Farming trees, banishing hunger: how an agroforestry programme is helping smallholders in Malawi to grow more food and improve their livelihoods

This booklet tells the story of Malawi’s Agroforestry Food Security Programme. Funded by Irish Aid and coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in partnership with a consortium of national institutions, the four-year programme will enable at least 200,000 families – or around .3 million of the poorest people in Malawi – to increase their food production and enhance their nutrition. At the same time, the programme will do much to improve soil fertility and restore degraded farmland. All of this will be done by encouraging farmers to use the agroforestry technologies developed by the World Agroforestry Centre and its partners over more than a decade of research in Southern Africa. During recent years, thousands of farming families – some of their stories are told here – have dramatically increased their welfare, and that of their land, by planting trees which capture atmospheric nitrogen, and by incorporating into their small farms a range of trees which yield fruit, firewood and livestock fodder. The benefits of these agroforestry technologies are clear; the task now is to promote their use throughout Malawi. This is precisely what the Agroforestry Food Security Programme is doing. During 2007, the programme supported almost 90,000 smallholder farmers by providing seeds, seedlings, nursery materials and training. This is just a beginning. These farmers will receive further support over the coming years, ensuring that they become self-sufficient and confident enough to share their skills with their neighbours. The World Agroforestry Centre and its national partners in Malawi would like to express their thanks to Irish Aid for its strong commitment to adopting science-based solutions to tackle hunger and poverty. Irish Aid’s faith in developing perennial solutions to perennial problems is exemplary, and its support, amounting to at least US$ 4 million over four years, should make hunger a thing of the past for a significant number of people in Malawi

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