By July 14: Survey Mapping Malawi's Organic Agriculture Stakeholders

[Stacia Nordin, RD]

I'm including nutrition and environment lists in the distribution of this survey as the mapping is focused on the whole Organic Agriculture Value Systems from Inputs through to Consumption and back to Inputs again.



Dear partners related to Organic Agriculture (OA)

I am contacting you with a stakeholder mapping survey that I am sending to all OA-related stakeholders.  This survey builds on the work that is being done by other Organic, AgroEcology, and Permaculture partners in Malawi and will be shared back with anyone that takes the survey. 

The survey starts with an explanation of how we are using the term OA. In short we are interested in all Organic stakeholders, including non-certified, from the whole value cycle (inputs, production, processing, marketing, consumers, and byproducts back to input).

If you would like to be included, please fill out the survey by July 14: http://bit.do/Malawi-Organic-Hub-Survey 

Using the electronic link is preferred, but I’m also attaching the survey as a pdf if needed.  

I will do my best to be available to assist you at many hours of the day every day. 

Attached are the Terms of Reference for this work through the Knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture in Southern Africa (KHSA) (South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, and Malawi), which being facilitated by Sustainability Institute in South Africa. You may recall their team’s visits to Malawi over the last 2 years of development of this project.

Right now the focus is on Stage 1 of the ToRs: Map key stakeholders, projects, relationships, gaps, and common channels of knowledge dissemination. Stage 2 will be decided together through the process of Stage 1. 

The KHSA partners in Malawi are Soil, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC) and Kusamala Institute of Agriculture and Ecology. From June 14-15 they held an in-person meeting with GIZ, who also has an organic agriculture project that includes Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR).  We will all link closely together.

Apologies for any double cross-postings.  We are starting the process with separate databases, lists, and groups, but we hope to contribute to the development of one harmonised database for Malawi - to be decided on through discussion with key stakeholders.

I look forward to supporting Malawi by collecting and organising this information.

Stacia