e>
World Development, Vol. 23, No.5, pp. 819-831,1995
Elsevier Science Ltd
Printed in Great Britain
0305-750Xl95 $9.50 + 0.00
Pergamon
030S-750X(95)OOO13-S
"Maize is Life": Malawi's Delayed Green Revolution
MELINDA SMALE*
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico
Summary. - The pattern of maize seed development in Malawi demonstrates the importance of farmers'
capacity to articulate their interests through collective action and institutions. Despite the vital significance
of maize as a wage good in Malawi, limited effective demand for maize seed research prolonged the period
of technical stagnation. Analysis of the institutional factors shaping the demand for maize seed research
complements previous work on Malawi's political economy. the supply of seed technology and adoption,
with implications for current political changes in that nation, the importance of farmers' organizations, and
state commitment to agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa.
I.
INTRODUCTION
When technology is generated by public research
institutions, the rate and direction of technological
change is affected not only by relative factor prices
and the response of the national research system in
supplying profitable new technologies, but by the
capacity of key interest groups to articulate their
demand for innovations through collective action (de
Janvry, Sadoulet and Fafchamps, 1989). Pineiro and
Trigo (1983) have found that innovations tend to
occur when either the producers of a commodity are
few, homogeneous and economically powerful (case
1), or when a commodity is of national significance as
a wage good or source of foreign exchange (case 2).
In case 2, when producers are numerous and unorganized, the state may act in their behalf. Hayami
and Ruttan have also underscored the critical role
of farmer organizations and political expression in
the induced innovation model of technical change
(Hayami and Ruttan, 1985, p. 88).
This paper argues that although maize in Malawi is
of vital significance as a wage good (case 2) and relative factor endowments have long favored changes in
maize seed technology, the period of technical stagnation was prolonged, in part, because interest groups
could not articulate their demand through collective
action. Further, state interventions on the behalf
of smallholder maize producers were curtailed
by Malawi's estate-based development strategy.
Difficulties in obtaining suitable germplasm to use in
developing inbred Jines also affected the availability
of new technology. By contrast, technology development in the Zimbabwe case presented by Eicher
(1994) is consistent with case I, as well as with
case 2.
The evidence assembled here supports the foHowing hypotheses about the factors that shaped the
supply and demand for maize technology in Malawi.
First, until recently, the effective demand for maize
seed innovations was limited in Malawi. Unlike
Zimbabwe, Malawi never developed a community of
settler farmers who demanded high-yielding maize
varieties and had the political clout to ensure that a
public research system was established to develop
them. After independence in 1964, the policy emphasis on estate-based economic development gradually
marginalized smaHholder agriculture. Malawi's burgeoning tobacco estates had no interest in breeding a
maize variety that satisfies the grain texture preferences of smallholders who consume their own maize.
Second, as has been documented elsewhere (Kydd,
1989; Smale and Heisey, 1994) the scientific development of a high-yielding maize cultivar with suitable
grain texture was delayed principally because the
maize research program was constrained by the lack
of suitable germplasm, by staffing, funding discontinuities, and development fads!.
A number of factors converged during the late
1980s to dramatically alter the rate and direction of
technical change in Malawi's maize production.
Several of these factors are of particular relevance to
the opening themes of this paper. First, in place of the
state (Pineiro and Trigo's case 2), donors encouraged
the development, on behalf of the interests of small
*The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments
of seminar participants at the Yale Program in Agrarian
Studies, C. K. Eicher, P. W. Heisey, J. Rusike, and three
anonymous reviewers in the development of this manuscript.
Final revision accepted: September 6, 1994.
819
820
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
farmers, of high-yielding maize hybrids with the grain
texture preferred by farmers who consume and store
their own grain. Donor involvement in place of the
state reflected the general lack of interest in smallholder agriculture throughout the public sector - a
characteristic of what was then a fundamentally undemocratic regime. Second, international collaboration
between Malawian and CIMMYT scientists relieved
the germplasm constraint, reducing the time-torelease and the cost to the Malawi maize research program of developing new hybrids that meet acceptable
grain texture and yield criteria. The ability of the international agricultural research centers to work across
national borders is an important modification within
the Pineiro and Trigo paradigm.
