RUMPHI, Malawi — In the villages below Nyika Plateau in northern Malawi’s Rumphi district, coffee rules.

It’s one of the most common bushes in the region, grown in back and front yards or in open fields where, elsewhere, maize would have been cultivated. Here, coffee shares space with banana and other fruit trees around fishponds and water holes, and scales up steep slopes among natural foliage.

“It’s the father of all crops here,” says Martha Mhango, a coffee farmer of 22 years in a village located at the boundary of Nyika National Park, Malawi’s largest wildlife reserve.

Mhango is a member of a coffee agroforestry project developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition (SFCC), an international network that campaigns for sustainable coffee value chains.

In 2022, the two organizations launched a pilot project to promote coffee produced under agroforestry among farmers in Malawi and Uganda.

“Basically, the project was meant to integrate agroforestry into coffee production to enhance climate resilience and quality of coffee. Agroforestry has many benefits both to farmers as well as the ecosystem,” says Manvester Ackson Khoza, the SFCC’s national coordinator in Malawi and its international councilor for Southern Africa.

Agroforestry is a practice where farmers grow trees and shrubs with an agricultural crop or animal production. The system can help farmers ensure food security, increase incomes, preserve biodiversity and adapt to effects of climate change.

Mhango is one of the thousands of small-scale farmers who are the bedrock of coffee production in the largely mountainous parts of northern Malawi; large coffee estate production is concentrated in the nation’s south.

Still, coffee occupies a small part of Malawi’s overall agricultural exports. In 2020, for example, agricultural products accounted for 70% of exports. Of these, tobacco made up 51%, while coffee was only 11%, according to the 2021 Malawi Annual Economic Report produced by the Ministry of Finance.

But, among its smallholder growers, coffee is king. It’s thanks to years of coffee income that Mhango today owns a three-bedroom, burnt-brick and iron-roofed house in the village. Through coffee earnings, she’s also managed to educate her three children.

“In the low-lying areas of this district, people grow tobacco. But for us up here, we can’t do without coffee,” Mhango says. “For us, coffee production is culture. We pass it across generations. It’s addictive and it’s our life.”

While coffee ranks high on the list of cash crops in the region, its farmers grapple with a raft of challenges in its production. A 2023 study by local researchers on coffee production in the northern region highlights pests and diseases, unpredictable rainfall, inadequate farm inputs and extension services, an unstable market, and unreliable source of seeds and seedlings among the many factors impacting coffee yields.

Among other recommendations, the study calls for intervention by the government and development partners to help address the challenges and ensure high productivity and sustainable coffee production.

The FAO and SFCC project has trained farmers in coffee agroforestry, established demonstration sites, and conducted capacity-building sessions on how farmers can improve coffee quality to attract new and international markets.

It’s also trained them in participatory guarantee systems (PGS), a “locally-focused quality assurance system which certifies producers based on active participation of stakeholders,” according to Organics International, which champions this system globally. Organics International, previously known as the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, promotes the principles of health, ecology, fairness and care as the basis for organic agricultural production.

According to Khoza, current global food systems are changing from conventional to organic.

“As Slow Food we promote and advocate the production of and consumption of good, clean and fair food that is produced without the use of synthetic chemicals. So, coffee is one of the highly consumed beverage, hence many consumers opting for organic coffee because of the health issues,” he says.

Khoza says the SFCC also aims to bridge production and market deficiencies by, among others, sharing global market links with producers. Since joining the coalition, the growers in Rumphi have started selling their coffee to European markets that recognize traditional and sustainable food production systems.

“This is a milestone for them. There are also many companies and individuals who are enquiring about the Phoka coffee,” Khoza says.

Hackson Msiska, chair of the Nkhonthwa coffee growers’ group, one of several in the area, and the one to which Mhango belongs, says most of the 58 farmers in the group started growing coffee in the 1990s.

“It has not been easy especially in terms of marketing. Because we have not had a structured market and reliable buyers, we have been falling prey to intermediaries who pay very little for our coffee. Out of frustration, some of us have been abandoning coffee,” Msiska says.

With the new initiatives, the coffee farmers seem to be turning the corner. In the last harvest, the Nkhonthwa group earned $33,000 in coffee sales, a marked improvement from previous years.

