FARMER, PATRICK MWALE
Patrick Mwale is a farmer who lives in Stateland, an area Northeast of Chipata in Kapatamoyo chiefdom. He grew up on a family farm where he now lives growing maize, soybeans and other field crops, which are rain irrigated.
His main challenge before joining the “from auto-pilot to champion farmer” project was lack of access to water for his vegetable garden.
About Patrick Mwale
Patrick Mwale is married and has six children. Besides growing field crops, he loves growing vegetables. He used to do his gardening near a stream, but it was hard to get water because the stream was 3 meters deep, and it sometimes dried up during the hot season. This made it difficult for him to expand his garden.
Before joining the project, he had an open well near his house, but it was in bad condition, and he didn’t have proper irrigation methods to start a garden close to home.
Patrick focused on growing tomatoes, cabbages, rape, and onions. Despite these challenges, he kept working hard. With support from the AFAS-sponsored project, he is now doing much better.
See his progress and challenges below under the Guidance and Monitoring section.
Donor
Patrick Mwale is supported by AFAS
Jacana’s role
- Jacana will provide Patrick with the following support:
– Business and financial training.
– A borehole and a solar pump.
– Agro support (partly sponsored agro supplies and inputs) and guidance
– Bookkeeping guidance.
Provided training
You can also download the manuals for these trainings:
Guidance and monitoring
Nov 2024
Another visit was arranged for the farmers to visit each other this time to check on the progress since their last visits but also to inspire each other.
Guidance and monitoring
April 2024
Patrick joined other farmers in the AFAS program visiting each other to see how they were doing in their gardens particularly looking at implementation, garden layout, innovativeness, bookkeeping and to find the overall or best farmer for the year.
March 2024
Patrick attended a 1-week long workshop on Sustainable Organic Agriculture (SOA) and Organic Vegetable Production (OVP) training at Jacana offices.
During this training, Patrick learned, among other key principles of organic farming: how to make organic pesticides, how to incorporate biomass transfer and practiced spraying using natural pesticides.
November 2023
The project also endeavours to encourage its farmers to adopt and incorporate organic farming techniques. In that light, each farmer received tree seedlings, which could help them have access to plants that produce enough biomass, which can be used to make organic compost and some natural pesticides.
Patrick received 18 Gliricidia, 2 Neem and 7 Tephrozia tree seedlings and immediately planted them in his 50 x 50 garden after some guidance.
October 2023
Patrick’s yellow peppers grew well and were ready for selling.
He has been practising mulching to avoid losing lots of water in his plants during the hot season, as it is during this period of year. In addition, he is also practising intercropping; he intrecropped his cucumbers with red onion which helps to act as a pest repellant.
August 2023
The monitoring visit found Patrick had faced a challenge with his tomatoes: a fungal disease called powdery mildew had attacked them.
July 2023
Through the agro-support where a farmer needed to pay 40% of the cost of the material he wanted for his garden, Patrick acquired a partly sponsored portable solar pump to supplement his irrigation from his cement tank.
By this time, he had also bought a piece of game/fencing wire and erected it on one side and the other side he used dry maize stalks to protect his garden from wandering animals.
June 2023
As part of one of the goals of the project, farmers where encouraged to try out new types of vegetables. Especially to test high-value vegetables that the farmers have not tried before to see how well they could manage them and if they could realize more value within a limited piece of land (in case 50 x 50m).
Here we see Patrick just having received his red and yellow pepper hybrid seeds.
May 2023
Patrick started using his improved water source and now he can conveniently water his plants using a hosepipe, which he bought through the project’s 40-60% agro-support arrangement (beneficiary contributes 40% of total cost & project 60%).
He has now increased the area that he is working on since he can water efficiently.
April 2023
Patrick’s old, dilapidated well was renovated; next, a solar pump will be installed.
Below are pictures of before and after the well was worked on.
March 2023
Patrick attended his training in business, financial and marketing planning. In the workshop, he learned how to create his own practical business plan and financial plan.
