Malawi is losing about 29 metric tonnes (MT) of soil per hectare every year, a situation that is reducing the expected yield per hectare from six to between one and two tonnes.
The situation is reflected in Ministry of Agriculture’s Second Round Crop Estimates for the 2024/25 farming year which show that maize production has declined by 20 percent in the last five years.
To avert the situation, the authorities say the soil requires a lot of inorganic fertiliser, which, unfortunately, farmers cannot afford due to ever rising costs of the inputs, stressing the need to adopt new technologies and manure application instead.
Mzuzu Agriculture Development Division (Mzadd) chief agriculture extension officer Francis Chilenga said on Saturday at Vongo under Bwengu Extension Planning Area (EPA) in Mzimba North that most soils are neglected.
He said: “Most of the soils are degraded and looking at production, especially maize stocks. It really shows that farmers have made some few losses on harvests. As a nation, we lose about 29MT of soil per hectare per year, and that is a huge loss.
“This needs a lot of fertiliser and manure to enrich the soil so that farmers can harvest something. Take note that a farmer would harvest about six MT per hectare, but because of the soil losses, a farmer gets between one and two tonnes per hectare.”
Chilenga said government and other partners are promoting catchment management to reduce soil erosion and deal with land degradation to manage the ecosystem so that farmers can produce more.
He said that from the production estimates, Malawi will have a maize production loss of about 20 percent and farmers will not have enough to take them through the lean period.
“We have a campaign to intensify irrigation farming and we are coordinating that with the National Economic Empowerment Fund [NEEF] which is providing solar pumps to farmers for irrigation,” said Chilenga.
Traditional Authority Jalavikuba, a former agriculture extension officer himself, stressed the need for stakeholders to help farmers produce more manure, in the wake of ever rising costs of fertilisers.
He said: “Most farmers cannot afford to buy fertiliser, so there is need to encourage them to be producing manure because they have a lot of additives to the soil.
“What I mean is that they control soil erosion, add nutrients, contain moisture and manure is therefore the way to go. Climate change has affected a lot of farmers and we need farmers to learn new technologies to get out of the woods.”
Earlier, agriculture policy expert Tamani Nkhono-Mvula said it was disturbing that production levels for maize were decreasing, yet the population is increasing thereby raising demand for food.
The function marked the launch of Integrated Catchment Management Campaign under the theme ‘Transforming the agriculture sector through irrigation and integrated catchment conservation for improved food security and economic prosperity’.
Maize is Malawi’s staple grain and its availability or lack thereof has a direct impact on inflation, the general rise in the prices of goods and services. It contributes about 53 percent to the Consumer Price Index, a basket of consumer goods and services National Statistical Office uses in computing inflation.
