News: February 2009 - Environment

•	Force Flies to South Africa - a Reward for Planting Two Million Trees
•	176 Community Tree Nurseries
•	Citrus Project
•	Banana Tree Project
•	Deforestation in the Hills Is Still a Huge Problem
•	Beekeeping
•	The Mbaula Project
•	The Fish Pond Project

Budding improved citrus budwood onto hardy lemon rootstock

RIPPLE News: February 2009

ENVIRONMENT

Force Flies to South Africa — A Reward for Planting Two Million Trees
Two previous volunteers, Matt and Pauline, promised Force that they would pay for him to fly to South Africa when he had planted two million trees. As you can imagine, South Africa is a dream destination for many Malawians, and Force was very excited about this trip for a long time beforehand. Finally, the day arrived, and Geoff and Liz met Force at the airport in Johannesburg. It was a new world for him, and he couldn’t believe the number of cars and all the things that we take for granted in the West.

On the first day of his visit, Matt and Pauline took us all to Rosebank shopping mall in central Johannesburg. At one point, we thought we’d lost Force at the top of an escalator. It was the first time that he’d seen a moving staircase, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he quickly mastered this. After lunch and a bit of shopping, we all went Ten Pin Bowling and, within a few bowls, he was knocking the pins down as well as, if not better than, the rest of us. The following day, Matt arranged for Force to take a trip in a small plane with Russ, a good friend of his — yet another first for Force.


Force arrives at O.R. Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa	Matt, Pauline and baby Alex take Force to Rosebank shopping mall	Ten Pin Bowling — another first!	Russ, a good friend of Matt’s, took Force for a flight in his plane

After this wonderful experience, Geoff and Liz took Force on a trip to Kruger National Park. Then they travelled through some beautiful countryside from White River to Blyde River Canyon and on to Tzaneen, which is a major fruit growing area. Geoff and Liz were keen for Force to see fruit tree growing on a large scale, and there were thousands of hectares of bananas, oranges, avocados, etc. Although we don’t want to replicate fruit tree growing on this scale in Malawi, it was good for Force to see how the farmers in South Africa produce fruit on a commercial basis. As a result of this trip, he now has a clearer vision of how our fruit tree project can develop in Malawi.


A lucky sighting in Kruger National Park	Oranges in South Africa	Force saw thousands of hectares of oranges and bananas near Tzaneen	Blyde River Canyon

176 Community Tree Nurseries
Over the past year, we expanded the tree planting project to include 176 community tree nurseries. The project has been very popular with local communities as many of them do realise that they need to invest in planting trees. But it has been a huge undertaking and, although we have had tremendous successes, we have learnt a lot about the problems of growing trees, particularly with the quantity of tree nurseries and the geographical accessibility of some of them. However, that being said, we expect that about 1.5 million trees have been planted out this planting season, and we have been encouraging communities to plant the majority of these trees in community woodlots rather than as individual trees
which are difficult to monitor. The trees planted during the rainy season in 2008 have survived well and, with the ongoing programme, we are encouraging communities to look after the trees for the first few years after they are planted. This has really paid dividends, and we can now see the results.


Some of the supplies for the community tree nurseries and forest guards	Trees are planted in community woodlots and are looked after by the tree nursery members	An acacia which had been planted in January 2008	Community tree nursery members clearing and maintaining the woodlots

Force has developed a good team of supervisors, and we now have four reliable and enthusiastic supervisors who are making sure that the nurseries are working efficiently. They will be monitoring the planted out trees on an ongoing basis so that we have data on the number of trees which were planted and which have survived. Due to the global economic situation, we will be reducing the number of community tree nurseries we support in 2009 in order to reduce costs and maximise effectiveness.


Quick growing acacia trees which are now two years old	A tree at Kachere Primary School	Makuzi tree nursery	Chigwiti tree nursery

Citrus Project
Initially, we started developing the citrus project with a large number of the community tree nurseries who grew hardy lemon rootstock in preparation for budding with improved citrus varieties. Then we purchased improved budwood for oranges, tangerines and grapefruit from the south of Malawi. Due to the logistics of getting the budwood to all of the nurseries and then training the community members how to bud, we experienced a larger than expected failure rate. Half way through 2008, we took on Fumbani who used to work as an agricultural extension worker and who has had a lot of experience of budding fruit trees. We also took on Catherine to manage the fruit tree project at Mwaya where we have a large greenhouse. With Fumbani’s help, we have changed our budding strategy, and we are developing 20 community tree nurseries in key geographical areas in addition to our main nursery at Mwaya. With this system, we have experienced a very good success rate with the budded trees, and we are now planting budded fruit tree orchards so that these trees can grow and provide improved budwood locally rather than travelling to the south of the country, which is obviously very expensive.