The remainder of the paper is divided into four
parts. Section 2 summarizes briefly why technical
change in Malawi's maize production is of national
significance (Pineiro and Trigo's case 2). Section 3
assembles historical evidence about why the collective action to support changes in maize technology
could not evolve in Malawi (as it did in Zimbabwe)
and why the actions of the government after independence on behalf of the interests of smallholder maize
producers were limited. Section 4 summarizes previous and forthcoming work in explaining how
germplasm constraints, grain texture, and other factors
affected the supply of maize varietal releases over
time. Section 5 draws on other current work to outline
recent changes in maize technology among Malawi's
smallholders are described. The contribution of the
paper lies principally in complementing previous and
current work on the supply of maize technology and
technology adoption with a perspective that illuminates the role of institutional factors in shaping the
demand for maize seed research.
2. MAIZE IN MALAWI
Key features of Malawi's agrarian economy illustrate why a yield-increasing technical change in maize
production is of national significance. The white,
flinty maize produced by Malawi's farmers in the preferred dietary staple for them as well as for urban
dwellers. Maize replaced sorghum and millet as the
staple food grain only after the tum of this century
(Williamson, 1956), but Malawi's per capita consumption of maize as food is today the highest in the
world (CIMMYT, 1990). Despite the dominance of
maize in the diet, however, the majority of family
farms now fail to produce enough maize to meet the
requirements of subsistence (Centre for Social
Research, 1988)2.
Further, most of the maize in Malawi is both produced and consumed in villages. Since official maize
markets are often unreliable during stress periods,
much of the maize harvest is consumed directly by
producers or circulates in village markets or nonmarket exchanges. "Chimanga ndi moyo" (maize is life),
and the ideal of producing enough maize to meet
household food needs "informs everyone's actions
and rationales for their actions before, during and after
the maize harvest,")
The dominance of maize in the cropping pattern
narrows the base of rural economic activities and
probably has damaging environmental consequences.
At least 80% of the nation's cultivable land area
is planted to maize each cropping season
(GOMlMOAlPD, 1984-93). Customary fallowing
and rotation systems have gradually disappeared as
Malawi's farmers expand their monocropped maize
area in an effort to meet subsistence requirements with
chronically low maize yields.
In Malawi, a yield-increasing technical change in
maize production can affect the land allocation decisions of smallholders by enabling them to meet their
family maize needs on a less extensive crop area.
Farmers can then reallocate land from maize to the
cultivation of (a) other food crops that are of critical
nutritional importance, and (b) the valuable export
crops that generate the cash to pay for certain real rural
goods and services. Historically, the primary source of
public revenues in Malawi's agriculturally based
economy has been export crops produced by either
plantations, estates, or smallholders.
Yield increases in Malawi's maize production are
long overdue. Migrations of African populations into
the Southern region and land alienation for colonial
plantations have contributed to recognized land problems since 1900 (Pachai, 1973; Ross, 1975). The public maize breeding program commenced several years
after the Great Famine of 19494• In 1988, several
decades later, high-yielding maize cultivars covered
only 7% of national maize area (GOMlMOAlPD,
1988). In the following section, evidence about colonial and postcolonial policies and institutions is used
to explain why, despite the national importance of
maize in Malawi, there was limited effective demand
for maize research in Malawi until the I980s.
3. EXPORT-BASED GROWTH AND THE
DEMAND FOR MAIZE TECHNOLOGY
(a) The colonial period
Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) had the smallest
extent of land in the former British Central Africa, but
because of its relatively favorable agroclimatic environment, supported the largest concentration of
African peoples (Pachai, 1973) and was known as an
exporter of labor to the mines of the Rand and farms
of Rhodesia (Tindall, 1968; Vail, 1977). Compared to
Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia), however, Malawi
(Nyasaland) had few areas of high enough elevation to
"MAIZE IS LIFE"
attract a European population easily decimated by
malaria (Pike, 1968; Willis, 1984). Malawi also
lacked rich mineral deposits like those found in
Zambia (Northern Rhodesia). Malawi's small
European population consisted primarily of missionaries and government officials on temporary assignment, and a handful of planters working for companies
based in the United Kingdom (Needham,
Mashingaidze and Bhebe, 1984; Tindall, 1968; Wills,
1984). In 1953, the ratio of Europeans to Africans was
1:500, compared to 1:13 in Zimbabwe and I :40 in
zambia (Thompson and Woodruff, 1954). At its
height, European-held land was 14-15% of the total in
Malawi, compared to 50% in Zimbabwe (Pachai,
1973; Thompson and Woodruff, 1954). Without
improved transport or a railway to the sea until 1935,
Malawi did not develop towns of the size found in the
other territories (Tindall, 1968).
