“I have been farming and growing maize on this very same land for decades but never have I been this happy in seeing the quality of the maize that I’m about to harvest this year…” said James Bakali as he proudly expressed his joy whilst starring at his one hector sized maize farm. Bakali whole hails from Anaatani village, GVH Kambewa, TA Masumbankhunda is one of the community members that participated in an organic fertilizer making training facilitated by NACC at Chamadzi CBO supported by the USAID funded Milimo Local Capacity Building Activity. The locally made fertilizer production training was part of the capacity building exercises on Local Resource Mobilization which Chamadzi CBO demanded from the Milimo Activity in response to growing need for fertilizer from their community members, most of whom couldn’t afford purchasing the factory-made organic fertilizer which is costly.
“Food security has always been so challenging in our community because much as we rely on small-scale farming, we harvest very little and low-quality maize as most of us cannot afford fertilizer. As a result, we get struck by hunger every year and this is why we asked Milimo Activity to support us on how to deal with this challenge”, said Crifford Luwinga, Director of Chamadzi CBO. Indeed, Milimo responded to the CBO’s demand by linking them to NACC which Milimo also supported with capacity building in local resource mobilization skills including the making of soap, soya milk, peanut butter and organic fertilizer using locally available materials. In the training, which was conducted from 30th October to 3rd November 2023, Chamadzi CBO members invited interested community members to participate, and James Bakali grabbed this opportunity and practiced the learnt skills on manure making at his farm.
According to Bakali, the use of the organic fertiliser is cost-effective, and he is expecting to harvest not less than 50 bags of high-quality maize on his farm unlike in the past years where he usually harvested 8 to 15 bags of low-quality grain. “I am thankful to Milimo for inviting the NACC guys to train us through Chamadzi CBO on how we can make the manure… my family will have enough food this year and hunger will not hit us again like it has always been the case in the past,” said Bakali so proudly. According to him, he only afforded two bags of fertilizer and supplemented them with the manure. Bakali is one of the many individuals that have personally benefited from the USAID funded Milimo Activity under Chamadzi CBO in Lilongwe.
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