16 000 smallholder farmers in Mchinji secure markets

About 16 000 smallholder farmers in Mchinji have secured markets for their commodities in this years’ growing season, Business News has learnt.
Feed the Future value chain competitiveness specialist Henry Gaga said in a interview the farmers have found markets for soy bean and groundnuts.
This was learnt when Feed the Future organised a buyers’ tour in the district.

“Already, soy bean and groundnuts buyers have pledged to buy the crops from over 16 000 farmers in Mchinji alone. We believe this will also be a good platform to promote and increase collective behaviour in crop marketing and to pilot a new approach to offer farmers options to market their products,” he said.
Gaga said over 10 000 smallholder farmers will sell their produce to National Association of Smallholder Farmers of Malawi (Nasfam), about 2 000 to Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) and 1 000 farmers will sell to Catholic Development Commission (Cadecom).
He said through the buyers’ tours, Feed the Future we will help smallholder farmers who have been struggling to find markets for their agricultural produce.
Gaga further said Usaid has provided enough money to reach millions of smallholder farmers nationwide.
“This Usaid-funded project through the integrating nutrition in value chains project also aims at ensuring that smallholder farmers are growing crops, which are also nutritious for their livelihoods. We want a smallholder farmer to be food secure and, at the same time, find markets for their crops,” he said.
He said by starting the marketing process before harvest begins, they expect more farmers to benefit from collective marketing efforts and improved value for their crops.
“In addition, we also expect to show farmers the benefits of more formal market linkages for future transactions,” said Gaga.
One of the buyers, Cecilia Rice, who is a director of Estrell, a company that sells groundnuts flour, said she is happy with the arrangement because farmers will benefit from their produce.
“Traders rip off farmers but creating a link between smallholder farmers and buyers automatically shuts off the buyer and makes the farmer the winner,” she said.