Budwood has to be kept cold — each twig has four buds	Children with an improved orange tree	A new budwood nursery typically with 60 improved trees for future budding	Alupro visitors at one of the tree nurseries

At the end of October 2008, Alupro, who have been sponsoring our fruit tree project, brought out four of their competition winners — two teachers and two local authority recycling experts. They visited a number of our projects and were interested to see the progress being made.


Fumbani, who is in charge of the fruit tree project	Catherine, the manager at the Mwaya tree nursery, doing some budding	6,000 improved citrus trees were budded in four days at Mwaya tree nursery	Catherine with a successfully budded orange tree

Banana Tree Project
It has always amazed us how few bananas are available in Malawi when banana plants should grow very easily. However, what has happened is that many of the banana trees have been infected by a virus and, although this doesn’t necessarily kill the trees, the leaves tend to curl and many of the trees do not bear fruit. In addition to this, most Malawians do not grow banana trees in the best way, leaving them to grow in clumps rather than detaching the new suckers and planting them elsewhere. If they were to plant the trees at the correct intervals and manage the suckers, they would have better crops.


An improved banana tree producing suckers	Hopefully, thousands of these will be produced in the near future	A recently planted pawpaw tree	A mix of compost, soil and sand is needed to give trees a good start

Our banana tree project is very simple and exciting. We have made our experimental vegetable garden into a banana plantation with 250 improved banana trees. Each planting station is at three metre intervals and has been prepared with good compost. The trees are growing well, and they will develop at least four suckers each per year. The idea is to find farmers, probably through our community tree nursery groups, who are prepared to provide land and free labour to prepare a site and then 50-100 banana trees will be loaned to them. They will then grow suckers for RIPPLE Africa to distribute to new farmers who will do the same thing. The farmers will have the benefit of the fruit and will eventually own the suckers. They will then be able to generate a reliable income from the crop. If everything goes well, we could establish between 20,000 and 100,000 banana trees in two to three years. People will be very interested to purchase these banana trees for their homes, and RIPPLE Africa can assist with the overall planning and with providing transport to the different areas within Nkhata Bay District. We’re also very keen to extend this project to schools for two reasons — firstly, it will teach the children about farming, and, secondly, the bananas will provide valuable nutrition for them.

Deforestation in the Hills Is Still a Huge Problem
The dry season is a lovely time to be in Malawi but also a very sad time. The Malawians, like many other Africans, have an urgent need to set fire to almost everything in the belief that it will improve the environment for the following year. There is also tremendous pressure on the natural resources because of the burgeoning population. We were horrified by the bush fires in October and November, and some evenings it was difficult to breathe because of the smoke in the atmosphere — it was the worst we have ever seen. One day, a member of staff, who lives in the hills, came to tell us that his house had been burnt down, and we decided to go and see for ourselves. Sure enough, a bush fire had burnt out of control and a spark had ignited his thatched roof during the day whilst he was at work. The house and contents burnt very quickly, and he lost virtually everything other than the clothes he stood in.


Bush fires rapidly burn out of control	Musa lost everything when his house burnt down	Many houses were burnt down due to bush fires burning out of control	There were even bush fires next to Mwaya Beach which the volunteers had to extinguish

On the way to and from his house, we had a very interesting walk along forest paths and witnessed dreadful scenes of devastation where farmers had indiscriminately cut down trees and set fire to them where they had fallen. One particular farmer had cleared an area of virgin forest of 5-10 acres singlehandedly and had just set fire to everything. When we arrived, it was still smouldering. We asked the farmer why he had done this, and he told us that he had a family of 11 children and his existing crops were failing because the soil was exhausted. He had more forest left and plans to cut this down in the future.


Before — how the forest was!	After — destruction like this is happening incredibly quickly	This farmer cleared and burnt between five and 10 acres of forest in just three months

We decided to try and do something about this. Unfortunately, in 1994, authority for these areas was decentralised by the government and devolved to the local chiefs with the result that the farmers just do what they like. Very quickly, the beautiful forests of Nkhata Bay District will be gone for ever and farmers will struggle to grow their crops once the top soil has washed away from the steep slopes which inevitably it does very quickly once the trees have been cut down and the land cleared. It is one thing to grow new trees, but we are really keen to work with the communities to try and save the existing ones. To this end, we assembled a group of chiefs, Forestry Department staff and other interested parties, and we took them on the same walk to see the extensive damage for themselves. They were as horrified as we were, and they realise that something has got to be done. We are currently working on a simple set of bylaws for all chiefs to use in Nkhata Bay District. These will control which trees can be cut down and which areas need to be preserved. It will be a huge task but one worth pursuing if the trees of Nkhata Bay are to remain for future generations.

