Mchinji: A drying bread basket?

Since Malawi’s independence in 1964, the border district of Mchinji earned an enviable reputation as one of the country’s breadbaskets.

Endowed with fertile land as well as sustainable ground and surface water resources, the western district along the boundary with Zambia fed Malawi and churned out truckloads of tobacco, the country’s top foreign exchange earner.

But that was until two decades later when climate change has came biting, leaving crop yields dwindling due to erratic rainfall pattern, barren soils and unsustainable agricultural practices.

Father Benedict Kamdabweni, director of social development and industries in the Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe, says the district has in the last few decades become food-insecure due to drought, unpredictable onset of the rainy season, flooding and overpopulation.

“Lack of alternative income opportunities, insufficiently performing extension public support structures and overdependence on rain-fed subsistence farming have contributed to Mchinji’s unenviable situation since the turn of the new millennium,” says the priest.

Concurring, Mchinji’s agriculture extension metrologies officer Isaac Kalongonda says climate change has gradually trimmed the district’s standing as the Central Region’s food basket.

He states: “Over the years, we have seen farming families’ yields of both food and cash crops from each year’s seasonal farming in Mchinji consistently fluctuate.

“This has not just resulted in less income, but also a dangerous nutrition crisis, including a steady rise in malnutrition rates in the district since 2000.”

Meanwhile, the Catholic Development Commission (Cadecom) is working with the district agricultural development office to help farmers yield more from their shrinking plots amid uncertainties associated with climate change.

Cadecom programme coordinator in Lilongwe Archdiocese Chimwemwe Nkhata says ordinary farming methods can no longer bring extraordinary yields in the fast-changing times.

In 2018, Cadecom, with funding from the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through Hoffnungszeichen (Sign of Hope), rolled out a five-year project to strengthen the resilience and self-help capacities of smallholder farmers affected by climate change.

The initiative targets 3 000 farming families in traditional authorities (T/As) Mlonyeni, Mavwere, Zulu, Simphasi, Nyoka and Mkanda.

Its activities focus on sustainable nutrition improvement, natural resource management, farmer field schools, village savings and loans, gender empowerment, livestock production, legumes production, irrigation as well as orchard and woodlot management.

Kalongonda says Cadecom is supporting farming families to become  food and nutritionally secure.

Cadecom works with crop and livestock cooperatives to embrace winning business models and conserve nature, including their land at risk of being eroded by rainwater racing down bare slopes.

Five years on, Father Kamdabweni says the project has increased community knowledge and structures to implement sustainable and diversified agriculture.

Crop yields have also improved, so have profits and community empowerment,” he says.

Also enhanced is access to effective extension services and post-harvest value-adding processing of their produce.

“Crucially, the communities have embraced well-coordinated community-based early warning systems and disaster risk reduction plans. They have become agents of change and their livelihoods keep improving,” he says.

Moses Zabuloni Madambwe of Kalambwe Village’s Kathyuka Club, which includes a VSL group and seed scheme, says the community has learnt to grow a diversity of crops, not just maize, the country’s staple.

He explains: “Our community in T/A Semphasi is now well-organised and bargains for better selling prices for our groundnuts, soya and sunflower seed.

“We collectively produce these crops for sale to high-end markets. The overall objective is to move up the value chain and start processing cooking oil from our harvests at own value-addition factory.”

Construction of the cooking oil factory funded by the project is almost complete.

When completed, this Mchinji community will have made real strides in reclaiming their reputation as a trusted breadbasket for the nation and become producers of value-added goods that fetch more than raw produce on the market.