It’s good to be back in Malawi and I arrived immediately after the general election. There is a new President and ruling party and, thankfully, the transition has been peaceful. Malawi has huge economic challenges and I’ve had the usual struggles to find fuel to make the long journey North from Lilongwe to Mzuzu. Fuel shortages arise from scarcity of foreign currency to import diesel and petrol and the currency shortages affect our work too. Strangely, the solution for us is onions!

Preparing the onions for drying in the shed

By mobilising farmers in multiple locations to grow high quality onions, we are are able to aggregate the crops to get the volumes we need for exporting (at least 20 tonnes at a time). By selling the onions in Zambia and South Africa, we then get the foreign currency we need to import seed, fertiliser and other essential supplies to enable the next crop.

So it was that, on the journey North, we visited two of our farms which are at very different stages in their onion growing. At Jenda, the crop is being harvested and the growers are getting great yields and good quality. With good care and attention, farmers can get around 1,000,000 onions from a single hectare of land – and this group is on track to achieve that. It really was very impressive.

Hanging in the drying shed.
Atusaye packing the dried and cured onions.
Half the field has been lifted; the remainder are curing in the field.

Our second farm visit was near Doha where the growers only started preparing the field six weeks ago. It was great to see their progress, with pits dug for irrigation; growing beds made; manure dug in; and the seedlings being planted out in phases to stagger the crop. We are employing six people at this site (the same as Jenda) and these are farmers who were just growing maize for food but now have a job with a guaranteed salary – this is transformational for their household budgeting.

The new field at Doha. 2 hectares have been prepared and we have 5Ha available in total.

We have chosen these sites because of their high water table. At Doha, we only have to dig down 2 metres to get water and then a simple solar pump provides the irrigation.

A submersible water pump sits in the pit we have dug.
Regular watering is a huge part of successful onion cultivation.

It was great to see this progress before we even got to Mzuzu where our priority is going to be working on our innovative Coolrun project. Watch this space!