Who are you trying to help? What issue are you trying to address?

DAMRA intends to help 120 farmers (out of these 67 are women) living in the most marginalised rural remote and under-served areas of Rumphi district. Community members in these rural setup are poor on average living on less than 1 US$/day per household. On average each household has 4 to 5 members. Their source of income is mostly selling fuel-wood and charcoal which escalates deforestation that leads to severe land degradation.

The Fruit Processing Project is aimed at increasing income levels for the rural farmers.

What is your project and how will it help?

DAMRA has over the past 2 years worked with rural farmers promoting fruit production for food (nutrition) and surplus for sale (income).

Substantial amounts of fruits (pineapples, bananas and mangoes) are now being produced. Due to remoteness and poor road infrastructure to the communities we work with, access to markets for the fruits produced for beneficiaries to realise the much needed income, remains a challenge resulting to wastage of most of the fruit harvests as these fruits are highly perishable and that they get ripe in large quantities per season.

These rural farmers groups who are dominated by women still remain poor due to lack of market for their fruit harvests within their locality. There is good and potential market for processed fruits (mango, pineapple and banana) in the nearby cities and towns of Rumphi, Mzuzu, Karonga and Lilongwe.

Processing for poor rural farmers project aims at promoting agriculture trade through processing of fruits into either fruit juice, fruit chips or crystals and pack and store them for sell at local, regional and even international markets. Poor farmers will be able to earn income from their fruit crops. To achieve this, there is need to develop the capacity of these peasant farmer groups to operate like cooperatives. Through established cooperatives peasant farmers (especially women) will be able to sell their products in processed form and in bulk thereby realising more profits. Post harvest fruit losses due to rotting when fruits are at peak will be minimised thereby increasing income.

How can other people partner with you on your project?

This project will require partners to provide support on:

1. Purchase of simple manually operated fruit processing machines.

2. Purchase of fruit solar dryers.

3. Hire of expert for machine installation and capacity building on fruit processing, packaging and marketing.

4. Construction of processing and storage shelters.

5. Purchase of donkeys or oxen and farm carts for transportation of farm produce (fruits)

Please detail the resources that you need.

The project will require resources as follows:

1. Capacity building (training) for establishment of two functional cooperative societies that are able to sell their products at local, national as well as international markets.

2. Infrastructure development for production and marketing of quality fruit products, these are 2 each processing machines, fruit drying equipment, storage and shelters, rural transport technology (ox or donkeys and carts).

Please see attached budget.