PRATIQUES - agro.3 : Note sur les Vergers scolaires au Malawi

By Lobin LOWE, Horticulturist
INTER-AIDE Agriculture Project, Lilongwe-East, Malawi
Mars 2001

Article écrit pour la revue "Horticulture in Malawi" publiée avec le soutien de la GTZ

1. Introduction
2. Objectives
3. Achievements
4. Constraints
5. Conclusion
Retour au sommaire Cultures

1. Introduction

Fruit is good for you, and growing fruit is good for you . Yet for decades, unlike other food and cash crop, fruit production had been considered by rural development planners as a minor component of farming systems or as a technique that could only be carried out under professional commercial management bases. Fruit propagation has been very slow because there were no extension strategies to improve horticulture skills among rural communities.

Inter Aide Agriculture project is a Food Security project that implements several activities, among which horticulture and gardening, to improve productivity and diversification. The fruit propagation project aims at small scale production for domestic consumption on the local market. The project intents to put fruit propagation skills at village level as a challenge, so that fruit growing can be adopted by rural communities and not considered anymore as technical activity destinated only to specialists trained in institutes of higher horticultural education.

Trainings are therefore one of the main components of the programme, and are elaborated for three groups of beneficiaries:

• "Potential individuals": these farmers will act as demonstrators as well as selling points of new horticultural planting materials
• clubs : groups of smallholder farmers get involved in fruit-trees planting (the trainings include techniques such as group dynamics and capacity building)
• schools programme :groups of pupils learn about horticulture and tree-planting and practice in school orchards.
  

This article deals with the school programme that constitutes an exception among most of agriculture non-governmental implementators in Malawi.

2. Objectives

The main objective of this approach is to meet the pupils so that :

• Theoritical horticulture covered in primary school curiculum is backed up with practical demonstrations,
• Pupils, who are assigned many agriculture activities by their parents, should be equiped with relevant knowledge, practices and techniques.

You cannot expect good results from someone that has been taught how to cycle or play football in a classroom. The same applies to some fruit propagation techniques such as grafting. Theory alone is not enough. Memorizing is one thing and practicing is another, and practice makes the difference. Experience has revealed that each time a practical demonstration is carried out in a school, the teachers nod their heads first in sudden comprehension, "so this is grafting!" they say, learning together with their pulpils.

You may as well want to know why taking the trouble of training pupils at school when we can just deal with their parents who are targeted by IA Agriculture project. The problem is on the transmission of important information from the source to the beneficiaries. (see illustration).

To avoid this situation, it seemed interesting to us to provide youth with equal training as their parents. Pupils, who are considered as future farmers, are also the right target for fruit production which is a long term investment.

3. Achievements

We started the Educationnal and Practical programme with 8 schools from end 1999 under Horticulture section. Starting from courses and establishment of school nurseries, the Project encouraged the allocation of a piece of land belonging to the school to turn into an orchard. Seeds, polythen tubes issued from Inter-Aide, teachers and school pupils had to organise themselves for an appropriated and close upkeep of the new structures (nurseries, orchards). 7 to 8 new schools are planned to join the programme during the 2001/2002 season.

The quantitatives achievements are shown in table 1 as follows.

Table 1 : School Fruit tree implementation overview
from September 1999 to March 2001

4. Constraints

That approach seems to be impossible or unpredictable, more especially when it comes to management during holidays. In this case, targeted schools form commitees within horticulture clubs. These committees are intensively trained and taken on field visits to places of interest. Headmasters, agriculture teachers and some school committee members are also involved to assist in drawing duty poster for pupils, especially those who live near the school to undertake upkeep during the holidays.

2 of the 8 schools targeted presented problems of dedication and self organisation last season (which means only 6 were actually included in the project). Initially, all the 8 schools had orchards, but 2 of them did not care, for different reasons :

• There had been no commitment by teachers and headmasters of these 2 schools. They failed to organise the targetted pupils for the different tasks to be carried out;
• Practical field horticulture is not included in the examinable syllabus on primary school curriculum, so some headmasters and teachers are not willing to take the challenge of launching a new activity.
• Teachers may be transferred anytime, and are not always ready to get involved in activities that they will note follow up later.

5. Conclusions

All in all, horticulture field practicals in schools is a commendable development that government and NGOs could emulate. Since it seems realistics to assume that most of pupils are involved in agriculture activity and that a wide percentage of them are to be farmers, that Programme bet for future upskilled small-holder farmers. It is high time some measures were taken to avoid teaching pupils for the sake of passing examinations. A pupil, just like any other person is visual minded, he/she is practical, which means theory is a tiny step in the right direction.

Yomikani Banda, 12 years old, Satchiti Horticulture club member teaches his sister Kumvana, 10 years old on budding in the family nursey, march 2001

* Contact : Lobin LOWE
Inter-Aide Agriculture Project
PO BOX 84. Nkhoma
Tel/fax : 753 378
e-mail : iankoma@malawi.net

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