NEW HOPE FARM – WHERE FARMING MEETS EXCELLENCE!

BY MERCY NAMFUKWE

NEW Hope farm is an agriculture training center, located in Chongwe town township of Lusaka.

Director for New Hope Farm, Chris Bochniak says they are focused in organic vegetable farming, they are conducting agricultural course throughout the year in two sessions that include the gardens of faithfulness a basic training were people learn more about organic farming.

“We have been at the farm for 6 years, when the woman who was owning” the land saw our dedication in church ministry’ she gave us the land for free as long as we are utilizing it for church activities,” he said.

He said the activities that are happening at the farm include a 4-week training were the farmers come on board on every Saturday to learn more about vegetable organic farming and farming in God’s way adding that they are also introducing an advanced class to educate people on the pest disease control and how to make their own compost and fertilizer.

“Our essence is to help people have nothing to have access to agricultural information, our trainings are free of charge and its mainly for individuals who want to grow some healthy vegetables for themselves, we only charge for seedlings at a discount cost,” he said.

He explained that they have different types of traditional vegetables such as Chibwabwa, Cabbage, Impwa, Okra and Lumanda with a broad spectrum of types of vegetables they also grow tomatoes to mention a few. With the aim of helping people when they are growing their own vegetables by teaching them on how to mitigate the pests.  

He explained said that when it comes to financial discipline, as a training farm they are not into profit and most of their funding is coming from USAID and the United Kingdom (UK) helps them to continue with the farming activities.

Mr. Bochniak added that the farm also does fish farming activities that ties in with their gardening by using ponds as the watering systems for both aquaculture and gardening activities going on.

“We trust God, with a heart for theministry and to train people with activities involving our community and through trusting God we centred with the right people at the time,” said Mr. Bochniak.

He added its every time that things are rosy at the farm because at times you can wake up in the morning coupled with plans but end up doing difference things, such as maintenance especially in an instance were someone is using a hole and has mistakenly cause a fracture on the irrigation pipes would require maintenance.

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He further added that challenges can be encountered, adding that God has given them patience to deal with the challenges. He said so far, they have employed 5 workers, one manager who is working together with the wife are helping out with sales and marketing of vegetables,2 unpaid interns and the 2 ladies who are working part time.

He said that the two interns and the manager and his wife stay at the farm premises, the other 2 ladies are staying close by and they just come through to work part time.

“Our target market is the community, they know that we are going organic and they know that our vegetables are nice in the regular market in the sense that we don’t charge extra because it is organic and we love to see people consume good food,” he said.

He added that mainly their market is the local area, they also have market with a couple of women who come through when they have access to vegetables they purchase and sale it out.  

“The nutritional benefits of our vegetables are many, one of them is that it does contain any chemicals, everything is done organically, you can pick a fruit from our field and eat it without worrying about any chemicals added to eat makes it very safe and healthy for consumption,” he stated.

He added that the other benefit of dealing with organic is that you will not worry that if you spray today then you have to wait for several days to take the farm products on the market. That’s not issue when you into organic farming as it gives out the flavour because you can only be required to spray pesticides to get rid of ants and termites, then later sale on the vegetables on the market without any challenges.

Mr. Bochniak further said that they have formulars for organic pest control, for disease control noting that the type of farming practice involves mulching can result to pest infestation which can be mitigated with different pest control depending on the type of pests in the field.

He advised the farmers to always test their soils like he does, as he notes that their clay soil is smooth because of the organic materials that they are farming on’ the vegetables are growing well amidst the droughts the response is incredible.