a trip to the farm.

In our recent email update, Kyle mentioned that he took a trip to Lilongwe, Malawi to spend some time with guests from North America who were visiting a Partners Worldwide project. These three colleges students and their professor prepared four training sessions focused on basic accounting in small business. Below you will find some pictures.

Those same three days, January 14, 15, and 16, I was scheduled to tour farms and villages where one of the projects we partner with is at work. The project is called Farmer2Farmer. This project is a partnership between the Reformed Church in Zambia, CRWRC, Food Resource Bank, and Partners Worldwide to provide funding to train rural farmers in conservation farming techniques that assist them to achieve food security for the entire year. These visits were powerful and exciting for me. I learned a great deal about farming in Zambia as well saw visual examples of the difference using conservation farming techniques makes in growing crops. Below I have included some narrative and pictures of my adventure.

The entire project is organized by the Reformed Church in Zambia's Eastern Diaconia Services. They have regional facilitators who assist in training volunteers from the community in agriculture, primary health care, and orphan/vulnerable children care (OVC). These volunteers are given a bike, t-shirt, and training materials to take back to their communities to teach best practices in all these areas.


Some farmers in the community are experimenting with rainy season gardens. These are plots of land farmed with vegetables traditionally difficult to grow during rainy season because of disease. Some examples of these high risk crops are tomato, cabbage, and rape. However, if a farmer can grow these successfully they can become a cash crop in the market because the difficulty in growing pushes prices much higher. One man we visited had 956 heads of cabbage growing. If all these heads are harvested and sold this man will make $1000USD. When asked what he would do with the extra money, he said he would finish his house and help pay school fees of family members. When he was asked where he will spend time planting next year, he stated clearly he will spend less time planting maize and more time in his garden, because with the profit he makes he can buy all the maize he needs at harvest time and still have money left over.

A farmer in each community volunteers his land to work as the "demonstration plot." On this land, he then can demonstrate good and bad techniques offering a visual example of the success achieved by new techniques. In this example velvet beans were planted side by side to contrast traditional and new techniques. On the left conservation farming was used and on the right traditional planting.


This is one farmer who uses his fields as a demonstration plot.


One farmer we met took this one step further and had also begun experimenting with newer techniques trying to adapt them to the land and improve their yield potential. Below you will find a picture of this inspiring man, Joseph Phiri. He had many "experiments" in process on his farm. Here Mr. Phiri (man to the far left) is explaining to us a new conservation farming technique that plants seed in a large mound filled with compost manure. This is instead of planting in a row. Next to him, the area Agriculture Volunteer Worker translates.

Here Mr. Phiri experimented with growing velvet beans by planting one row with compost manure, one row with fertilizer, and one row with nothing special added. The healthiest plants were those give the manure. This demonstration allows farmers to observe and enables them to decide what is the best way to spend their time and money next planting season. In this case, making/buying manure may be the best option. The visual provides an example from which farmers can make better decisions in the future.


Throughout the growing season, the Agriculture Volunteer Workers hold "Field Days" in the community where members and farmers are invited to the demonstration plot to see the progress of using different planting and farming techniques. This is how the community is encouraged to try the new ideas in the next planting season.


As we walked the fields during our visits it was clear which fields had used the new farming techniques and advice and which ones had not. Farmers using conservation farming techniques clearly had healthier looking crops. However, as every farmer said, "The real test is at harvest, to see what produces the most yield."

These farmers were created in the image of God and are using the mind that God gave them in so many creative ways. They are not just food secure; some are also becoming strategic businessmen who set an example of thinking and planning for the future, while others are using what God has given them to teach and empower their community for change. All of these efforts are slowly reversing the effects of "the fall", one community at a time.

I hope that you find their work as inspiring as I do. Pray for these volunteers, farmers, and facilitators to continue pushing through the many challenges and barriers they face as they try to bring hope to their communities. May God give them strength to persevere and continue to focus on His desire to bring redemption, healing, transformation to the land and the people.