When the harvest season comes, farmers using Deep Bed Farming benefit from crop yields that are more than doubled, starting from the very first year of adoption!  Farmers have reported a ninefold increase in income​ in this first year as well. Healthier soil and diversified crops also provide more nutritious and balanced diets, helping to tackle malnutrition. Many Malawian farmers and their families have achieved food security through Deep Bed Farming, eating an average of one extra meal every day ​compared to their peers using conventional farming. ​Farmers continue to harvest these heightened crop yields year after year.

Weeds are often thought of as a nuisance, but in climate-smart agriculture they have a valuable role to play! Alongside the residue of crops and other plant materials, weeds are cut or pulled up and laid on top of the land as a form of mulch. Mulch is another type of ground cover that helps protect soil by minimising impacts of big raindrops and conserving moisture. Weeding is lighter work than digging, and whole families can help! Meanwhile, other organic materials like crop residues, leaves and grasses, and household food waste are made into a rich compost.
​
Farmers may also add animal manure to the compost. To make sure that all farmers have access to animal manure, Tiyeni organises a livestock pass-on programme of pigs or goats to first-time farmers. Animal offspring are passed on to other members of the community, contributing to Tiyeni’s legacy effect that ensures our work is self-sustaining in communities after our departure. Farmers’ interest in the successful breeding programmes brings village communities together and increases uptake of Tiyeni’s methods.
 

Mulch and compost add valuable organic matter to the soil that promote healthy soil microbiomes. They also enable farmers to transition away from synthetic fertilisers by providing the soil and plants with the necessary nutrients for healthy growth. Transitioning from synthetic fertiliser to mulch and compost also benefits farmers economically, as synthetic fertilisers are expensive. Plus, some of the methods that Tiyeni teaches to farmers can produce compost that is ready for use in as little as 21 days!  ​

Next, farmers plant their crops in the Deep Beds. Deep Bed Farming encourages farmers to move away from the monocropping that is practiced across much of Malawi. In monocropping, a single crop, in this case maize, is planted exclusively year after year on the same plots of land. Monocropping weakens the structure of the soil and depletes it of nutrients and leads to the growth of weeds and pests that are difficult to manage. To move away from monocropping, Deep Bed Farming diversifies crops through the application of intercropping and crop rotation.
​
Intercropping means that additional crops are planted alongside the staple crop of maize in the same season. These crops provide a natural ground cover that conserves soil moisture and also protects the land from the impact of large raindrops, which contributes to soil erosion. Crop rotation refers to changing the crops that are grown on a plot of land over the course of multiple seasons. In Deep Bed Farming, typical choices for intercropping include low-growing crops like pumpkins and ground nuts. For crop rotation, farmers will often rotate between legumes (e.g., beans) and cereals (e.g., maize).

Both intercropping and crop rotation regenerate the land, including undoing some of the damage caused by monocropping. Diversified crops restore depleted soil nutrients, increase soil fertility, improve soil structure and prevent erosion, and provide natural pest management. Together with the use of mulch and compost, this step enables farmers to transition away from the use of synthetic fertilisers.

Next is the creation of the Deep Beds. These beds are designed to minimise water runoff, to maximise water retention, and to prevent a new compacted layer of soil from developing. With the soil hardpan broken, Deep Beds and the crops grown on them regenerate the land to allow roots, water, and air to penetrate into the soil indefinitely.

To prepare for the creation of Deep Beds, farmers make careful measurements to plan and then form marker ridges in harmony with the natural terrain. Each ridge has a ditch running alongside it, created with soil excavated when the ridges were formed. Ditches become holding reservoirs for rainwater and allow the water to slowly enter into the soil, helping to improve local water tables through a process called groundwater recharge. If the farmland is on a slope, the ditch is constructed uphill of the ridge so that it can serve as a dam for water after heavy rains. The ridge is then stabilised by planting vetiver. This non-invasive grass establishes deep root networks that contribute to sturdy soil structures, which also helps to mitigate erosion.

Now the farmers begin building the Deep Beds between the marker ridges! Deep Beds are designed to be larger than ridges used in conventional farming in Malawi. Each bed measures one metre wide, enough for two rows of maize or three rows of smaller crops. This wider bed enables a more agricultural land to be used for growing by creating a higher bed-to-ratio. Once created, the Deep Beds are never trodden on again, preventing re-compaction and the formation of a new hardpan.

