Malawi’s Lower Shire Valley is changing. Over 14 years, the Shire Valley Transformation Program will turn 42,500 hectares -- more than 105,000 acres -- into irrigated farmland, giving nearly 50,000 smallholder farmers a real chance at building prosperity and generational wealth. Irrigation infrastructure, along with favorable climatic conditions, will allow farmers to grow two to three crops each year, doubling or tripling their profit potential.
The Shire Valley Transformation Program is also making it possible for rural Malawi to establish soybean as the national standard for protein and oil, thus entering the global market for soybean, which has never before been processed on a large scale in the region. But with help from the Soybean Innovation Lab, based in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, soybean is set to take off in Malawi.
For 12 years, the Soybean Innovation Lab has worked to develop the soybean value chain in Africa and beyond, bringing evidence-based guidance on breeding, agronomic practices, mechanization, processing and marketing. While Soybean Innovation Lab offers expert advice, its goal has always been to identify and empower “strong nodes” — organizations on the ground that can develop and sustain local capacity without relying on external support.
In late August, the Soybean Innovation Lab and partner organizations created and hosted the first-ever Soy Tour, bringing dozens of decision-makers to tour processing plants and soybean fields in the Lower Shire Valley. Attendees learned everything from plant spacing and disease management in the field to milling and oil refining in processing plants.
The result?
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