Many African countries are home to arid soil, creating an environment that makes it difficult for crops to grow without significant help. Although many African countries pivot their focus and instead dedicate their resources to industries like mining or manufacturing, Malawi is one of many countries that has continued to focus on agriculture. Because of Malawi’s heat, many areas of the country have endured extremely harsh soil erosion, with some areas of the country losing as much as 39 tons of soil per hectare per year. Tiyeni wants to help provide a solution to this issue.

What is Tiyeni?

Tiyeni is a nonprofit that seeks to provide a solution for severe topsoil loss to farmers across Malawi for free. This technique is called deep bed farming. Tiyeni can do this thanks to donors, primarily from the U.K., and from around the world. Although the nonprofit is based in the U.K., its headquarters are in Malawi, and all operations are run by local Malawians, meaning that the U.K. simply acts as a funding arm for Tiyeni. 

The nonprofit started in 2004 and, by 2012, it had successfully implemented deep bed farming in Malawi across several villages. Since then, the nonprofit has taken the approach of teaching at least one farmer in every community its farming techniques so they can spread them around their community. In the long term, it hopes to spread the benefits of deep bed farming all across Southern Africa.

Deep Bed Farming

Deep bed farming, as described on Tiyeni’s website, is an advanced and highly effective form of conservation agriculture. The process has three main steps, the first of which is breaking up the compacted hard layer of soil underground with a pickaxe. After this is step two, which involves physically creating the deep beds. This requires the farmer to create a 100 cm bed of crops followed by a 50 cm ditch, meant to catch water and keep the soil moist. This allows farmers to take full advantage of the scarce rainfall that happens in the area by catching every drop within the ditches and using that water to continue watering the crops. Finally, the third step is to choose the correct crops to make the best use of the technique. 

Tiyeni recommends that farmers plant maize as a staple crop with beans, pumpkin, kale, soya, ground nuts and other types of local crops mixed in between. Using this intercropping technique, farmers across Malawi have noted significantly higher crop yields compared to using other farming techniques.

Tiyeni’s Impact

Tiyeni’s spread of deep bed farming across Malawi has proven to be a significant step toward lifting Malawian farmers and communities across the country out of poverty. An independent research study shows that, since implementing this technique, one Malawian community went from yielding 839 kg of maize in 2021 to 2,480 kg of maize in 2023. 

That study also showed that the same community went from earning 67,500 Malawian Kwacha from agriculture in 2020 to 192,8000 Malawian Kwacha in 2022. By using this technique, Malawian communities have nearly tripled their crop yields and incomes earned from agriculture. 

On top of this, deep bed farming in Malawi has played a direct role in addressing food insecurity. According to another independent study conducted in 2020, families that use deep bed farming consumed an extra meal every day. This shows that deep bed farming has had significant beneficial impacts on farming communities across Malawi. This is especially important in Malawi, where, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 9.8 million people face mild to severe food insecurity.

Although deep bed farming in Malawi has been successful, Tiyeni acknowledges that there are still obstacles preventing it from being able to spread the technique to farmers across the country. The nonprofit has used “trial and error” methods of group training to ensure that people are still encouraged to use this method of farming even after the Tiyeni team leaves the community. Additionally, Tiyeni is looking for ways to ensure that people who hear about deep bed farming from other farmers get the full technique and don’t miss crucial steps in the farming process. Although these obstacles are present, Tiyeni has still managed to make a significant impact on the communities that have picked up deep bed farming and is helping families across the country to lift themselves out of poverty. 

– Aidan Johnstone
Photo: Flickr