Feature
Food security

By Frazer Potani, Lilongwe, Malawi

She felt weak in her legs after on several days sleeping on an empty stomach because she had literally nothing to eat within her household.

But her face beamed with hope that she would this day have something to fill in her stomach after the country’s first citizen a longside a representative of an organization that had donated 50 Kg bags of maize flour to government for free distribution to the needy placed one on her gray haired head.

This was 72-year-old Alineti Kachere an old woman from Traditional Authority (T/A) Mwanza’s Area benefiting from a food handouts distribution exercise in the lakeshore district of Salima (90 Km from Lilongwe) recently.

And concerned that while Malawi has since the introduction of the Fertilizer Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) the country has been scorning hunger yet some souls have been sleeping on empty stomach President Joyce Banda left her office at Capital Hill in Lilongwe to take part in the food distribution herself.

From Salima Banda went to Balaka in Sub-Traditional Authority (STA) Chanthunya’s Area (over 200 Km from Lilongwe) where she also distributed 50 kg bags of maize to food insecure families.

As Malawi joins the rest of the world in commemorating World Food Day which falls on October 16 annually which was set by the United Nations (UN), President Banda said her government has been reliably informed that some Malawians are suffering from hunger.

“Although in recent years as a country we have been praised in the region and globally for attaining food surpluses presently close to 2 million Malawians have no food in their households due to poor harvests,” she said.

Banda disclosed that for example while Malawi and its leadership were being praised for making some strides in food security some Malawians have been suffering in silence from pains of hunger since 2009.

She added that her government is doing everything possible to prevent any suffering in the lives of those affected by the food crisis.

The President disclosed that she sourced the maize flour bags for distribution as a response to the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee Report which indicates that households in districts Nsanje, Chikwawa, Mwanza, Neno, Blantyre, Balaka, Phalombe, Ntcheu, Zomba and Chiradzulu are food insecure.

Banda made a donation of 10,000 bags of maize flour to 400 families that have been affected by hunger in the area of T/A Mwanza in Salima.

The President said she sourced the maize flour in her own capacity from an organisation called Gift of the Givers.

Banda said apart from the governments' support and the support from other United Nations agencies she will continue to look for food for poor people so that they don't suffer during this time of hunger.

On behalf of Gift of the Givers, Gaffer Jakhura pledged that his organisation will continue to support government to reduce suffering amongst the poor of the poorest.

“As an organization, Gift of the Givers we are committed to continue supporting Malawi Government efforts to reduce suffering amongst the people, because we know government alone can't solve all the problems,” said Jakhura.

Banda further explained that in an effort to eradicate hunger she has personally started a programme to eradicate the problem by officially launching the Chikwawa Estate Greenbelt Initiative (GBI) Scheme in Salima.

The GBI was introduced in Malawi by the late president Bingu wa Mutharika. The initiative emerged from India, a country with an area of 3, 287, 260 Km squared and second most populated country in the world with, about 1.2 billion people after China with over 1.4 billion inhabitants.

India adopted the initiative after recording one of the world’s worst food disaster in 1943.

Known as the ‘Bengal Famine’ it is estimated that four million people died of hunger that year alone in eatsern India.

So after gaining independence from Britain in 1947 the memory of the famine continued haunting Indians forcing government endorsing food security as top priority.

India worked hard to expand farming areas, but population was growing at a much faster rate than food production, and something much more drastic was needed.

The situation called for drastic action to incresase crop yields-that is the amount of crop produced per acre-and not just the number of acres planted.

The action came in form of ‘Green Revolution’ a general term applied to successful agricultural experiements in many countries not specific to India alone.

However, in India it was most successful where it took place in full force from the late 1990s to the end of the 1970s.

There were basic parts in the method of the Green Revolution in that vast country as the area of land under cultivation was being increased right from 1947, but this was not enough to meet with rising demand for food on its own hence other methods were required.

The expansion of cultivated land also had to continue, which it did. But this is not the striking feature of the Green Revolution.

Then there was an increased use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer made from fossil fuels (oil) and increased application of pesticides that enabled crops grow better and yields also increase.

The GBI launch in Salima marked the beginning of the much talked about irrigation schemes that are aimed at intensifying the use of Malawi’s vast water resources to increase food production and income earnings among small holder farmers.

