Future Plans for JTS

The main target is to get a new mill at Karonga. The present mill is only able to remove the husk and the polishing of the rice has to be done in Lilongwe. This means a lot of additional freight and milling charges A new and more sophisticated mill in Karonga would mean that we could ship to the UK via Dar-es-Salaam, making considerable cost and time savings.  

KASFA are keen to continue working on the quality of the rice: They will now select the farms which supply JTS with their rice, store their produce in a separate store and mill from there. This will enable stricter monitoring. They have recently registered for HACCP, the international food quality regime and this will help with the development of their HACCP ratings.

We are also keen for KASFA to become members of the World Fair Trade Organisation. This certifies producer groups (as opposed to products) as trading fairly and is more appropriate to large groups of smallholder farmers.

We would also dearly like to do more work on helping women to have a greater say in household and farm management decisions. We are currently working on applications for work in this area: encouraging households to do joint planning about the future development of the farm. It’s something which is bringing very good results elsewhere in Africa. Let’s hope!