Deep Bed Farming begins with the crucial step of using a pickaxe to break up the compacted soil or hardpan. Breaking the hardpan in and of itself delivers powerful benefits by allowing roots, water, and air to penetrate deeply into the soil. These benefits produce immediate effects towards curbing soil erosion, or even stopping it altogether, thereby allowing rich healthy soils to start developing. Crops with deeper roots tend to be stronger. They can also successfully deal with long periods of dry weather and drought, which have become increasingly common because of climate change. Now able to penetrate the soil further, the deeper roots can also store much larger quantities of water for longer periods of time. Greater water storage enables roots to nourish crops far into the dry season.
​
This first step provides prompt, tangible benefits that are key to establishing credibility and raising enthusiasm for Tiyeni’s methods among farmers. The credibility and enthusiasm also build the momentum to interest farmers in additional aspects of Deep Bed Farming.

To strengthen the enabling environment for sustainable freshwater aquaculture, state-level Multi-Stakeholder Platform (MSP) were initiated in the states of Assam and Odisha. The platforms were designed to bring together actors from government, the private sector, cooperatives, academia, and civil society to collectively address sector-specific challenges and align efforts across policies and programs.

The MSP development process in Assam and Odisha was carried out over a period of approximately 18 months. It began with a strategic planning workshop involving the Department of Fisheries, where the concept, purpose, and governance structure of the MSP were introduced. Feedback was collected to refine the structure, clarify roles, and ensure alignment with state priorities.

Subsequent workshops facilitated dialogue among key stakeholders, leading to the identification of priority challenges and opportunities in the freshwater aquaculture sector. As a result, in both states thematic working groups were established on e.g., One Health, Feed and Seed, Capacity Building, Finance and Insurance, and Decentralized Renewable Energy. These groups developed draft proposals for scoping studies and potential action plans to address key issues within their thematic areas.

Apart from common comprehension of wildlife, citizens can also get involved in the following advanced activities and become “citizen scientists”.

1. Verify the existence of wild animals through the AI recognition tool “Species Eye”;

2. Estimate the number of wild animals manually;

3. Select the species of wild animal;

4. Figure out the name of the wild animal through the AI recognition tool “Species Eye”;

5. Ensure the accuracy and consistency of data by marking the geographic location.

This mini program, through scanning or searching, provides the access for every citizen to infrared images of wildlife in his/her geographic location, which allows them to participate in the sharing of nature with wildlife in a simpler and more intuitive manner through this application.

The Mini Program, with AI intelligent recognition as the underlying technology and endangered species as the core targets for recognition, trains a large biodiversity recognition model capable of monitoring such systems as mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands and sandy lands. This recognition model features a powerful “engine” – Species Eye. As the fundamental and general model of “Wildlife Friends”, it is primarily characterized by strong learning capability, that is, multimodal recognition based on no or a few samples. It indicates that it can rapidly recognize the location and species information of multiple wild animals based on a few samples. For instance, it may take thousands of photos to be captured and days’ training for a traditional model to recognize a new species, but Species Eye can complete such mission quickly through a small number of photos, as well as trainings and iterations. In addition, it boasts a high extent of tolerance. It is no longer limited to the training and prediction for specific species with a powerful capability of open vocabulary identification and zero-sample recognition, and is able to accurately recognize and locate species without trained data. For instance, traditional models can merely recognize species based on trained data, such as tiger and antelope; while this new model can discriminate snow leopard and fox at the same time even without trained data of those two wild animals before. Another advantage of “Species Eye” is lower costs. Common AI models rely heavily on high-performance accelerator cards, which cause a high cost in hardware environment and its maintenance.

WeChat Mini Program is an application accessible without download, near at your fingertips just by scanning or searching. It is very simple to design a mini program, as a mini program development environment and developer ecosystem has been established in nearly two years. WeChat Mini Program is also an innovative achievement which genuinely influences general programmers in China’s IT industry for it involves over 1.5 million developers in its development together with WeChat. Its number has exceeded 1 million, encompassing more than 200 subdivided sectors and accommodating 200 million daily-active users.

1. Use without download: Users can open the mini program by scanning the QR code or searching in no need of download, which saves the storage space for mobile devices and lowers the usage threshold; they can quickly visit the mini program directly through WeChat to meet their temporary usage demands.

2. Low development costs and short cycle: The mini program sets a low technical standard and causes a small learning cost to developers based on front-end technology stacks (HTML/CSS/JS); and is compatible among various platforms and supports iOS and Android after development, which saves human labor and time costs.

3. Powerful traffic inlet and social fission: WeChat boasts 1.3 billion monthly-active users so it is easy to cultivate a sound user base. It supports the sharing channels to chat boxes, Moments, official accounts, and Search. Social dissemination, through sharing, group buying, and bargaining, can rapidly multiply and is suitable for marketing activities.