Macadamia from a smallholders perspective

Festus Mzembe considers himself a pioneer of macadamia farming in Nchenachena, a remote village in the northern region of Malawi. Up here, where the undulation of the highlands traps its fertile land at odd angles, a dedicated farmer can grow just about any crop that exists in the country. Mzembe, together with a few dozen farmers in the area, took the advice of government agronomists back in 2001 and introduced macadamia to their gardens.

There are exactly 101 trees scattered amongst maize, beans, cassava, and banana. Walking around his property on a cloudy day, Mzembe examines each tree, clearing the weeds around its roots and studying the bees that come for the nectar of the macadamia flowers. “When it was introduced, we thought this crop would take the place of tobacco,” he says staring up at the tall branches of one of his trees, “but macadamia is a crop of patience.”

Further south, the buzz of macadamia as a high-value cash crop has caught the attention of farmers in Nchisi, in the central region of Malawi. There are over 1,200 farmers growing the retirement crop, as macadamia is known in the area.

Farmers like Erias Samson Kapacasa are counting on the crunchy white nuts for when their bodies are too tired to tend to more demanding crops. Kapacasa has 200 trees in his property; macadamia is his pension, he says.

Malawi is a country of subsistence farmers; people eat what they grow on their land and keep a few crops to sell so they can get basic goods such as salt, sugar, and soap.
Tobacco has been for many generations the most popular cash crop in Malawi, but in the last few years prices in the world market have plummeted, and so the government has looked for other crops to export.

In 2001 the Malawian government introduced macadamia to smallholder farmers, and promised it would provide a market where these high-valued nuts could be sold. Around Nchenachena, where altitude and climate conditions are perfect for the crop, dozens of farmers planted trees and patiently waited for three years until the first fruits fell to the ground. “We de-husked the nuts and got them ready to sell, but there was no market for them, and as we waited the nuts went bad,” remembers Mzembe.

Other farmers, like Mazoe Gondwe, were given trees of another variety, which took between seven and 10 years to give fruit. She saw the trees get bigger and take space in her garden, but no fruits came, so she chopped them down for wood and planted other crops. “We were so disappointed,” she said bitterly, “no one came to buy the nuts and we didn’t know what to do with them, it wasn’t a food we were familiar with, so even in the local market no one bought them.”

Just as the governmental macadamia programme was coming to its end and farmers seemed ready to give up and try another crop, a trading company called Equal Exchange provided funding for the programme to continue and organized local cooperatives that could provide farmers with a platform to sell their harvests. These cooperatives are gaining members every year, which in turn has made the smallholder macadamia sector a promising enterprise.

In 2008, Mzembe was approached by his friend Luca Thirembo. It was time to revive the macadamia trees that up in Nchenachena farmers had almost forgotten about. Thirembo was part of a local team of agronomists funded by Equal Exchange who wanted to encourage farmers to go back to the macadamia orchards. When planting macadamia, smallholder farmers are not just looking out for their own crop and benefit; they are part of the bigger industry, and they need other farmers in their own communities to have prosperous macadamia harvests in order to secure the sale of their own. Cooperatives have committed themselves to buying all of the nuts in shell that farmers bring in, and the more volume and quality the cooperatives can deliver to processing plants owned by macadamia estates, the more the estate owners will trust smallholders to become part of the bulk volume of processed nuts.

“It has not been easy to convince farmers,” admits Thirembo. There are still grudges around the unkept promises that were first made when macadamia was introduced in Nchenachena, and farmers have told Thirembo and his colleagues that they need incentives to be brought back into macadamia. In response, they have set up loan schemes that allows farmers to get a minimum of 50 trees from the nursery and pay back in installments.

In 2010 there were 174 farmers in Nchenachena who had fruit-bearing macadamia trees. Today that number has swollen to 375, and although this is still a small number compared to the 1,200 of Nchisi, the altitude and climate of the northern uplands is perfect for the crop, thus results are bound to convince more farmers.

At the peak of the harvest season, which in the north happens around March, farmers keep a lookout for one of the biggest threats to their macadamia crops: naughty children. Since the introduction of macadamia in the area, these healthy nuts have become a favourite snack for the local population, and have even been introduced as ingredients to some of the more traditional vegetable dishes. Macadamia nuts have high levels of monosaturated fat and calcium, two nutrients that are otherwise scarce in the local diet.

The future of macadamia in the region is with farmers who are not holding back and have a firm belief in their investment. Emmanuel Mkandawire is regarded in the community as one of the hardest-working farmers. His three acres of land are neatly divided to accommodate just about every crop that can be grown in Malawi: maize, cassava, soya beans, sugarcane, wheat, sweet potatoes, coffee, and a variety of fruits including oranges, banana, avocado, papaya, pineapple, and tomato. In addition, he has 900 macadamia trees, and though at the moment he makes more money selling tomatoes than any other crop, Mkandawire keeps a close eye on his macadamia trees: “I know this will be my best crop.”

By Lorena Fernandez