From the start of 2017, MVIWAMBI promised to regularly provide both us and you with a quick read to make sure you know what is going on, and we are happy to share with you some segments of their second newsletter of the year!
MVIWAMBI is a local network of farmers’ groups in Tanzania working as a second-level farmers’ company. MVIWAMBI is a coffee coop, producing quality Arabica coffee.
Implementation of project activities
Record keeping is of key importance not only to farmers and therefore MVIWAMBI, but also to the government of United republic of Tanzania. Considering the importance of keeping records MVIWAMBI in cooperation with Agriterra has started to implement the project activities, which will improve all farmer groups abilities to keep updates records on all information relating to input supply, sales, membership records etc. So far, we have spent three months visiting our members in the region to give a crashcourse on record keeping. We meanwhile have collected data of individual members to identify the number of active farmers (men/women/youth) at MVIWAMBI.
Organic fertilizers production
Since 2015 we have been emphasizing our farmers to use organic fertilizer (liquid fertilizer and bokashi), after having received trainings from mr. Ruben Borge (Agriterra). We continue to enable our farmers to produce more organic fertilizer mainly for two reasons: our farmers’ inability to procure chemical fertilizer due to high costs,
and we want to improve our soil and indirectly the quality and quantity of coffee! The local low-cost production of organic fertilizer with waste materials combines our goals to reduce waste and create a healthy environment for our community to work and grow high quality coffee.
New member groups
Over the past years MVIWAMBI has been enjoying a continuous increase in number of members, due to good services provided by MVIWAMBI in cooperation with Agriterra, SIDI and other stakeholders. This has included or continues to include distribution of farm inputs, access to loans, different trainings and a good market and price for our coffee. Currently we have received application from seven new groups requesting to join the network. Upon their approval to join the network which needs to be approved in the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the end of June. may We expect to have new 7 Members, This will boost our production level this season, for this reason we’re happy to tell you that there will be no changes of our previously made promises, and we are expecting to surpass our production targets.
