Farmers gain with message from pocket

On this clear and sunny Saturday afternoon, 40-year-old Lemani Mbetayasamba, in a beige glittering satin suit, a white shirt and red necktie, danced as he sang and threw K100 banknotes in the air.

No one could blame him—his firstborn daughter was getting married. Thanks to the SMS Extension Services (SESs), Mbetayasamba was able to fund the wedding, described as the first-of-its-kind in Chawinda Village, Traditional Authority (T/A) Chakhaza, Dowa. The village is allocated about 30 kilometres away from Lilongwe.

“I made over K90 000 from the last growing season sales alone. I used part of the money to buy fertiliser, some household items and a goat. I was also able to organise a wedding for my daughter,” he says, his face beaming with excitement.

SESs are mobile short message services (SMS) aimed at helping smallholder farmers increase productivity by constantly updating them on the best crop farming practices; from land preparation, harvesting to accessing markets.

In Malawi, the project is being implemented by the Agriculture Commodity Exchange for Africa (ACE) and Market Linkages Initiative Bridging Activity (Mliba), a non-governmental organisation supported by United States of America for International Development (Usaid).

Mbetayasamba has been a farmer for about 20 years; growing maize and groundnuts. He also rears pigs and chickens. He has recently bought a nanny goat.

For all those years, Mbetayasamba, like many other farmers in Malawi, thought traditional farming practices are unrivalled. But with SESs, he has flourished.

“In all my life, I relied on traditional farming practices and the results were always disappointing. From a quarter acre, I would get only a bag of groundnuts due to poor farming practices.

“I could not even sell the groundnuts because of their poor quality,” he says.

Despite not making any meaningful progress, Mbetayasamba, clung on to farming, hoping one day the gods would smile on him. Then came SESs.

He says since he was introduced to the SESs by his trader George Chitsosa, he has never regretted.

“I subscribed to SESs by simply giving Chitsosa my phone number and I was instantly connected,” he says.

In order to boost his farming, Mbetayasamba adds, he took a 10 kilogramme groundnut seed loan.

“Last year, I got a 10 kg bag of groundnut seed from our trader on credit, planted on a quarter acre and harvested over 80kg. After paying back the agreed 20 kg, I sold the remainder and kept some seed for the next growing season,” he says.

But how has SESs helped Mbetayasamba and other farmers improve their yield?

As his groundnut crop grew, he testifies, Mliba made sure they provided him with information on high quality and modern groundnut growing practices.

For instance, he learnt how to plant the groundnut seed, the importance of banking in time, what to do when the seed starts to flower and how to determine when to harvest.

Experts argue that one of the reasons Malawi continues to suffer despite having over 90 percent of its land dedicated to agriculture is the poor farming methods practised by thousands of rural subsistence farmers.

For example, with literacy level averaging 60 percent, former Farmers Union of Malawi president Felix Jumbe believes farmers in Malawi need to be monitored right from land preparation to market identification.

“Most farmers in Malawi lack basic education and that is why their farming practices are traditional. The knowledge our farmers use in practising agriculture has been passed on from generation to generation and if Malawi is to succeed in farming, we need to find means of helping farmers,” Jumbe says.

Mbetayasamba says before SESs, he never banked his groundnuts in time and this affected the output.

“But now, I have learnt the best way of banking and I am able to get as much as 60 pods per plant as opposed to the usual 20. It is the message from the pocket that has made me a successful farmer. This year, I have my seed and fertiliser ready, and the future looks bright,” he says.

Another reason for Mbetayasamba’s success is that he no longer struggles to find markets for his produce. He says in the past, some traders would exploit farmers by buying their produce at low prices.

Because they lacked knowledge on what other markets offer and also feared losing the harvests to pests and diseases, the farmers were swayed into selling the produce at a loss, he says.

“When the crops are ready, we are told where to sell our produce and at what price through the SMSs. We call it Esoko, a Swahili word that loosely means ‘market’. That way, we are able to make informed decisions on where to sell our produce, and we can never be cheated anymore,” he says.

Chief of party for Mliba Rachel Sibande says the project was launched after noting that smallholder farmers in Malawi were struggling to sell their produce at fair prices.

She says: “Usaid/Malawi started the project with Esoko in 2011 to equip farmers with relevant information needed for their crops to grow and also with current market information regarding prices on the market.”

Currently, Mliba together with Agriculture Commodity Exchange (ACE) uses Esoko to get information on prices of produce on markets from different districts in the country. Local enumerators upload prices onto the system through their cellphones and, after approval, the prices are automatically sent out to registered users via SMS.

Messages are in local languages. Sibande says so far, SESs have provided farmers with information they needed to sell 2 500 metric tonnes of grain valued at $750 000 (K262.5 million).

“Currently, we have over 9 000 smallholders enrolled on prices and an overall 21 000 plus farmers on Esoko,” she says.

To smoothly reach out to the smallholders, Esoko engages ambassadors for message alert such as Tenthani Msayima. A group village head and farmer of groundnuts, maize and soya beans from Mchinji, Msayima, 58, sensitises 742 households in his Kabuthu Village to the best ways of ensuring maximum productivity.

Msayima does not simply share the alerts with the households; he has also benefited from the project.

“I used to have poor harvests due to poor farming practices. Things have tremendously improved since I started subscribing to Esoko message alerts,” he says.

ACE principal adviser Kristian Moller says they generated 97 Esoko contracts totalling 2.5 metric tonnes in 2011.

“From 2011 to 2013, ACE has generated over 1 000 contracts totalling to over 60 000 metric tonnes,” he says.