Farmer Voice Radio facilitates market access
Access to markets for agricultural produce remains a challenge to the success of many small-scale
farmers in Malawi, particularly in rural areas. Poor
road networks and low literacy levels further
exacerbate the situation as farmers tend to stay within
the arena of subsistence farming rather than selling
their produce to make a profit.
The Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ACE) and
World Food Program (WFP), two other BMGF Grantees
operating in Malawi, collaborated with Farmer Voice
Radio (FVR) to include agricultural marketing topics in
the National Agriculture Radio Agenda (NARA) for the
first quarter of 2011.
Chipoto Listener Club members in their groundnut field
It only took a few ACE introductory programs,
broadcast on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), before radio Listener Clubs began exerting
pressure for further information. For example, the Chipoto Listener Club in Lilongwe, whose mission is
to help one another succeed through breaking the chain of individualism, contacted the area’s FVR
Radio Extension Officer (REO) for assistance with marketing the groundnuts they produced following
their implementation of practices broadcast on FVR programming. With the help of the REO, the group
leaders met with Horizon farm in Lilongwe and negotiated a
contract at a selling price of MK150 ($1.00) per kilogram of
groundnuts. Their previous selling price was MK80 per
kilogram (53 US cents).
The Chipoto Listener Club members have cultivated
groundnuts on a total estimated land area of 2.7 hectares,
and expect to make approximately MK607,500.00 ($4,050),
compared to MK324,000.00 ($2160) made in the previous
year. These smallholder farmers are delighted. “We will
produce even more [groundnuts] next growing season
especially now that government is considering phasing out
tobacco growing, which was our cash crop”, the Listener
Club chairperson reports.
Members of the Chipoto Radio Listener Club