People

Stewards Globe Limited (Afriseed) is committed to improving small holder farmers’ income bases and nutritional status through the production and distribution of high yielding nutritious legume and cereal certified seeds. Our seeds are produced locally through a contract based out grower program that provides growers with two critical inputs: output services; access to seeds, sustainable agronomic support and assured seed market. We are currently growing with more than 2000 seed growers concentrated in Central, Lusaka, Eastern, Southern and Northern Provinces.

“Empowering out-grower farmers”

We have helped seed growers generally increase their productivity, for example, bean yields have since doubled from 450kg to 900kg per hectare translating into more than 100% increase in household income. Charity Nangogo, a farmer and single mother of 6 children says of her experience, ‘‘before I joined the Afriseed seed grower network, I used to only grow maize on a small farm plot, less than a hectare and experienced poor yields (10 x 50kg) this made it very difficult for me to feed and send my children to school. After joining the scheme in 2016, I learnt how to grow beans which is now giving me a yield of 900 kg per hectare that I usually sell and make more money than I used to make from maize. Additionally, my children are looking healthier because of consuming highly nutritious legume crops alongside the usual maize’’

Our Chipata based lead Mr. Yona Banda has four years seed growing experience with Afriseed. He had the following to say, “Before we started the scheme in Chipata, we were just ordinary smallholder farmers doing subsistence agriculture with little hope of educating our children. However, through this out-grower scheme, I have been able to build a house, buy cattle and most importantly, send my children to school. This has been possible because of the technical training that we undergo to be more productive and the assured market”.

Constance Chisamba, a Lusaka based seed grower has been growing with us for two years now. She could hardly hold back her excitement, “my husband and I never thought that joining an out-grower scheme would give us reasonable income but now we have seen just how profitable farming can be with the right training, timely extension support, and the use of quality certified seed such as that supplied by Afriseed.”

We, as a company, define success not only in terms of the growth that we have recorded ourselves but also in terms of how many smallholder farmers we have been able to positively impact with our products and various partnering projects. We believe in the idea that when a smallholder grows, we grow too. This is the idea we re-echo throughout our farming operations as the company’s Chief Executive Officer- Stephanie Angomwile sums it up: ‘‘we exist simply because a farmer exists and we succeed only when our farmers succeed’’

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing the farming community today, especially smallholders. The recent negative development of global warming has had a telling effect on agriculture and Zambia has not been spared. In the recent past, Zambia has been experiencing dry spells in which is a consequence of climate change left many smallholder farmer fields especially maize crops in total ruins. This is enough evidence of the devastating effects of climate change on our farming communities and a more reason for prompt sustainable actions to safeguard the smallholder farming community and ensure food security. As our core climate action strategy, we are challenging farmers especially smallholders to adopt climate smart agriculture practices and technologies that have the potential to increase food production and adaptive capacity of food production

There is high prevalence of malnourished people in Zambia. This is especially true for women and children. Stewards Globe Limited is complimenting government efforts in addressing the challenge through scaling up of nutritious legume seed production especially the iron and Zinc bio fortified beans and Vitamin A fortified Orange maize seed. Increased productivity will also have a greater impact on poverty alleviation at household and national level in general.