A market development project that Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM) is implementing in Mwanza has helped over 8,000 pigeon pea farmers in the district to realise more profits from the crop.
Farmers made the revelation during an interface meeting with the buyers on Friday.
The project which seeks to link the farmers with the buyers through cooperatives saw 8,454 smallholder farmers in the areas of Traditional Authorities (T/ As) Kanduku, Nthache and Sub Traditional Authority Govati realising K260 million from pigeon pea in the past year.
EAM Manager for the Southern Region, James Kalikwembe, said the project was initially meant to improve the socio-economic status of 7,000 farmers but the positive response from both farmers and buyers necessitated the increase in population of beneficiary farmers.
“This project has helped farmers to do better in their business. We need more farmers to adopt this idea of selling their produce through groups so that they can have that bargaining power. We are happy that through this project we have managed to organise farmers and they are now able to realise more from their produce. Our aim is not only to help a person in spiritual life, we need to help them physically also and this project is just confirming that,” Kalikwembe said.
He also said production of pigeon pea has gone up by 22 percent in Mwanza and the expectations are that the market price will even be higher this year.
In the 2014 to 2015 season the average price was K160 but jumped to K650 during the current season.
Christian Aid is funding the project with support from United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and there are plans to extend the project to the neighbouring Neno District.
Chairperson for the farmers, Stanley Chimpembe, who described pigeon pea as their current gold, said as farmers they want to change Mwanza using the proceeds.
Head of Operations at AHCX Commodities Exchange, Wise Chauluka, said farmers need to take care of their produce if they are to make profits out of their farming.
“Quality assurance is paramount in any business. Farmers need to do more in terms of quality for their produce to fetch better prices on the market,” Chauluka said.
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