Nor did Malawi's colonial plantation owners gain
the supremacy in policy formulation that the established settler community enjoyed in self-ruled
Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia). Effective power
remained with the Colonial Office in London until the
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953. Even
then, unlike in Southern and Northern Rhodesia, the
Nyasaland government declined to transfer the
responsibility for providing services to non-African
farmers to the Federal government (Kettlewell, 1982).
According to Gann, "Malawi never became a settler's
country in the true meaning of those words" (1971, p.
124).
Why? While the plantation export economy was
not particularly successful, the market response of
African farmers to production and price incentives
was remarkable. Throughout the colonial period,
Malawi's economy depended on a small number of
agricultural exports - coffee, tobacco, tea, cotton and most persistently, rural people. Soon after the initial coffee boom, however, shifts in world market
prices, the inefficiency of the transport system
(Crosby, 1975; Vail, 1977), lack of technical skills,
and the short-term perspective of the planters resulted
in a stagnation from which the plantation economy
appears never to have recovered (Kydd and
Christiansen, 1982). From 1922 to independence,
although tea produced on European plantations
emerged as an important export crop, the major
exports were crops produced by Africans on their own
land or on land they sharecropped or leased from
Europeans (Baker, 1962). Dark-fired tobacco, produced by Africans on customary landS, dominated the
tobacco export crop from 1927 throughout the colonial period (Dean, 1966; Kettlewell, 1982; Rangeley,
1957). In his analysis of the tobacco supply response
of African smallholders on customary land, Dean
(1966) estimated a supply response as great or greater
than those recorded in a number of examples from US
and Indian agriculture.
821
Perhaps as a consequence, colonial development
policy wavered between overt support of export production by European planters and by African smallholders (Kydd and Christiansen, 1982; Mkandawire
and Ferguson, 1992; Pachai, 1973; Wills, 1984).
Initially the colonial administration offered few direct
incentives to smallholder production. Cash crops were
introduced by European planters and taken up by
Africans on their own land and under tenancy agreements. After WWII, the colonial administration
recognized that there were limited opportunities for
expanding European agriculture6, and the development of African agriculture became a primary policy
aim (Kettlewell, 1982). In 1962, the Nyasaland
Development Plan had as one of its priorities the modernization of agriculture "to increase yields per acre
by modernizing farming methods, thereby freeing
more land for cash crop production" (p. 53). By that
time, the value of African agriculture was four times
that of European agriculture (Nyasaland Development
Plan, 1962).
As part of the general appeal from the Colonial
Office to concentrate on increasing food production
after WWII, a Master Farmers' Scheme was initiated
by the administration in Malawi in an attempt to
develop a "yeoman" class of farmers. A combination
of stringent qualifications for entering the scheme and
tenure issues set the Master Farmers apart from the
rest of the rural population. Without the bonus payments they received from the government, the Scheme
was unprofitable for the Master Farmers. Although
nationalists referred to them as "stooges," many later
rebelled against the government. The Scheme was terminated in 1962 (Kalinga, 1993).
What happened to maize production in this
process? Malawi's colonial planters, unlike
Zimbabwe's settler farmers, did not need to concern
themselves with feeding plantation laborers and urban
workers. The tenurial systems that evolved on
Malawi's plantations allowed tenants to feed themselves. In the thangata system of the Southern region,
tenants were permitted to cultivate on European plantations in return for rent and labor on the estate (Kydd
and Christiansen, 1982). In the "visiting tenant system" of the Central Region, tenants sharecropped
tobacco on the plantation but remained independent
producers in close association with the traditional
community, growing maize and other crops on customary land. In colonial Malawi, there was no class
dependent solely upon wages or the sale of cash crops
for its livelihood (Pike, 1968). Africans produced the
maize they consumed - with the exception of a few
skilled workers and those employed by the colonial
administration. Wage earners traveled to their homes
to work their maize fields at critical points in the growing season. Even in cotton and tobacco-growing areas
on customary lands, food crops covered a large proportion of the garden area (Pike, 1968).
