Agriculture in Malawi
The first estate crop was coffee, grown commercially in quantity from around 1895, but competition from Brazil which flooded the world markets by 1905 and droughts led to its decline in favour of tobacco and cotton.
[8] The main barriers to increasing exports were the high costs of transport from Nyasaland to the coast the poor quality of much of the produce and, for African farmers, the planters’ opposition to them growing cotton or tobacco in competition with the estates.
The Natives on Private Estates Ordinance 1928 formalised this arrangement by allowing landlords to receive rents in cash, in a fixed quantity of acceptable crops or by direct labour.
[21] By 1946, those estate companies that had formerly relied on labour tenants for their workforce complained that thangata was virtually unenforceable, as the workers ignored their contracts with impunity and refused to pay rent.
[24] Most of the land in Malawi suitable for farming food crops was available at the time of independence to Malawians without an obligation to pay cash rent or provide labour services.
A situation approaching continuous mono-cropping developed on many Malawian smallholdings, which placed soil fertility under gradually increasing pressure [38][39] Maize monocropping without fallow or fertiliser leads to reduced yields, but even so, up to 1982 it was estimated that Malawi had sufficient arable land to meet the basic food needs of its population, if it were distributed equally.
[48] In view of the fluctuation in maize harvests, from the 1990s crops of sweet potatoes and cassava increased the result of USAID projects to promote drought-resistant foods.
[56] Households with sufficient land, labour, fertilizer and credit for both food and tobacco achieved only modest returns but were vulnerable to price fluctuations and bad weather.
However, rather than promotion, restrictions were imposed on the number of African smallholder growers and their output by registration schemes, fixing producer prices, licensing buyers and exporters and establishing commodity boards, which often had exclusive responsibility for crop production and marketing.
Settler demands for the regulation of the peasant tobacco and cotton sectors were partly motivated by fears that profitable smallholder farming could reduce the availability of cheap African labour for their estates.
It was supposed to ensure that Malawi's maize supplies were maintained and to guarantee minimum prices to farmers, but it was hampered by lack of funds and its objectives were unattainable with the organisation it had.
The quantities of maize available for the home market dropped significantly at a time of growing demand caused by poor harvests in the run up to the major famine in 1949.
The Farmers Marketing Board was given wide powers to buy, sell and process farm products, promote price stability and subsidise seed and fertilizer.
[68] During the first years after independence in 1964, Banda and the governing Malawi Congress Party actively supported the smallholder farming sector, as few European-owned estates remained.
[69] The activities of the FMB were widened to include participation in business ventures, and accumulate investment funds, competition in marketing African food crops was restricted and the monopoly strengthened.
[71] Its objectives were to increase the volume of exportable economic crops and improve their quality, to promote the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce abroad and to support smallholder farmers.
[74][75] The partial privatisation left ADMARC with limited funds to supply fertilizer and seed to smallholders, and the closure of many of its depots hindered distribution.
To create a stable economy and a government which the first world can work with the IMF employed SAPs (Structural Adjustment Policies) to restructure the country.
[87][88] However, for the first 50 years of colonial rule, much of the country fared better that the drier areas of southern Tanganyika, eastern Northern Rhodesia or Mozambique, where famine was endemic.
The older strategies were supplemented by the use of cash to make good food deficits, whether it was earned directly, remitted by a migrant worker relative or borrowed.
Growing maize as a cash crop requires reasonable sale prices, low input costs (particularly fertilizer) and farmers having some financial reserves.
The Malawi government agreed to partially privatise it to obtain World Bank loans, which required a phased but complete elimination of fertilizer subsidies.
This intensified pressure on food-growing land without providing an alternative way for poorer Malawians to earn a living' as ADMARC failed to pay reasonable prices for the crops that farmers had to grow.
Disabilities and deaths from AIDS may have discouraged growing labour-intensive tobacco or maize in favour of cassava, reducing family incomes and coping resources.
[129][130] Families with half a hectare or less relied on casual labouring (often food-for-work, termed "ganyu") and with those dispossessed by estate formation made up a virtually landless underclass.
The privatised ADMARC received limited state funding to create a Strategic Grain Reserve of 180,000 tonnes to stabilise prices for farmers and consumers and had to use commercial loans to import large quantities of maize each year in the 1990s.
The Malawi government required it to buy domestic maize at a fixed minimum price to support farmers, and this forced ADMARC to sell its strategic reserve in 1997, and again in 2000 to pay off its commercial loans, creating insecurity.
After initially failing to persuade the World Bank and other donors to help subsidize green revolution inputs, the president decided to spend $58 million from Malawi's own reserves to provide seeds and fertilizers to the poorest farmers.
The World Bank eventually endorsed a scheme to allow the poorest 1.3 million farm families to buy three kilograms of hybrid maize and two 50-kilogram bags of fertilizer at a third of the market price.
[147] Following a bumper harvest in 2007, Malawi sold more maize to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other southern Africa country, and exported hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.
