Lead farmer Frederick Msiska from Malawi. Fredrick (the ‘Doctor of Crops’) is a very dynamic and innovative farmer who has adopted practically every sustainable agriculture practice known!

He gave us a tour of his fields which included 9000+ maize plants and 3000+ groundnuts all looking very healthy and grown with compost using close spacing.

He has fruit and agroforestry trees growing on his land as well as a medicinal plant garden. Fredrick’s latest experiment is with a wormery – he uses soil, grass, eggshells and paper to produce very concentrated manure.

Fredrick is also leading the way in developing a Macademia nut nursery. Grafting takes place to produce high yields once the plants mature – after about 5 years. Fredrick clearly shows how the sharing on innovations through FAIR’s Sustainable Agriculture network is working. He demonstrates a sprayer he has built following the design of another farmer in Mhuju as well as a mouse trap from Simlemba.

Fredrick has set himself up to teach others in his classroom and by showing them his farm. All around his land are areas which clearly demonstrate practices he has used – such as different planting holes, vetiver grass etc.