Hunger A Familiar Crisis In Malawi? Maybe No More

By Alick Ponje

The whitish tents emblazoned with names of humanitarian organizations that first responded to the floods that swept across a small village on the western banks of the Shire River in Malawi’s southern district of Chikwawa are still visible from a distance.

The only sign that people still live in this place is the cold fireplaces in front of about 15 shelters. The survivors spend most of their time on their farms preparing for the next rainy season, but cannot rebuild their houses because they do not have the resources to do so.

At least six households making up to around 25 people remain stuck in the temporary structures three months after Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) decommissioned the camps.

“We cannot return to our original homes because we don’t have money for constructing new houses. We are also afraid of being hit by the floods again,” Chikondi Mapeto, a resident of the camp, whom we meet as we leave the place, says.

His family of three is among 3.8 million food-insecure Malawians, 20 percent of the 20-million-strong population, who DODMA says need K76 billion ($73 million) in the next five months if they are not to starve.

The amount represents 70 percent of what the government pumped into the previous Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) which it touts as crucial in achieving food security for vulnerable households.

Beneficiaries are provided with subsidized agriculture inputs mainly two 50-kilogram bags of fertilizer and a packet of seed.

Mapeto’s family has been benefiting from the initiative for the past three years but they have always returned to the government asking for food assistance.

“Sometimes due to floods or droughts, we fail to harvest enough to take us to the next yield,” he says as we accompany him to his farm on the relatively elevated banks of the giant watercourse.

The National Food Reserve Agency, which manages Malawi’s strategic grain reserves, recently disclosed it had 89,000 metric tonnes (MT) of maize, part of which will go towards meeting the food needs of households like Mapeto’s.

Maize requirements for the implementation of the plan amount to 90,665MT, according to Commissioner for Disaster Charles Kalemba.

“The tonnage may go down if more partners come in to support. We keep our fingers crossed that no one will die from hunger,” Kalemba said.

The number of people who will go hungry this year is higher than last year’s, a development the chairperson of the Agriculture Committee of Parliament, Sameer Suleman, says indicates AIP is failing to achieve food security and should be reviewed.

“I wish this government could listen to other views so that things are done for the benefit of all Malawians. Millions of dollars are being pumped into AIP but the number of people facing starvation keeps rising,” Suleman said.

Agriculture policy analyst Tamani Nkhono-Mvula also frowns at AIP, saying there is a grand mismatch between investment and output.

An August 2022 policy note by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that it was more expensive to produce maize in Malawi than to import the commodity.

But the Ministry of Agriculture has been adamant about AIP, choosing to maintain its current set-up which several stakeholders argue does not make economic sense.

Last year, the government spent K120 billion ($118 million), or over 50 percent of the agricultural budget on subsidizing fertilizer.

This year, AIP claimed K109.5 billion ($107 million), representing 85 percent of the agriculture sector budget while for the next growing season, it is pegged at K213 billion ($209 million)

Mapeto also admits that sometimes smallholder farmers’ failure to employ modern technologies and use certified seed, whose policy and Act of Parliament the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) helped legislate, results in low crop yields.

With the Seed Act now in place, he hopes his household will stop being at the mercy of well-wishers when it comes to food availability.

“We used to plant any type of seed even without knowing whether it would do well in our soil. Sometimes, the seed that we used to plant was not even certified. During the next growing season, I will only plant the certified seed,” he says, his old handmade hoe stuck to his shoulder.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a leading provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity around the world, states that dry spells, cyclones, and floods led to below-average crop production in Malawi.

The network further says the effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on fuel and commodity prices, the devaluation of the Malawi Kwacha, and high input prices, among other factors, are hitting poor farming households hard.

Transactional costs due to the fuel price hikes, inflation, and higher demand in markets across in the border in Tanzania and sometimes up to Kenya are also said to drive food price increases.

But, about 200 kilometers away from Mapeto’s home, in a hilly village on the outskirts of Balaka Town in east Malawi, a smallholder farmer Ethel Victor is not losing sleep over the rising fertilizer prices.

In low-lying zones between small hummocks in the otherwise typically dry area, Victor is growing crops using little sprinkles from a small stream that flows through her village resisting its typically searing weather.

“In spite of the hot weather and droughts that are common here, my field is always damp because I use manure that traps more moisture. It has also helped me treble my family’s yield,” the mother-of-three boasts.

She admits there was a time her family stuck to farming as a traditional act they had grown up doing despite that what came out of the venture significantly paled in comparison with what went into it.

Now they even have a surplus for sale.

“This is the first time this is happening. In the past, our family was being perennially hit by hunger,” Victor says while strolling in her verdant tomato field while her husband helps with watering the flowering crop.

The stream and wells from which they fetch water for their crops used to quickly dry up after the rainy season due to overuse.

Today, less than a quarter of the water that used to go into the gardens is being drawn because the manure, dubbed Mbeya, is keeping the moisture and, in the process, lengthening the time the crops can stay without being irrigated.

It is made by mixing 20 kilograms (kg) of ashes, 10kg of dung and 10kg of maize bran, and five liters of water. The process, that produces a 50kg bag, is completed with either 10kg of Urea or 10kg of NPK.

“This means from a 50kg bag of fertilizer, we produce up to five bags of Mbeya manure. This makes a big difference especially now that inorganic fertilizer is out of the reach of most of us smallholder farmers,” victor says.

Thaulo Osman, an Agriculture Extension Development Officer responsible for a section where Victor’s village is, says through farmer field schools (FFS), thousands of farmers have been equipped with modern farming techniques to beat the effects of climate change.

He has observed a gradual rise in yields among households drilled through the schools.

Osman says the knowledge that households have gained in making the organic manure is being transferred to others within their locations.

And a few kilometers from Vikitala’s gardens of healthily green tomato crops, onions, beans, and carrots, Idana Mawecha is rising in his farming with organic fertilizer and improved farming methods.

In his newly constructed iron-roof house lie bags of shelled maize and heaps of red-ripe tomatoes.

“From my two-acre piece of land, I used to harvest less than 50 bags of maize each weighing 50kg. Now, with Mbeya manure, the yield has tripled, yet the investment has significantly declined,” Mawecha states.