The Salima site is just one of the four sites earmarked to be the centre of the GBI in the four regions of the country; the others being Karonga in the north, Malombe in the East and Chikhwawa in the south.

Speaking at Thawale Primary School ground after touring the GBI site, President Banda appealed to people from the areas of TAs Mwanza and Khombedza in Salima where the project is located to make use of the scheme to end hunger and poverty in their homes.

“My appeal to you is that you should take this opportunity seriously as the scheme has potential to end hunger and poverty in your households,” she said.

President Banda also requested government officials to make sure that people from this area are the first to benefit from the project.

“I would be disappointed to see people coming from other areas benefitting from this scheme before the locals benefit,” she said emphasizing the need for people to take irrigation seriously.

“With the changing of climate irrigation is the only way we can be granted food security,” said Banda.

The Coordinator for the GBI in Malawi, Professor Kanyama Phiri disclosed that the Chikwawa Estate will cover about 6, 000 hectares but only 530 hectares are being developed currently as part of the first phase.

“1, 000 farmers are expected to start cultivating on the developed area before the end of this year and another 2, 000 will join the scheme in future,” he explained.

The site is being developed by two contractors F. Jackson and Plem and it is expected that Malawi Government will develop the irrigation system and the land, while the farmers will just move in to use the scheme to produce food in order to eradicate hunger.

Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says eradicating hunger globally remain a challenge because at least one billion people suffer from pangs of hunger or one in six people on the planet.

The organization further discloses that a child dies of malnutrition every six seconds worldwide.

It also says more than 2.5 billion people worldwide depend for their income and nutrition on the efforts of small holder farming households particularly women farmers.

“Our challenge is not on how to ensure adequate food for the current 963 million hungry people, but also how we are going to feed a world population of over 8.3 billion people by 2030,” says the FAO.

According to the organization this is even why the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also considers food security as one of global key priorities and as a result, emphasis has been placed on smallholder farmers because they produce the majority (up to 90 percent) of the food consumed worldwide.

However, the agency says agricultural land uses that degrade the environment are fuelling climate change, resources depletion, reducing soil fertility and exacerbating food crisis on the planet.

FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva admitted that eradicating hunger globally still remains a challenge.

“Since the food crisis of 2007 to 2008 many countries have renewed their commitment to eradicating hunger in the world and improving livelihoods. But in some cases, concrete political programme and financial support are lagging behind verbal commitments,” he said.

The FAO Director General explained that the opportunity that food price spikes of 2007 to 2008 might have provided as a pathway out of poverty for small producers was even not realized.

“Every day, small producers around the world continue to face constraints that keep them from reaping the benefits of their labour and contributing to food security not only for themselves but for all through active participation in markets,” he said.

The FAO Chief however, said poor infrastructure and limited access to services to services and information, productive assets and markets, as well as poor representation in decision making processes, mean that this potential is not realized.

“It has been said repeatedly that we have the means to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. What is needed is the establishment of an enabling environment that allows small producers to take full advantage of available opportunities.Strong cooperatives and producer organizations are an essential part of that enabling environment,” explained da Silva.

On its part the Brussels (Belgium) based Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Development Cooperation (CTA) says pockets of hunger remain deep rooted in poor developing countries like Malawi in African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) region because the price of farm inputs such as fertilizer are high beyond the reach of poor local farmers to apply in their gardens to produce food.

“More intensive use of chemical fertilizer is known to be a prerequisite for a rapid increase in the agricultural output of African Caribbean and Pacific [ACP] countries,” says the centre.

The organization discloses that to help farmers access farm inputs for boosting agricultural production, since the recent global food crisis of 2007, more and more African governments have decided to subsidize these costly inputs, in a bid to make them more accessible to farmers.

This was even supported by Jose Graziano da Silva’s predecessor, Jacques Diof.

“You can’t feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers,” said Diof.

CTA says farmers in sub-Saharan Africa use just 8 Kg per hectare of fertilizer a year as compared with a global annual average of 90 Kg per hectare.

An alarming research by the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) even also reveals that 85 percent of Africa’s arable land lost an annual average of 30 Kg per hectare of nutrients between 2000 and 2004.

