Unless a miracle happens, the country should brace for another challenging harvest in the next growing season because despite forecasts of better rains this coming season, government is off-track on procurement and distribution of the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) supplies.
By this time last year, government had already procured 73 percent of all AIP inputs but as of Monday, October 7 when the Minister of Agriculture updated the nation on this year’s AIP progress, only 39 394 metric tonnes (MT), representing only 37.6 percent of the required 104 845 MT or so was in government warehouses.
As if that is not bad enough, the available stock of fertiliser is under collateral, which means that the government has to find money to redeem it before they can start thinking of distributing it to farmers. Some of the remaining amount—65 491 MT—is yet to be imported. The impact of this is that beneficiaries are likely to receive the bulk of AIP inputs much later than they did last year.
After the widely-publicised mismanagement in the procurement of AIP supplies last season, where it transpired that government officials had paid millions of kwacha to a United Kingdom-based company to supply 25 metric tonnes of fertiliser only to learn that the company did not have the capacity to do so, one would have expected government to learn from that experience and do better this year. More so because the Meteorological Department has predicted better rains in the next planting season. With better preparations, the country could have realised bumper yields to not only feed the nation, but also restock its depleted reserves.
The AIP programme is not running on charity—taxpayers’ money is invested in this programme. In the 2024/25 National Budget, AIP has claimed K161 billion, representing a high percentage of the agriculture sector budget. That is no small change. If prudently managed, agricultural production can save on these expenditures and the money can be diverted to other equally important needs such as health care or education. We all know our public health and education systems are in dire need of a revamp!
The least the government can do now is to get things right on AIP. The problem is that when things do not work out on the agricultural production front, it is usually women that bear the brunt of such poor management. At the moment, many women are spending long hours in queues in the hope of redeeming the subsidised farm input. This is at the expense of time spent on economic development ventures that even support their households, among other things.
As a result, while these women are trying to secure fertiliser for food security, another part of their lives is suffering. If they cannot engage in economic activities, then the cycle of poverty gets vicious. As a taxpayer, I believe I speak for many when I say that it is painful to see one’s hard-earned resources being invested in programmes that are not yielding the desired results.
While we need food security in the country, it is no use clinging to a heavily subsidised farm inputs programme that is not working. The writing is on the wall–it is time to move on to other solutions to our agricultural production challenges.
Many have called on the government to focus on large-scale agricultural production programmes, and the government itself has admitted to the need to develop mega-farms and capitalise on large-scale production. It is now time to get serious about phasing out the AIP. This programme worked wonders in its first years of implementation, but some things are not designed to be implemented long-term, and clearly, this is one of them.
We need to start seeing clear efforts towards the implementation of brilliant ideas that have been outlined as a replacement of AIP, otherwise, we will keep singing the same old story year in, year out, while Malawians continue to suffer and resources get wasted.
