Farmer, Wilson Banda
Wilson Banda is a passionate and visionary farmer residing in Petauke district, Zambia. He has been growing vegetables on a small piece of land which he bought back in 2009 when he sold 5 goats. On this piece of land, he has gained basic vegetable farming skills which has helped him support his children to school and with household needs.
He is looking forward to reducing the initial cost of vegetable growing from using synthetic fertilizer to low cost-effective organic fertilizer and organic pest control and management. He also has a reliable water source now and he is able to expand and grow other vegetable varieties that are highly demanded by his customers. He is very happy that Jacana is supporting him in growing his farming business.
Watch Wilson Banda before he got a pump from Jacana
About Wilson Banda
Wilson Banda is a farmer who lives in Manchichi village and was born in 1974, married with five (5) children 4 boys and 1 girl Wilson Banda started his garden in 2009 and he has been growing different types of vegetables and rain-fed cash crops. From the time he established his garden, Wilson had a challenge with water and was using watering cans. When he heard that Jacana was conducting interviews and training small-scale farmers he showed great interest and registered, he was called for business training which he did very well, and he was selected to be among the farmers supported by AFAS in Petauke district. Wilson wants to improve his technical way of farming by using organic manure in his garden and growing highly demanded crops that are not commonly grown in Petauke district such as red pepper, Yellow Pepper, Chill Lettuce Garlic, and Red Cabbage.
Donor
Wilson Banda is supported by AFAS Foundation
Jacana’s role
- 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
October 2023
Wilson was guided how to prune cabbage leaves; his wife is fully involved in garden management which also makes his work easy. After pruning he was further guided how apply Bokashi organic manure which was made in his garden.
September 2023
Wilson had a passion of learning how make his own fertilizer for his garden. In September 2023 Eunice visited Wilson to guide him on how to make his own bocashi fertilizer which he practically learned at a previous workshop organized by Jacana. He will now use this organic fertilizer to regenerated the depleted soils in his garden and improve production.
Here in the pictures Wilson together with his wife are learning how to make organic fertilizer. Next visit Wilson wants to learn how to make lab serum also known as lactobacillus serum, an organic milk-based fertilizer rich in microbes that promotes soil fertility and plant health and it boost crop yield.
May 2023
Here in this picture, water entrepreneurs (Severiano and Patson) installed 5m by 10m partly sponsored drip irrigation on Wilson’s demo plot. He wants to compare the performance of crops grown on drip irrigation to those that are manually irrigated with a garden hose pipe before he expands the drip irrigation on a bigger portion of land.
April 2023
In April Boston visited Wilson and guided him on how to do bookkeeping that will help him keep track of his profit and loss. Boston also guided Wilson how to make his garden layout. The layout will help Wilson to plan, organize and maximize the space in his garden.
June 2022
Wilson attended his first business and financial training workshop sponsored by AFAS. Wilson learned how to make a business and finance plan. In the training, he made a business plan where he focused on expanding his vegetable growing business, he learned how to look for customers, identify potential problems that are faced by his customers, and how he may come up with solutions to the challenges faced by his customers and ways on how he may advertise his business.
