Farmers urged to add value to foods

Farmers have been urged to develop enterprises by adding value to foods they produce to increase their family incomes as well as diversifying their diets.

Head of Ecology Department at Chancellor College Mangani Katundu said this at the institution in Zomba on Monday during the opening of a two-week training of 60 farmers and youths from Ekwendeni in Mzimba on product management, food processing methods, business development and management of small enterprises.

He said under the five-year project called Malawi Farmer to Farmer Agro-Economic (Maffa), they provide food processing expertise to the farmers, especially those working on trying to develop enterprises in addition to other foods they find in their respective communities.

“We want them to develop businesses so that they can increase their family incomes and boost their nutritional status from foods that they have processed in different ways.

“This improves incomes for the economic well-being of the families and in addition to that, when farmers have got money, they are better to withstand the challenges of droughts and others associated with agriculture through the use of agro-ecological methods of farming that is in line with climate change,” he said.