“Soil degradation is a particular case for concern in tropical Africa, where the earth’s ability to retain water is now less efficient in many regions,” says the centre.

It adds that the continent is also facing increasing pressure on land and natural resources due to population growth and urbanization.

The centre further says that sound management of soil and other resources plays a key role in productivity hence, poor access to mineral fertilizer is the main obstacle to a greater use of these inputs in ACP countries.

Another global giant agricultural organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) also discloses that fertilizer is even more expensive within Africa.

“Frequently imported fertilizer is expensive due to the cost of transport, as well as import tariffs, weak competition and scattered demand.Transporting fertilizers from an African seaport to a farm 100 Km in land can cost more than shipping the same fertilizers from North America to the African seaport. As a result, African smallholders pay more two to four times the average world price for fertilizer,” says the IFAD.

The fund says for example farmers in Burundi pay 1 British Pound (over K500) per Kg of fertilizer yet they do not earn that figure in a week!

“The sharp hike in oil prices in 2007 has pushed fertilizer costs even higher: they rose four fold between the beginning of 2007 and mid 2008 and are still twice as high as before the [food] crisis,” says the IFAD.

Appreciating fertilizer’s importance in food production in Africa, few years ago, heads of government on the continent gathered in Abuja, Nigeria at the Africa Fertilizer Summit where a goal of boosting fertilizer use from an annual 8 Kg per hectare to at least 50 Kg per hectare by 2015 was set.

In their final declaration, delegates at the Summit urged more local fertilizer production, the removal of taxes and import tariffs on these products including the creation of financial mechanisms to make it more accessible.

The delegates also proposed the creation of a fund, to be hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), to finance programmes aimed at boosting fertilizer use.

The Summit further called on member states to grant subsidies from African development partners, with a special focus on poor farmers however, the World Bank and the IMF opposed such aid as a matter of principle.

But CTA says the 2007 global food crisis and the success of the subsidy policy pursued by Malawi since 2005 have caused World Bank and IMF to soften their position.

It adds that in response to the 2007 global food crisis, the World Bank even funded the distribution of subsidized fertilizer.

After suffering from a devastating famine five years ago, Malawi under late Mutharika decided to help its small holder farmers by making fertilizer available to them at subsidized prices resulting in increased dramatic maize yields production of 3.6 million tones-more than double the country’s requirements.

“During the devastating famine as a country, Malawi imported 400, 000 tonnes of maize to rescue people from starvation,” said the late Mutharika then.

Malawi’s food successful story earned late Mutharika international recognition including awards for transforming Malawi from a food begging bowl to a producing and exporting basket after his administration introduced the National Fertilizer Subsidy Programme which enabled poor peasant farmers purchase fertilizer at just K500 (about $2) per 50 Kg bag from the exorbitant minimum price of K4, 000 (over $ 13).

During the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in Denmark few years ago National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) Executive Director Dyborn Chibonga even took Malawi’s food successful story to the meeting and was enthusiastic about the importance of making fertilizer accessible to poor farmers.

“It’s much cheaper to help people produce than to help them consume imported food. It is a process that is far more sustainable and much less expensive,” said Chibonga whose organization has a membership of over 100, 000 farmers across Malawi.

It was therefore not surprising that a number of African countries have followed Malawi’s food surplus success story due to the fertilizer subsidy programme with keen interest.

And even based on the same food success story despite that some families were in fact suffering from hunger due to among other things, logistical hiccups hindering food distribution from a surplus area to where it was in short supply including crop failure in the field due to climate change, late Mutharika refuted reports that there were some pockets of hunger in Malawi during his rule.

Yes! When the United States Aid Development Agency (USAID) funded Farming Early Warning Systems-Network (Fews-Net) Quoted the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) as estimating that approximately 4, 800 metric tonnes of food aid were required between December 2011 and March 2012 to cover 201, 000 people in southern Malawi for instance, Mutharika and his government dismissed fears of looming hunger saying the reports were aimed at discrediting his administration.

The 201,000 people requiring food assistance in Malawi then was a sharp drop from the previous year when it was estimated that between 500, 000 and one million people needed the assistance.

“No one will go hungry in this country because we have enough food,” charged the late Mutharika then.

Nevertheless, since others had no food to eat then, to them this was more like laughing at hunger while on empty stomachs!

---