Mr. Maximiyano Chimphikizo (Max for short) is all of these things: a hard worker, a risk taker, an innovator, an entrepreneur, a leader in his community. He is one of the potato farmers that we are working with in partnership with Universal Industries. He is a wiry, energetic man, proud of his work, eager to learn, excited to expand.

He is unique in many ways. For him, farming is more than a way of life, it’s his business. His fields are his office and he tends to them with the same care, dedication and pride that anyone passionate about her/his work would show.

He invests. He wanted to expand his production, so he sourced and bought a treadle pump. (This is next to unheard of. He was not GIVEN the treadle pump, he BOUGHT it. He didn’t even buy it as a group, he bought it for his own use on his farm). Max has now outgrown his treadle pump! Simply put, he is old and has more land than one man on a treadle pump can manage. I tried it; it is hard! (Think of using a stairmaster for a couple hours straight… now add to that image the process of carrying that to and from the field 1.5km away) He now looking to purchase a small diesel powered pump to assist him on the farm.

He grows maize, like everyone in Malawi, but he also grows cassava, irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, many types of vegetables, pumpkin, avocado, apples, bananas and peaches. (He doesn’t specialize in coffee, but his brother does, and as soon as I expressed some interest in the crop, we ran off to see the trees and their yield.) He has goats, pigs, turkeys, chickens and rabbits. He’s got a little bit of everything.

Despite all that, his main crop, and what he is famous for in the area are his potatoes. He grows 3 varieties, gets high yields and good quality. He has 2.5 acres of potatoes. (To put that in perspective, most small scale farmers I meet are barely managing 0.5 acres) “I want to be Universal Industries #1 farmer” he tells me. I believe him! And I believe he can. With a top-of-the-line, hand-made potato seed production store, he produces bags of seed potato every year.

He and his wife don’t go sell their produce on the market, people come to them. “Is this good?” I asked his wife. “Yes!” was her definitive reply. She would rather be home, working around the house or on the farm, having people come to visit her at home and taste some of her home-made tobwa (maize drink)and beer.

He has not one latrine, but two…with covered sandplats! (concrete slabs with a concrete ‘lid’ that the WAT/SAN team and NGOs work so hard to produce because they are far cleaner and sanitary) He bought and built them both. His “bathroom” has a line for hanging your clothes suspended in tension from a pole at the back, a soap container suspended from a wall, a tilted ledge for the bath bucket and water, a wooden tunnel and drain to the garden. (WOW) My bucket bath was like an adventure into local innovation.

Max knows a lot of people. He organizes meetings and trainings (I sat in on one). He gets a lot of visitors, enough that he’s building a guest house to accommodate them. “Are you the chief?” (sometimes chiefs have it a bit easier, get some special benefits, more training…) “Am I the chief? No! The chief lives over there” he points and shows me a little house. He laughs and turns to his wife and says “She thought I was the chief!” and they fall over laughing.

I was starting to run out of options for what makes this farmer different than the rest. So I ask him “Why do you work so hard.” He pauses, looks me straight in the eye and says: “I don’t want to beg.”

He is different, and he and everyone else know it. But he started in the same place, from the village which he never left, from a big family, and from a local school. He has 8 kids. And he likes his Chibuku (maize beer) as much as the next farmer. So what makes him different? My guess is his attitude, his approach. He isn’t waiting for an NGO to come around to him. He isn’t waiting to see if his neighbour is doing it. He thinks, takes measured incremental risks. He has a vision. This is not farming for survival or because there’s nothing else to do; this is farming as a business. And with (a lot) of hard work, and I’m sure some amount of fortune and luck, it is possible.

Max has restored my faith in good hard work.