So what’s the big problem?
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation says:
By the year 2050, the world simply won’t have enough food
there are over half a billion tiny farms worldwide that barely support the two billion people that live on them
These ‘subsistence’ farmers?
It looks like they are the problem
but it turns out they are the only real solution
they are trying to survive on degraded land that nobody else wants
are it really doesn’t need to be this way
experts have known for decades how to rapidly make any under-productive farm sustainably produce dramatically more food, even in the most challenging terrain
but spreading this knowledge fast enough among these starving farmers to make a big enough difference to the world food supply?
it turns out to be something nobody has ever managed to get right
a new way is desperately needed, right now for these farmers to not need ‘us’ to help them spread that knowledge fast enough to lift themselves (and us) out of that looming 2050 global food crisis
Those barely able to survive today by struggling to farm almost barren land are sitting on tomorrow’s most productive soil, they just need to know ‘how to’
Learning this will not just end their deadly food insecurity, but will also stop the rest of us from running out
The Village Transformer Network is here to make this transformation happen, replacing totally unnecessary subsistence with realistic and practical abundance
Can we fix this fast enough?
‘Outsiders’ trying to make this happen? It’s been tried!
Even with the best will in the world, ‘creating model villages’ isn’t the answer
They take way too long to spread and they cost much more than anyone will back
Desperately struggling farmers just can’t wait, and nor can we
They need to spread this crucial knowledge themselves
They need a way to do it without constantly needing more ‘first world aid’
Doing it in a way which fits in with local culture, rather than sidelining it
The clue to fixing this fast enough turns out to be staring at us
Those subsistence farmers are all in subsistence villages
Crucial knowledge needs to be systematically spread from village to village
When it’s equipped and committed to transform itself and neighbouring villages?
A network of Village Transformers will naturally develop and grow exponentially
The key to getting this transformation to spread fast enough?
It needs to go from village to nearby village
And the villagers need to be equipped to spread it themselves
But can we make this spread fast enough?
Yes, but not f it happens just one village at a time
Villages that are growing just barely enough to eat?
It turns out that they’re almost always surrounded by nearby villages in exactly the same precarious state
So it makes perfect sense for a village that has made solid progress in the ‘village transformation process’ to start the job of passing that transformation on to as many of its neighbouring villages as it can, just as soon as it can
It looks like a very reasonable number to start with is two neighbouring villages and similarly six months looks like a reasonable timescale for a village to be transformed enough to start helping its neighbours to do the same
In other words, after a village has had six months of transforming itself, it should be ready to start helping two of its nearby neighbouring villages to start transforming themselves
Six months after that, each of those two nearby villages should be ready to start helping two of their neighbours do exactly the same
So, how do we get this started?
The whole thing begins by starting to transform a single village
This network will only become ‘a network’ when the very first village has got to the end of its first six months and started transforming two of its neighbours
So six months before it even becomes a network, everything needs to start with just a single village
There’s a country full of countless villages which are crying out for the kind of transformation we need to do, and it’s one of the poorest, probably even the very poorest country on earth.
That country is Malawi in Southern Africa. It’s a country that our team has some strong personal connections to.
We’ve chosen a subsistence village in Malawi as the very first village that will bring Village Transformer Network into being.
The village we’ve chosen is called Chadzala
What ‘transformation’ does a subsistence village need?
It starts with the same problem every subsistence village has
They eat what they grow, but not much else
They quickly begin to starve when their crops fail
Even when their crops don’t fail, they rarely grow enough food to put much aside for when they do.
The result?
Subsistence villages don’t just have a lack of food
They typically lack just about everything
Healthcare, clean water, sanitation, education, shelter, electricity, communication, infrastructure
Yes, the food shortfall won’t happen if billions of these villagers learn to farm more productively
But the reality is this unfortunate fact:
A subsistence village is hardly in a fit state to give ‘agricultural education’ the priority it deserves
So the Village Transformer Network has a guiding principle for the beginning of transformation
We call it ‘FIT TO FARM FIRST’
We start with this assumption any subsistence village
Its most immediate ‘life support’ needs come before learning to how improve its farming
So what does the Village Transformer Do Differently?
At the beginning of Village Transformation?
We’ve got quite a bit in common with the world’s best relief operations
Our FIT TO FARM FIRST principle is all about getting the villagers into better shape
Only then can they benefit from learning how to make their farming more productive
So what happens on day one of the transformation of a Village Transformer Village?
