Peace in troubled times.

It was only 18 months ago that I stood on a bare piece of ground at the foot of two impressive hills. We were working with a group of women who formed a co-operative to begin greenhouse farming, and in January 2023 we erected 20 polytunnels on the site, complete with a borehole, solar pump and drip irrigation. They called it Peace Farm, and this is farming technology never before seen in that area.

The women have worked hard, and we support them to grow high quality tomatoes and peppers and, despite some big challenges along the way, they have prospered and are building a good business. They have attracted the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture, not just for the technology and quality of the produce, but also because of the business model. The whole farm is owned by women investors – these are women who are nurses or teachers or have another salaried job – and they have invested their own money and employ women from the local village to grow the plants for them.

Two weeks ago, Peace Farm Co-operative got great news: they have been awarded a large grant under the Malawi Government Agriculture Commercialisation Programme (AGCOM). This is exciting because it is a grant direct to the Peace Farm Co-operative and not to Malawi Fruits: a great sign of their credibility and a recognition of their hard work so far. The grant is 160,000,000 Malawi Kwacha, about £75,000, and we continue to work in partnership so together we will double the area of the greenhouse farm and this means more food will be grown, more work for local women and a good reward for these entrepreneurial women which will inspire others.

There is a dark backdrop to this good news story though. These women have the ability to orgainise themselves and to grow large quantities of high quality food, but the challenges they face are huge:

• It is increasingly difficult to import essential supplies like steel, polythene, high-quality seed and fertiliser. Having Malawi Kwacha is one thing: converting that to foreign currency for importing is quite another proposition.
• Inflation is running at 36% which presents a challenge for any business, especially one that doesn’t want to, or is not able to, increase the sales price of the vegetables at that rate.
• The kind of success that these women have worked hard for causes jealousy in others, and the women battle problems with theft and vandalism, ironically, on Peace Farm.

When you hear of any development in Malawi, and any small success, you can be assured that it has come only through extreme hard work and dedication because nothing comes easy here.