Bocash Field Demonstration (BFD) Project

1. To solve food insecurity problems for poor smallholder farmers who cannot buy inorganic fertiliser. Inorganic fertiliser is too expensive for poor smallholder farmers.

2. The solution is to increase smallholder farmers' awareness about the effectiveness of bocash inorganic fertiliser to replace inorganic fertiliser. The farmers will also be provided with hands-on training in the production and use of bocash as an alternative solution to inorganic fertilisers.

3. If scaled globally, this project would help reduce food insecurity in the world. The project has potential to promote the adoption of organic production which minimises use of harmful petroleum based inputs. The project would reduce the consumption of chemically contaminated food products, hence helping reduce some health risks.

Feeding the nations with good quality food is one of the major challenges facing the world today. In Malawi, majority of the population falls under the category of resource poor smallholder farmers living in the rural areas. With increasing soil degradation on their fields, farmers are not able to produce the staple crop maize and other crops without the application of chemical fertilisers. At the same time, poor farming households do not have the capacity to buy enough fertiliser. As a result, majority of the smallholder farmers in Malawi are not able to produce enough food to be available all year round.

This demonstration project will promote the production and use of Bocash organic fertilisers in Malawi. Farmers directly participating in the project will receive hands-on training on Bocash production and how to use it as an alternative solution to inorganic chemical fertilisers.

Bocash is cheap because it makes use of the waste organic materials such as the non-edible parts of the crop plants.

This project will benefit the following:

1. Poor smallholder farmers who cannot afford the expensive inorganic chemical fertilisers. These farmers will receive training on how they can use their locally available resources to produce Bocash to fertilise their crops.

2. The ultimate consumers of the organically produced crops. Through this project, there will be more access to safe and nutritious food. Ultimate consumers includes both the producing households and those buying food from the farmers.

The government and other organisations in Malawi are also working with smallholder farmers. However, the government of Malawi and majority of the organisations are there to promote the use of chemical fertilisers because chemical fertilisers provide farmers with immediate solutions. For instance, the government of Malawi is currently providing selected smallholder farmers with free chemical fertiliser through a Farm Inputs Subsidy Program (FISP). However, not all smallholder farmers have access to this program.

Fermented is more cost-effective, because the main raw materials are agricultural output wastes which are locally available to all smallholder farmers in Malawi.