Complementing govt’s role in food production

Food shortages in Malawi have always been recurring year in, year out. A number of reasons, ranging from drought to inadequate application of fertilisers, have been blamed for this state of affairs.

To counter this, over the past eight years, government has been allocating billions of kwacha for the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp), in which poor households receive two coupons to buy fertiliser and seed to ensure that there is food security both at household and national level.

But this has proved elusive because even when government allocates a huge chunk of resources for this cause, a majority of Malawians have been food insecure. For instance, the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (Mvac) report shows that close to two million Malawians are the under threat of starvation.

In the 2012/13 budget, Finance Minister Ken Lipenga announced an allocation of K200 million (about $588 235) for the Malawi Irrigation Development Programme. On top of that, Lipenga also announced an allocation of K1 billion for Green Belt Initiative (GBI) to scale up irrigation initiatives across the country. Government also allocated K500 million for the construction of multipurpose dams while the Malawi Irrigation Development Programme was allocated K200 million.

All this is to ensure that Malawi is food secure throughout the year. But last week, the Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) president Felix Jumbe bluntly said Malawi is not doing enough to venture into serious irrigation farming to solve the food deficit faced year in, year out.

Some agriculture experts, including FUM have, on several occasions, called the intervention of the private sector which could engage in large-scale farming. They argued that, in addition to the maize produced by small-scale farmers, large estates could grow maize to supplement that which is grown for subsistence.

Just last week, Illovo Sugar (Malawi) Limited showed that this could happen if taken seriously. The Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE)—listed firm in the last quarter of 2012 engaged in a maize project in response to the food shortage in the Shire Valley area.

“We, therefore, agreed, to grow maize for this purpose. As we did not have enough land available for this project, we asked our colleague at Dwangwa [one of the areas where Illovo sugar estates, located at 306 kilometres north of Lilongwe] to grow some maize,” said Emmanuel Banda, the company’s group human resources manager.

The company spent K43.2 million for the cause. Out of the money, K24.2 million was spent in Dwangwa and K19 million in Nchalo. The total harvest was 367 tonnes which translate to 7 338 bags of 50 kilogrammes.

“Out of this, Dwangwa produced 4 535 bags [227 tonnes] while Nchalo produced 2 803 bags [140 tonnes]. Some harvested maize got rotten due to high moisture content since the harvest was caught by the rainy season,” he said, when the company made a donation of 350 bags to Chikhwawa District Council, which is the last tranche of the maize grown under irrigation.

To date, the sugar manufacturer has distributed the maize to over 5 000 households, translating to 30 000 vulnerable people based on the National Statistical Office (NSO) calculation of six people per household. The project has reached out to 2 000 orphans.

On Friday, the company gave 350 bags of 50 kg to Chikhwawa District Council to be given to Chikhwawa District Hospital [300 bags] and district social welfare office [50 bags].

This shows that if the private sector can be engaged full throttle, food insecurity could be a thing of the past, as observed by T/A Ngabu.

“If all companies were like Illovo, cases of food insecurity would have been history,” he said.

Ngabu said Malawians in the district have to also be supported to grow maize through irrigation.

But experts agree that irrigation is a capital intensive project.

Jumbe said it costs $3 000 (K10 million) per hectare to develop land into irrigable area on average, and Malawi needs to put at least 2 000 hectares under irrigation in addition to the already developed for the country to be strategically positioned for food security.

“There is much talking about the intentions and less doing and more spending. Malawi needs reformatting and reengineering the economic order so that we can have a designed economic system that delivers productivity, production and exports. From the records on export trends on rice it shows that Malawi last exported the highest volume of rice in 1979,” she said.

The farming system in Malawi is traditionally dependent on rains and, over the years, no serious investment has been made on irrigation except for those made in the 1960s and 1970s that saw the irrigation schemes such as Wowve, Lufilya, Hara, Chonanga in Karonga and Limphasa in Nkhata Bay; Bua and Kasitu in Nkhotakota; Bwanje in Dedza/ Salima; Domasi in Zomba and the Lower Shire irrigation schemes.

Two weeks ago, it was reported that one of the schemes in Karonga Hara is on the verge of breaking down because the infrastructure has outlived its lifespan; hence, the need for serious investment to reclaim more than 250 hectares under irrigation which is under threat.