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Wonders of Phalombe river in fighting hunger
By
Ephraim Munthali - 28-10-2002 |
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Jim Chigwenembe is one of those many Malawians who shudder at the mere reminder of what they have been going through following the food crisis that has brought havoc in many a household in the country.
Hailing from Dzanjo Village, Sub Traditional Authority Jenala in T/A Mkhumba’s area in Phalombe, Chigwenembe has to battle it out to feed his wife and their six children.
Since food has been a priority in Chigwenembe’s family, some of his children have had to do away with school. The little he earns from selling tomato and sugar has to feed them first before they think of school for the children.
Chigwenembe and his family are not the only casualties of food shortage in the area as several of his fellow villagers have had it thick as well.
He explains that the reason most people do not have food in their homes is not because they are lazy, but because they are victims of unforeseen natural disasters that swept away crops in their gardens.
“We cultivated enough food that could probably have lasted us through out the year and a little surplus that we could have sold and buy necessities like soap, books and other materials for our school going children. But Phalombe River over flooded and washed away all our crops,” he says.
What aggravates the food problem in the area is the fact that there is seldom maize at their Admarc market, forcing the villagers at best to buy the little their neighbours have and at worst to starve even when they have money to afford a few kilogrammes.
They had to think of a way to bail themselves out of the mess.
Having noticed that farming during the rainy season is a risky business, they organised themselves and approached their chief to give them some land on which they can practice winter farming.
They reasoned that they could irrigate their maize with water from Phalombe River through manually constructed canals.
Traditional Authority Mkhumba, having appreciated the thoughtfulness of his subjects did not hesitate to allocate them three hectares.
After they started their land preparation in April, they asked their Member of Parliament Justin Mokowa to acquire on loan, two treadle pumps from the Ministry of Agriculture and fertiliser from Malawi Rural Finance Company.
The medium term loan, amounting to K80,000 will be paid over three years.
There are currently 31 women and 34 men farming on the site which is called Saukira Irrigation Scheme. The villagers are confident that even with the staggering K80,000 loan, they will manage to retain enough for consumption.
Village Headman Dzanjo believes that with joint efforts, members of the scheme will be able to pay back the loan and still remain with enough maize to feed themselves.
“We will be cultivating three times a year and our advisors have told us that we can produce per hectare. Three times a year this means 300 bags per hectare,” Dzanjo says.
He hopes with the help of well trained farming advisors from the ministry coupled with their two treadle pumps, they will produce enough for consumption and have some surplus to sell to pay back the loan.
Dzanjo, however, says the farmers are finding problems in maximising maize production in the scheme because they do not have adequate farm inputs.
He believes that with a tractor and more treadle pumps, the scheme could be expanded and cater for more people in the area.
“The tractor will level the field better than our bare hands so that water going into the field should be evenly distributed,” says the village headman.
Dzanjo also appealed to government and its cooperating partners to construct a dam in the middle of the scheme to ease the burden that the farmers go through in diverting water from the river through the manually dug canals into the scheme.
“We need more pipes. The ones we have at the moment cannot cater for the whole scheme. Without more of these I see that our dreams to expand the scheme and produce more food for ourselves will be shattered,” says Dzanjo.
Malawi, like many other countries in southern Africa, is facing an acute food shortage due to a short fall in last year’s production. This has led to many people in the country dying of hunger-related diseases.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture Andrew Chioza says more than 50 percent of the country’s rural households do not have adequate food to take them to the next harvest.
Chioza also says over 50 percent of children under the age of five are chronically malnourished and that 54 to 92 percent of pregnant women are anaemic.
Since many agricultural experts have attributed the devastating food shortage to floods and drought, the Ministry of Agriculture is promoting a number of programmes that include irrigation, Targeted Input Programme (Tip), soil and water conservation and employee fertiliser and maize loan scheme as one way of involving people to take part in the fight against hunger.
The rural dwellers who are the food basket of the country are the ones that have, unfortunately, been hit hard by the food crisis.
This is why government strongly believes that increasing smallholder land under irrigation from the current 8,000 hectares to 80,000 hectares is the solution to the hunger problem.
This, however, needs the commitment of the small holder farmers themselves.
Only with hard work and commitment will the 65 families in Dzanjo village tame the hunger animal after utilising resources like their rich loam soil and free water from their river.
To quote what one girl from Mileme Primary School in Phalombe said in her poem during the commemoration of World Food Day (which falls on October 16, but was this year commemorated on October 19 in Phalombe):
“Aliyense ayenera kulimbikira kulima. Ukati manja lende udya matope” (Everyone should work hard in the field, if you are lazy you will eat mud). |
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