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| Columns |
| Backbencher |
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by
Anonymous, 17 February 2007
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03:37:11
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Rain’s good, but two questions...
Honourable Folks, as a fellow opposition fat cat recently said, it appears Almighty God is helping President Bingu wa Mutharika’s campaign for a second term with good rains.
We had good rains last year resulting in a maize surplus. The previous year—the year Mutharika took over the reigns of power and promised food security among other things—the whole world had its eyes focusing on Malawi as over 4 million of our people risked death from hunger.
We’re referred to as ‘another Niger’, a name that invoked sad memories of excruciating hunger sniffing out lives of thousands of children, the sick and the elderly in another poor African country.
Mutharika introduced fertilizer subsidies and, coupled with sheer luck of having good rains in many parts of the country, Malawi became the only Sadc country that realised food surplus, or so government claimed. This we achieved despite that there was drought in some parts of Kasungu, Phalombe and other major maize growing areas. Army worms too wreaked havoc to crops in parts of Karonga and Chitipa.
Although there hasn’t been a presidential crop inspection tour this year—a conspicuous element of inconsistency in Mutharika’s style of leadership—there is clear evidence of a bumper harvest this year. The rains were good almost everywhere in the country and there hasn’t been a serious threat of army worms in any maize growing areas.
It seems obvious to me that those folks in opposition who were gunning for taking the President, who doubles as agriculture minister, to task in Parliament for the hiccups experienced in the distribution of fertilizer coupons this year, have their case messed up for them by nature which has acted in Mutharika’s favour. Who can stress that fertilizer distribution was erratic if the consequence of such a mistake is a good harvest?
Nevertheless, two cases relating to maize. One, is government aware of a really hungry type of weevil that is voluptuously feasting on last year’s maize stored in bags regardless of whether or not it has been thoroughly dusted with Actellic or other weevil-busting chemicals? I may not be good at agricultural science but I know that we risk losing much more than a third of our harvest should the chemical-resistant weevil spreads.
Last year, I requested the Ministry of Agriculture to tackle the substantial loss of hybrid maize that occurs during storage as one of the measure to achieve food security but, if there was a campaign to educate the maize growers on proper storage methods, then I’m not aware of it. What we heard again and again was the debate on whether or not to distribute subsidized fertilizer through the coupon method. It’s time the debate shifted to best storage practices, especially now as we are approaching another maize-harvesting season.
Another issue is maize price at the market. How come that a slight surplus leads to a slump in prices when there has hardly been a year in the last decade when all Sadc and Comesa member countries realised a bumper harvest? Does it make sense that a 50kg bag of maize, which sells at about K2,000 in times of hunger when the maize grower becomes the buyer, should go down in price to K650—the value of a single chicken—when it’s the turn of the grower to look for a market for their surplus?
Why doesn’t government, through Admarc, protect the poor villager who toils the whole growing maize by buying the surplus at above-cost rates for export to drought-hit areas of the two regional markets where we belong? Who said maize cannot graduate from a mere food crop to a foreign exchange earner when an opportunity avails itself?
Granted, it’s the taxpayer who meets about 75 percent of the cost of fertilizer through subsidies. This isn’t an ideal situation and should be contained, better still reduced. But who sees a possibility of maize growers acquiring the capacity to stand on their own feet and grow when six bags of maize can fetch a single bag of Urea at the current commercial rate?
I was at the village during weeding time which coincided with the festive season and I saw weeding labour demanding between 25 and 30 tambala per plant station. Add to this the cost of seed, chemicals and harvesting and you begin to see more clearly that maize farming isn’t cheap even where the fertilizer is heavily subsidized.
It’s therefore common sense that growers need an incentive if they are to continue feeding the nation. That incentive is their being able to sell a bag of maize at a price that can enable them to recover what they invested into the farming with a reasonable mark-up to alleviate their poverty.
— Feedback: backbencher2005@yahoo.com
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