Divason’s Story: A DREAM COME TRUE -Tomatoes Year Round!
Residence in Chinzu and Kabudula, in Malawi, are excited because the Putting Farmers First program has expanded into their villages. The project is supporting over 500 beneficiaries through Farmer Field Schools (FFS). Through Farmer Field Schools small-scale farmers learn new agriculture methods and share experiences to make the most of their productive potential.
Divason Phiri is 38 years old and lives in Masinja Village, Chinzu. Divason is married to Chrissy who is 34 years old. Together, the family has four children, all of them are girls, namely Patricia 11, Edna 10, Maria 7, and Enita 3. Three of the girls attend primary school except Enita who is the youngest.
Divason is a farmer and for years he has been growing crops like maize, groundnuts, soya beans among others. Divason has also been growing vegetables like tomatoes, mustard seeds and pumpkin leaves which provide much needed nutrients for his family. Unfortunately, growing vegetables is only possible during the rain season which is only 3 months long, from December until March.
“When CPAR introduced Farmer Field Schools, I was very much impressed when I was selected to be one of the first project beneficiaries from my village. We started our Farmer Field School with 25 members comprising 14 men and 11 women. After establishing the group, we were trained by experienced agricultural extension workers in new and improved agriculture practices such as conservation agriculture, inter-cropping, irrigation farming and village savings and loans programs. I was particularly impressed with irrigation farming because with irrigation you can grow crops throughout the year. The good thing about farmer field schools is that the learning is both theoretical and practical thus making a lot of farmers enthusiastic and willing to adopt a lot of skills.” Explains Divason.
Divason, proudly displays his high quality tomatoes
“At the Farmer Field School, we established our own plot of land to learn through practice. CPAR provided us with start-up vegetable seeds like rape, cabbage, mustard, onion and tomato. I was very interested in learning if tomato could be grown any time throughout the year. After sowing tomato on our learning field, I did the same at my garden at home and followed the good practices that we had learned. I was so amazed that from my small plot of 0.2 hectares I was able to harvest 300 kg from one cropping cycle. I sold about 100kg realizing K5000.00 (US$50). It is easy to sell my tomatoes because they are of high quality. I used the remaining tomatoes to feed my family. From the profits on the sale of tomatoes, I was able to buy soap, sugar and writing materials for my school going girls and also bought shares at my village savings and loan group to also help boost my sources of income.“
Before joining the project, Divason was only getting 50kg per year of low quality tomatoes and now he is realizing 300kg per year of high quality tomatoes! He is looking forward to increasing his land to 1 hectar in the next growing season. “This time I will make sure that I start irrigation activities as soon as the rain season ends to grow more vegetables several times a year which will also help me realize more profits from my agricultural production.” Explains Divason.
Divason explains some of the agricultural practices he has learned through Farmer Field Schools. “I have learned the importance of following all good agricultural practices to produce high quality tomatoes like applying enough manure while sowing the tomato, mulching the crop to conserve moisture, removing the shoots to improve fruit size and quality and staking the fruit among others.”
Teaching poor rural farmers better ways to produce high quality tomatoes has greatly helped farmers from Masinja village to substantially increase their incomes and improve their families’ living conditions.
Buzz it!