Scorecard Report: Focus on Malawi
With one child dying of hunger every six seconds, ActionAid has investigated the records of more than 50 governments to find out what they are doing to tackle hunger.
Who’s really fighting hunger? points the finger at failing governments while highlighting those that have achieved extraordinary results.
Out of 22 developed countries, the United States scores a woeful 8 out of 100, while Italy scores just 19, caused by a failure to aid agriculture in developing countries.
Overall donor countries reduced aid to agriculture budgets from 16.8 per cent of all official development spending in 1979, to just 3.4 per cent in 2004, despite signing up to UN goals to halve hunger.
But some of the poorest countries in the world such as Malawi, scored 51 out of 100 in their efforts to reduce hunger and demonstrated that with political will there is a way, investing massively in agriculture and producing a grain surplus for the third year running.
Breaking with the Past
Malawi’s transformation in agriculture has been nothing short of miraculous. Modesta Nyirenda, 55, from Kasungu district, remembers the hardships everyone went through just eight years ago.
“People were eating banana roots, cassava peel and maize bran normally used to feed chickens and pigs,” she said.
Hundreds possibly thousands of people died of hunger, some from the cyanide toxins in cassava, prompting an international outcry.
The crisis followed the IMF’s advice to sell off part of the grain reserve to pay debts, thereby reducing stocks. The following season there was a shortfall and prices skyrocketed. Both the IMF and the government have denied direct responsibility.
Since then a new government in Malawi, led by President Bingu Wa Mutharika, has been striving to turn things around, providing subsidised fertilizer to smallholder farmers, and now, for the third year running, there is a surplus of grain.
How Malawi Scores in the Report
In ActionAid’s HungerFREE scorecard report, Malawi scores a well deserved ‘A’ for investment in agriculture and comes in fifth place for developing countries – punching well above its weight, despite being one of the poorest nations on earth.
Subsidised seeds and fertilisers introduced by the Malawian government have been heralded by many as an example for the rest of the continent to follow.
But this scheme has soaked up about 15 percent of Malawi’s national budget and accounted for about 80 percent of agriculture spending, raising questions of affordability in the face of growing fertiliser prices.
To cut costs, Malawi has scaled up a nationwide campaign to use cheaper, more sustainable organic composts as an alternative to synthetic fertilisers.
In Rumphi in the north of the country, a group of women are yielding results using low-input agro-ecological practices.
Evelyn's Story
Farmer Evelyn Mwafulriwa is busy adding bokash (fermented food scraps) to manure from her pigs, chickens and goats, mixing it all together with soil and water.
When she’s finished, she covers it with leaves and lets it mature for 21 days, testing it with a stick. “If gases come out, you need to spread the manure, to get more air,” she explains.
When the compost is ready it can be used to help grow a bumper crop.
Evelyn is part of the Coalition of Women Farmers, a group initiated by ActionAid in 2007. She farms three hectares of her own land, growing a mix of paprika, groundnuts, cassava, garlic and beans but also shares land with thirty other women, growing maize and tomatoes on a plot given to them by the local chief, providing an extra harvest in the dry season.
Thabo's Story
Thabo Chidimba, 37, is also part of the farming coalition. She’s feeding 17 family members using sustainable, low-tech farming methods and remembers the time when her children used to go to bed hungry.
“I’m making compost now because it helps me produce good results – in fact 7.5 tonnes of maize,” she sais. At the far end of the field the women have created a compost area, with several piles fermenting nicely under plastic.
Their healthy crops sit in stark contrast to most others in the country, where drought, poor quality soil, lack of access to land and lack of tools leave almost a quarter of people struggling to grow enough to feed their families.
Governments Must Support Small holder Farmers
In addition to subsidised fertilizer, the government is promoting irrigation – hugely significant in rain-fed agricultural systems, providing people with a second harvest a year.
They are supporting smallholder farmers by reinstating grain reserves, cushioning against the hungry season and helping buy surplus produce from farmers.
These measures, coupled with state support and political will, have all played their part in reducing hunger in the country. Malawi also performs well in other indicators, for example, it is introducing national right to food legislation.
However, social protection programmes are vital for reaching the hungriest, most vulnerable sections of society and the country lacks these.
As the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s World Summit on Food Security gears up for November, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf has gone on record as saying, “The silent hunger crisis — affecting one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security.” The recognition is there, but now it is time to turn it into action.
