By Vincent Gunde

The Total Land Care (TLC) is implementing Regenerative Agriculture and Forestry Technologies (RAFT) projects in areas of Traditional Authorities Mkukula A and Chakhaza in Dowa district.

RAFT is a carbon project with focus on combating climate change through adoption of regenerative practices in agriculture and forestry which will see to it that 3000 households and 3,700 hectares of land are covered in its interventions.

The project is for 8 years and implementation started in September, 2023, and it has the potential of expanding to other Traditional Authorities like Mkukula B and Kayembe to gather more hectares of land.

During Dowa District executive committee meeting, TLC’s Natural Resources Management Specialist Wanangwa Banda, said the main objective of the project is to improve the sustainable productivity and resilience of smallholder farm households to climate change through integrated community based focusing at Group Village level to tackle multiple challenges to climate change.

Banda said the core interventions of the project are Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) on farmland and degraded woodlands, tree and bamboo planting, agroforestry systems and conservation agriculture saying currently, the project already conducted entry and consultations meetings with 3 Area Development Committees (ADCs) of Mkukula, Chakhaza A and B in Dowa district through Free Prior Informed Consent Process (FPIC).

“The project has targeted 30 Group village headmen 20 under T/A Chakhaza and 10 under T/A Mkukula, and from the meetings that were conducted at GVH level, 1,442 members participated which also went further to the village level where 46 meetings conducted in collaboration with government staff reaching out to 6,616 community participants,” he said.

The Specialist said the project out planted 2,535 bamboo seedlings in the 2023/24 season, and expects more bamboos to be planted in this 2024/25 season saying the project used the Field School approach to help farmers learn best practices which will be transferred in their fields in 2024/25 season and 5 farmer field days were conducted on conservation agriculture and agroforestry systems technologies with a total participation of 460 smallholder farmers.

He said the planned interventions of the project include planting of 450,000 tree seedlings targeting 3000 farmers in order to promote integration in its interventions, same farmers will also be targeted for conservation agriculture and agroforestry systems (intercropping with Tephrosia) on 1,200 hectares of land.

“There has been good reception of the project and commitment of stakeholders at all levels in implementation because of the FPIC approach taken, we have also been experiencing high farmers attendance during field days, good performance of crops in demonstrations especially maize and sunflower on conservation agriculture,” said Banda.

He said beside the project registering successes, it experienced some challenges like dry spells and low hectares of Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) from the identification exercise (661.47 ha against 2500 ha), hence a need for expansion.

RAFT project is being implemented in Dowa district with funding from TLCs key partner and financier C-Quest Capital amounting to 348,738.98 US Dollars for first year’s pilot phase.