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​September 2024 Farmers’ Corner

3 September 2024

Welcome to the second instalment of Farmers’ Corner!
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We hope you enjoyed the launch of this new feature in June, where we share selected stories from individual farmers that Tiyeni is working with. Our work has such a wide-reaching impact, and we believe it’s important to make sure that farmers’ personal stories don’t get lost in statistics.

Stuart Ziba - Baula, Emsizini hub **UPDATE**

​Our previous issue of Farmers’ Corner introduced you to Stuart Ziba, who anticipated a harvest of 80-90 bags of maize of 50kg each. However, when harvest time came, Stuart harvested more than three times that amount. His total harvest of 300 bags was so so bountiful that he had to hire a maize-shelling machine to shell it all because, in his words, “I can’t afford to use my hands because I have too much maize!”

Esther Mwala - Milonde, Mulanje hub

​Esther praises Deep Bed Farming, saying that adopting this climate-smart agriculture has changed her life. Through vastly increased crop yields, she has achieved enough income to return to school to finish her secondary education, and she is dedicated to going on to university. The heightened profitability of her land has also provided Esther with the financial security to pay the school fees for two of her children, who are both in Form One.

Annie Samudeni - Nansila, Mulanje hub

​Annie is harvesting an outstanding pigeon pea yield on her DBF plots this year. On average, farmers will harvest six pails of pigeon peas on DBF plots of 10m x 10m, compared to three pails for conventional ridge plots of that size. But Annie’s yield is 50% higher than even this high DBF standard, as she is harvesting nine pails of pigeon peas!

Join Annie as she walks us through her plots in this short video.