Lewes man will travel to Malawi to work with potato chip producers

David Bernheisel of Lewes will soon travel to Malawi for three weeks to help local people with agricultural resources. Bernheisel’s goal is to improve quality control and awareness at a small farmers’ cooperative.

The organization’s mission is to reach the rural poor by introducing intensive farming, processing, value adding, quality control and marketing practices to the region.

From its initial four founders, the society has grown to 80 members and 50 employees, and it has a capacity to produce 12,000 25-gram packets of chips a day.

Bernheisel is traveling as a volunteer for CNFA, a nonprofit organization focused on empowering people and enterprises in the developing world.

From Sep. 14 to Oct. 2, Bernheisel will work with the quality team at Biriwiri Farmers and Marketing Cooperative Society Ltd. (BIFAM), a potato chip-making cooperative based in Ntcheu, the central region of the Republic of Malawi, which is in southeast Africa.

Bernheisel will evaluate BIFAM’s current practices, train members in quality control and collaborate with staff to set a quality-improvement program, which is key to the cooperative’s continued growth and success.

Bernheisel has traveled to Ukraine and Moldova on volunteer assignments for CNFA. He has also volunteered in South Africa. This is his first trip to Malawi.

Bernheisel said seeing the effect he has made in developing countries motivates him to continue volunteering. Not only does his work improve people’s livelihoods, but it also improves their view of Americans, he said.

“I just think it’s very important for us as Americans to get out and get to know people around the world and for them to get to know us as something other than what they see in the movies and on TV,” Bernheisel said. “I think these person-to-person [interactions] are very important that way.”

Bernheisel will travel to Malawi under the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program, to promote sustainable improvements in food processing, production and marketing.