We also visited lowland areas along the lakeshore where general bush burning is endemic for a variety of reasons. Mainly people burn the bush as an easy way of clearing the land ready to plant crops at the beginning of the rainy season, but there are other reasons as well including hunting and for fun. But, as you can see from the pictures, it causes untold damage, and we saw many houses which had burnt down, and many fruit trees and indigenous trees destroyed.


Deforestation just starting —- next year there will be far fewer trees	A fact-finding meeting with local chiefs, Forestry Department staff and other interested parties to find a solution to this problem which is devastating their environment	Bush fires burn fruit trees, destroying the fruit

In conjunction with the bylaws, we are also offering advice on improved agriculture. The Malawian communities in our area grow only cassava all year round and some maize during the rainy season. They quickly exhaust the soil and, together with the bush burning, destroy any organic matter. We are encouraging farmers to make compost rather than burning and to intercrop with potential cash crops like groundnuts and beans which will not only produce additional income but will put nitrogen back into the soil. We are very keen to develop this area of activity over the next few years and, with the help of David Newman, an experienced horticulturist, Fumbani, and Ruben, who is in charge of local vegetable projects, work is already starting in this area. But, as we’ve already experienced with previous agricultural projects, there are always many obstacles — whether it’s too much or not enough rain, or pests and insects destroying crops — but it is essential that solutions are found so that communities can grow crops on the same land rather than continually expanding into the forests and causing even more destruction.


A groundnut shoot	We encourage intercropping with groundnuts to improve the soil	David Newman and Ruben want to develop a local vegetable project	Ruben composting the old reeds rather than burning them!

Beekeeping
We have now constructed 50 beehives for two local projects. These have been hung, and we understand that there are now bees in some of them. It is still early days, but we hope that these hives will be producing honey during 2009. Early in 2008, a Canadian volunteer, Carol, did some research on making bee suits prior to starting her placement at Mwaya Beach, and she worked with a local sewing group to create some very good quality suits. It is hoped that the group will be able to continue to make these suits as a business, and we are also encouraging them to make school uniforms for the local students.


MacFancy and team making the beehives	50 beehives made	Carol, a Canadian volunteer, established a sewing group to make bee suits	Finished bee suits

The Mbaula Project
There are now 30 clubs making mbaula (fuel-efficient wood stoves), and these are very popular with the people who use them. Typically, they are burning less than a quarter of the wood that they used to burn on the traditional three-stone fires.

However, there has been a problem with selling the mbaula, and very few of the groups are selling in the quantities that they should be. Many of the groups who make the mbaula think that selling is waiting for a customer to knock on their door and ask to buy one. We employed a marketing team to help to solve this problem but, as a result of the cutbacks we have had to make during the current financial crisis, the team has been made redundant. However, our supervisors and Catherine are now taking over this role. We will be trying new strategies throughout 2009 to try and develop the market and to find suitable sales people who can earn a reasonable commission for selling the mbaula.


This enterprising group are advertising their mbaula on the main road	Mbaula being transported ready for sale	Typically, people are using less than a quarter of the wood with the mbaula

The Fish Pond Project
Sadly, our fish pond project has not come up to expectations, and we have experienced all sorts of set backs along the way. One of the main problems has been lack of good quality food to feed the fish. In the absence of being able to make our own fish food, we have had to use chicken feed which has increased in price over the last year by almost 200%. Without a doubt, the answer for the future is to make our own fish food, but a vital ingredient is soya protein which is in short supply in Malawi so we are getting local farmers to grow soya.

At Chiomba, we started off with 10 fish ponds, but the fish were nearly all stunted because of a lack of food. This year, we are only stocking two of the ponds, and we have already bought all the food needed for the season so we will see if this project is viable for the future. We certainly hope it is because fish protein is an important part of the local diet and, with dwindling fish stocks in Lake Malawi, projects similar to this one are vital nutritionally.


Extra maintenance has been carried out to make the ponds more watertight	Feeding the fingerings	We will be growing soya which will provide protein for fish food	A disappointing catch — the fish need a regular and plentiful diet to grow

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