In Malawi’s Chiradzulu district, located in the southern region of the country, Diana Sitima’s farm shows how a combination of agroecology and secure land ownership can create a thriving commercial enterprise.
Many neighboring farmers rely primarily on growing and selling maize. But, on her 3.5-hectare (8.6-acre) farm, Sitima combines diverse crops of fruits and vegetables with fishponds and livestock to protect soil health and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers, reports Mongabay contributor Charles Mpaka.
Sitima started farming as a side hustle in 1993 while working as an office assistant. At the time she used microloans to rent small parcels of land. By 2006, she had saved enough to purchase her own property, a move she describes as the most critical step toward her success.
In 2026, Sitima’s farm is “almost 100% organic,” she says. She uses a biodigester to turn manure into biogas for cooking and to power an egg incubator, while growing aquatic ferns to supplement livestock feed. “The animals and the crops support each other in various ways,” Sitima tells Mongabay.
The farm’s productivity has led to significant economic results. It generates approximately $1,200 in weekly sales and provides permanent employment for six workers. Sitima attributes her growth to persistent learning, having relied on technical advisors from the government for two decades.
Beyond her own fields, Sitima serves as a mentor and the chairperson for a local chapter of the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), a grassroots network supporting nearly 200,000 small-scale women farmers across 11 countries in Southern Africa. RWA’s Malawi chapter has more than 2,000 members.
Through the RWA, Sitima says she’s learned from experiences of other women farmers in the region. In turn, she helps other, less fortunate, women access microfinance and learn soil-building techniques, such as agroforestry, which has helped some small-scale women farmers double their maize harvests.
Central to Sitima’s advocacy is the importance of land titles for women. She argues that permanent land rights are essential for the long-term investment required by agroecology. “When you are renting land or expect someone to push you out anytime, you can’t implement your ideas,” she says.
Through her work with the RWA, she continues to push for the financial and technical support necessary to make her success the norm rather than the exception.
Read the full story by Charles Mpaka here.
Banner image: Growing groundnuts near Khulungira, Malawi: Women are the backbone of smallholder agriculture in the country, though few women own land. Image by Mann/ILRI via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
