Some would wait until more systems arrived before continuing on with the agriculture program. Others would question how to deal with 20,000 farmers who are asking for drip systems that are not yet available. Neither of these proved to be the course of Napoleon Dzombe. With the exceptional success of the drip system gardens, he kept encouraging the farmers to continue to sign up and get ready for the drip systems everyone knew would be coming. But Dzombe would not settle for everyone to sign up for the systems, then to sit down and wait until they arrived. He challenged the farmers to begin immediately to plant and cultivate crops during the Malawi dry season with the use of watering cans, bore holes, and any other method for getting water to the crops they could devise. To accomplish the programs he set up elaborate incentive programs.

In pre-set districts Dzombe assigned farmer supervisors to oversee village farm areas of a group of villages. Each area started immediately to cultivate, plant and water their gardens with watering cans. This qualified them for the waiting list for drip systems when new shipments arrived. Competition was encouraged between the villages, and as harest drew near judges decided which village group had successfully carried out the largest and most successful harvest. At village ceremonies the winners were given pieces of clothing as a reward, and the supervisor over that village received a bicycle.

With each crop planting, the farmers have created larger and larger farms. In some areas three crops have been harvested in recent months, and copycat farms are springing up all around the incentive farms that have been so successful. These neighboring farms attest, by imitation, to the value of the program.

Recently a new incentive has been added for upcoming planting seasons. To the farms that win the current contest, Dzombe plans to bring a small farm tractor, currently under development in America, to cultivate and prepare the farms for planting. To farmers who have traditionally used small hoes to cultivate the fields, this added incentive is paying big dividends in increased crop cultivation

Incentive Farms