On a hot afternoon in Luchenza, Thyolo District, Clifford Yuda Likwinji moves slowly between vegetable beds along the Thuchira River, a watering can in hand.
There is nothing dramatic about the scene. No technology on display. No slogans about transformation. Just persistence.
Likwinji, 33, is a trained journalist. He farms on a small plot measured more by what it can support than what it promises.
Until recently, agriculture was not part of his plan. Like many graduates, he associated farming with drudgery and low returns, preferring a white-collar job in an air-conditioned workplace.
However, that view shifted only after time spent managing a farm in Botswana in 2024.
The contrast was uncomfortable.
In Botswana, farmers were pushing productivity in dry conditions. Yet back in Malawi, water covered a fifth of the country’s territory but flowed unused all the way to the Indian Ocean.
“The question that followed was practical rather than romantic: if farming could work in that arid country, why was it failing back home in Malawi?” Likwinji wondered.
Since returning, he has been experimenting with irrigation and organic methods, constrained mainly by capital.
Without a pump, he waters manually. It is inefficient, but it keeps the crops alive.
What stands out is not scale, but intent. He is farming deliberately, not by default.
“I used to think farming was just hard labour,” he says. “Now I see it as a business.”
That shift in perception is quietly repeating itself elsewhere. It marks the rise of young people jumping to the front of the industry that employs at least 80 percent of Malawians of working age, but often left to the elderly
In Salima, communications specialist Daudi Kayisi runs a 100-hectare operation combining fruit orchards, livestock and irrigation.
Like Likwinji, he is also a former journalist who chose to leave formal employment—– a decision driven less by passion for farming than by discomfort with dependency.
Watching Malawi import food while productive land lay idle made little sense to him. Over four years, he invested gradually in boreholes, drip irrigation and animal housing, accepting delayed returns in exchange for control.
“Farming allows me to plan my life,” he says. “I may not earn quickly, but I earn deliberately,” he says.
Kayisi is careful not to oversell the allure of agriculture.
He warns young people that agriculture demands patience and capital long before it yields stability. What he challenges is the idea that salaried employment is automatically safer.
The main constraint, both men agree, is finance.
Likwinji remains limited by equipment costs while Kayisi notes that early investments often come before income, a mismatch that locks many young people out.
“Access to finance is very challenging for the youth,” Kayisi says. “The systems were not designed with beginners in mind.”
The National Economic Empowerment Fund (Neef) spokesperson Dan Chakhaza says it is trying to close that gap.
Last September, he told The Nation agriculture has been prioritised within that youth financing, with over 26 000 young people accessing agriculture loans in 2025 alone. Lending models, he said, now include group guarantees, farmland as collateral and repayment schedules aligned with crop cycles.
“These are deliberate adjustments meant to reduce entry barriers,” Chakhaza said.
Yet financing alone has limits. Agriculture specialist Felistas Tiopane Sibweza argues that the youth succeed when credit is combined with training, inputs and secure markets.
In lakeshore communities she has worked in, diversification into poultry, rice and horticulture only worked when buyers were assured.
“Money without structure does not build farmers,” she says.
These individual efforts are unfolding against a larger structural reality.
Agriculture still accounts for about 30 percent of Malawi’s GDP and employs over 70 percent of the population, yet productivity remains low and the sector is heavily rain-dependent. Climate shocks and ageing farmers add urgency to the question of who will farm next.
Policy frameworks such as Malawi 2063 pillar to increase agricultural productivity and commercialisation place youth-led commercial agriculture at the centre of long-term growth.
The challenge is execution, turning intent into conditions young people can realistically work within.
What emerges from stories like Likwinji’s and Kayisi’s is not a revolution but a recalibration. Young Malawians are not rejecting agriculture. They are renegotiating it, on terms that prioritise control, scale and sustainability.
“If young people treat farming as business, it changes everything,” Likwinji says quietly, returning to his watering.
As the year closes, Malawi’s agricultural future does not hinge on grand announcements. It rests on whether these small, deliberate shifts are recognised, supported and allowed to grow.
