Having experienced a disastrous harvest last year — the worst in a decade, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) — Malawi now appears set to improve its food situation.
Agriculture officials were earlier this week reported as saying that a maize harvest of 2,4-million tonnes was expected shortly, thanks in part to good rains that had ended months of drought, and the increased availability of fertiliser. This tonnage is said to be about double last year’s harvest; crops will start being reaped next month.
However, concerns remain about the ability of Malawi’s agricultural sector to withstand climate fluctuations and other adverse events. According to Alick Nkhoma, assistant country representative for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, an overhaul of this sector is needed for the country to achieve greater food security.
“Malawi has not only to mechanise its agriculture, but also make sure that inputs like fertiliser are easily accessed by peasant farmers,” Nkhoma said. The government’s decision to subsidise fertiliser was a step in the right direction, although many Malawians were too poor to afford even the subsidised cost.
About 56% of the rural population lives in poverty compared to 25% of the urban population, according to the National Statistics Office — which also notes that 52.4 percent of Malawians are considered “poor”, and 22 percent “ultrapoor”.
“This means that about one in every five people lives in dire poverty, such that they cannot even afford to meet the minimum standard for daily recommended food requirements,” said Commissioner of Statistics Charles Machinjili.
The government made 147Â 000 tonnes of fertiliser available for the 2005/06 growing season at a subsidised price, specifically for the very poor. However, a number of people ended up selling their supply to rich farmers.
Nkhoma commented that poor countries might consider adopting a recommendation by United States economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has said that while subsidies are welcome, free supplies of farming requirements such as seed and fertiliser should be made available for at least 10 years in these states.
“Maybe after that time,” Nkhoma added, “poor people might have reduced their poverty and improved their food situation”.
A recent UN document titled Malawi and the Millennium Development Goals noted further that for progress towards the MDGs, government should rehabilitate abandoned irrigation sites. This would allow 40Â 000 hectares to be irrigated for small-scale maize, rice and vegetable cultivation (small-scale farmers produce 80% of the country’s food).
Eight MDGs were agreed on by global leaders at the UN Millennium Summit held in New York. The goals include eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, and ensuring environmental sustainability — all by 2015.
The UN document also noted that a greater supply of seeds, fertiliser and insecticides was needed.
However, Malawi’s high level of illiteracy, around 65%, made it difficult to popularise modern agricultural methods. And, as there were no markets in most rural areas, poor subsistence farmers were discouraged from engaging in commercial agriculture.
Economic Planning and Development Minister David Faiti has similar observations to those made in the report.
“We suffer in agriculture because we are not utilising our vast water resources. We have Lake Malawi and big rivers, but we are not utilising these assets,” he notes. “We should be able to have at least three harvests a year.”
To help remedy this situation, government has distributed 400 treadle pumps in the country’s 193 constituencies. Apart from the treadle pumps, which require a lot of energy to operate, authorities are exploring ways of installing diesel-powered irrigation systems, in which the government of Japan has shown interest.
While debate on how to push the agriculture sector forward continues and the country awaits the relief of next month’s harvests, about five million of Malawi’s 12-million citizens require food aid.
They include people like Falesi Sada, a 50-year-old mother of four who lives in the Lower Shire Valley district of Nsanje. This region is located about 177km south of the commercial centre of Blantyre, and has been at the centre of the current food crisis.
At the time of being interviewed for this article, Sada was tilling the family maize field while her husband, elder son and daughter were out scavenging for food.
Leaving her hoe, she headed for the shade of a tree where she displayed what looked like pebbles covered in mud, but were actually water lily bulbs known locally as “nyika”. “We are surviving on these nowadays,” she lamented.
Eat too many of the bulbs, and diarrhoea is sure to follow. But, this is not the most problematic aspect of relying on “nyika” for food.
Khalid Hassen a professional hunter, said people risked fatal crocodile attacks when fetching the bulbs.
“During the warm months, between September and January, crocodiles go upland in search for food,” he noted. “To fetch these bulbs people have to dive in waist-deep marshes.”
Across Southern Africa up to 12-million people are in need of food aid.
Life in rural areas of Malawi has also been worsened by the HIV/Aids pandemic. The WFP has said that HIV/Aids is contributing to Malawi’s food crisis because people are either too ill to work — or busy looking after their sick relations.
About 14% of Malawians have contracted HIV, according to the National HIV/Aids Commission. – IPS