“We are better organized now. Each one of us now keeps records. We believe we are heading in the right direction,” Msiska says.

At the time of Mongabay’s visit in MONTH, Msiska and other farmers in the Nkhonthwa group, which in turn is part of the Phoka cooperative, are sorting coffee beans on the drying racks at their storehouse on the slopes of Nyika Plateau.

“This is already bought. We signed a contract with a buyer from Belgium so we have cut out vendors. That we can now have customers from Europe who offer better prices inspires us to produce and process our coffee in the best conditions possible,” Msiska says.

These small growers rarely plant just coffee. In most cases, they intercrop with banana, avocado, sugarcane, mango, gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) and fish-poison bean (Tephrosia vogelii), among other plants.

The farmers say they’ve been intercropping for some time now, but not in any planned way. It was only in recent years that the practice became more structured, amid a growing realization that agroforestry helps to improve the profitability of their farming.

“We are seeing a reduction in production costs because we no longer use inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides,” says Vera Msiska, one of the farmers in the group (not related to group chair Hackson Msiska). “We are using manure to fertilize the soils and organic ways to fight pests and disease to our coffee. That is pushing up our profit margin; so it will be a double win for us.”

Precious Chipeta, a government agriculture extension adviser in the area, says more than 60% of the coffee farmers he works with have adopted agroforestry coffee production. He says the adoption rate has surged in recent years because communities are feeling the negative effects of climate change and environmental degradation on their farming.

“Coffee is grown in steep areas here which are easily swept through by running water and landslides. The trees support the land and also assist in moisture retention. They are improving the soils through decomposition of leaves, and the shading of coffee improves the quality of coffee during certification,” Chipeta says.

He adds that intercropping coffee with fruit trees and plants can also help tackle land ownership wrangles in the area as the population grows.

“Conflict over land reduces, because now people are able to grow several crops on a small piece of land and harvest enough for consumption and income,” Chipeta says.

Studies have also shown that coffee agroforestry sequesters carbon dioxide. One such study conducted in Uganda, Africa’s second-largest coffee producer and where the FAO and the SFCC have also implemented their agroforestry project, found that coffee agroforestry systems sequestered more soil organic carbon compared to coffee monocrop methods.

Despite the progress for the farmers under the Phoka co-op, they’re not yet out of the woods, Khoza says. Building the market remains the biggest challenge, he notes.

“We need to identify stable buyers who can support farmers with other operational costs,” he says.

The coffee producers also need more capital to replace old processing equipment, improve warehousing facilities, and manage transportation of the produce to markets.

“As Slow Food we cannot support all the needs the farmers are requesting,” Khoza says.

A report on the project, launched during a global workshop on coffee at the FAO headquarters in Rome in July this year, says the project has shown the potential of coffee agroforestry as a sustainable agricultural model that not only addresses the pressing challenges of climate change, but also redefines the future of coffee farming.

The FAO and the SFCC are calling for increased adoption of agroforestry through greater access to finance for producers, enhanced technical support, and revised government policies supporting coffee produced through agroforestry.

“Farmers should aim to access markets that recognize the benefits of traditional and sustainable production systems and pay a fair price that accounts for coffee quality, environmental protection and improved livelihoods,” the report says.

For Mhango, the initiatives under the pilot project have helped strengthen the farmers’ motivation to continue growing the crop.

“For some of us, dropping growing coffee has never been an option; [even more] now that we can find international markets and be better rewarded for our hard work,” she says.

Banner image: Women make up a considerable proportion of the coffee farmers in the area. Image by Charles Mpaka for Mongabay.

Study highlights environmental and economic benefits of agroforestry for DRC coffee crops

Citations:

Kachiguma, N. A., & Masamba, K. (2023). Constraints and opportunities for increased coffee productivity under climate change: A case of Mzuzu smallholder coffee planters cooperative union in Malawi. Cognizance Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(8), 1437-1448. doi:10.47760/cognizance.2023.v03i08.037

Tumwebaze, S. B., & Byakagaba, P. (2016). Soil organic carbon stocks under coffee agroforestry systems and coffee monoculture in Uganda. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 216, 188-193. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2015.09.037