Our final farm visit has been to Chipunga Farms, a macadamia and coffee farm owned by the Catholic Diocese of Karonga. The farm is a beautiful place, not far from Mzuzu, and has nut and coffee processing facilities in addition to the well organised farm. The farm has been in place for a long time but is going through a renaissance, with powerful new machines for cleaning, cracking, roasting and packing the products. All very impressive and all very power-hungry!
The major learning point for us during this trip has been that to effectively generate electricity from biogas you need to have consistently large amounts of farm waste for the biodigester, and you need to have a customer for the electricity – and these two need to be in the same location. Chipunga Farm certainly fits the bill. The farm is off-grid, so the power for processing comes from a large genset which burns through 20 litres of diesel per hour. Yet, 50% of a macadamia nut is waste, and a staggering 80% of coffee cherry picked from the plant, doesn’t end up in your coffee cup.
As a lover of macadamia and a coffee addict, I was in my element on the farm. Bernard was our guide, and it was fascinating to hear of all the different steps required to get a quality product at the end of the day. The potential to skip the generator and get the required power from the farm wastes was immediately obvious to all of us.
Coffee production has a long history on the farm, and it was interesting to see an old shelling machine sitting alongside the brand new one. It was older than any of us who were there and was made in Edinburgh!
Malawi Fruits 