Alton Climate Action Network
Since 2020 ACAN has been supporting a charity helping some villages in the Gumbi region of Malawi. There are many subsistence farmers here who grow maize as a monoculture crop to sell. This requires expensive chemical fertiliser and reliable rainy periods, without which the crop fails. With climate change and recent price increases for fertilisers it has become an unreliable livelihood.
With ACAN’s help 12 young people have been trained at the wonderfully-named Permaculture Paradise Institute to use a mixed farming method to grow a wide range of local crops and fruit trees. The money raised from Alton helped to buy them some land in Gumbi a year ago – the Gumbi-Alton plot.
Already they have successfully grown staple crops and they have planted young trees. They have built fences and a store for tools and produce. From our donations, they are now buying animals for their farm and are planting fruit and nut trees.
They are teaching other villagers their permaculture techniques, to spread their methods.
This link is to the recording of our December 2022 online meeting with the farmers in Malawi and the Permaculture Paradise Institute https://youtu.be/xWQeaTX4d6o
‘Walking beside Gumbi young farmers on a journey to Paradise’
