at training 200 small scale farmers and help them establish 400 forests at least 2 forests per farmer one forest around homestead and another forest of trees incorporated with their seasonal crops using agroforestry approach. The forest demonstrations would demonstrate all the best practices replicable by local communities, with the resources typically available to them by focusing on native trees.

forests are well established. We would also like to add beehives to augment pollination and to produce honey at a later stage when the forests are well established. The long term goal is to have these farmers train other farmers and multiply the forests across Malawi. The goal is to have each farmer plant at least 1000 trees 300 around homesteads and 700 incorporated together with seasonal crops making a total of 200,000 trees to be planted by 2022