822
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
After a brief flurry of administrative interest over
the potential for maize as an export crop before WWI,
maize remained a subsistence crop produced or
exchanged by Africans (Rusike, 1994). Questions of
maize self-sufficiency did not assume policy importance until the Great Famine of 1948-49. Until then,
the plantations depended entirely on Africans to meet
domestic maize requirements. Thereafter, maize produced by Europeans in Malawi rose to only 4,000 tons
in 1952, as compared to 245,000 tons produced by
Europeans in Zimbabwe in that year - some of which
was already hybrid maize. Maize sold (excluding consumption) by Africans in Malawi in the same year was
ten times the European crop. In Zimbabwe maize sold
by Africans was less than a third of the European crop
and estimated African production was only 200,000
tons (Thompson and Woodruff, 1954, pp. 137-138).
The Great Famine spurred the administration to raise
maize prices in order to increase maize marketed. For
several years thereafter, marketed maize surpluses
were hefty and maize was exported. In the mid-1950s,
the inability to find a world market for Malawi's maize
led to further policy revision. From then on, the policy
of the administration was to set prices in order to coax
only enough maize onto official markets to support a
small urban population and administration and maintain a modest level of stocks (Kettlewell, 1982).7
Malawi's colonial history had several implications
for maize research. First, most incentives for smallholder production were directed to the promotion of
export crops. Second, consistent with the approach of
Pinerio and Trigo, the fact that the national maize crop
was produced by numerous unorganized smallholders
rather than a comparatively small group of politically
active settler farmers (as in the case of Zimbabwe)
meant that there was no means for promoting the
development higher yielding maize cultivars. The fact
that Malawi was directly administered as a protectorate rather than a colony or Crown Colony also hel ps
to explain why the legal institutions to enhance the
collective capacity of the European settlers and the
seed research, production, and marketing institutions
to support maize production were never created
(Rusike, 1994). Settler influence on administration
was necessarily muted and there were, relatively
speaking, more attempts by the administration to
"make smallholder agriculture work" as a matter of
explicit policy (M. J. Blackie, personal communication). Certainly concern for the reasons behind and
the implications of maize monoculture were not
expressed in government policy statements until late
in the late colonial period, when the maize research
program began. Unfortunately, much of the belated
colonial effort to support smallholder agriculture
through credit plans, Master Farmer schemes and
agronomic research for smallholders became the focus
of nationalist rhetoric aimed at discrediting the colonial administration during the independence period.
(b) From independence
After a brief period following independence in
1964, Malawi's estate-based economic development
strategy emerged and intensified (Chanock, 1977;
Mkandawire and Ferguson, 1992). Historical data
show no discernible trend in estateS production as a
percentage of the value of total agricultural export
production from WWll through independence. From
independence, that percentage rose almost consistently from 30 in 1964 to over 80 in the early 1980s
(Pryor, 1988, p. 14). By 1981, estates occupied 13%
of total cultivated land in Malawi, as opposed to 2% in
1970 (Mkandawire and Ferguson, 1992). This figure
is nearly as high as the ceiling percentage alienated to
Europeans in Southern Region alone (the smallest
region in land area) during the colonial period. New
estates established since independence were opened
by Malawians.
The concept of estate-based development had an
economic rationale. Malawi's smallholder export
production was an unreliable source of government
revenues because it fluctuated considerably from year
to year (Barber, 1961; Chanock, 1977; Nyasaland
Development Plan, 1962). In the absence of an organized farmer cooperative system, it was easier to
create and control a coordinated system to produce,
market, and finance research and development among
several hundred estates than among over a million
smallholders 9 • Economic growth based on large-scale
commercial agriculture was a recognized development strategy for an agrarian economy with surplus
labor. Greater security of tenure was believed to provide investment incentives. The strategy also became
a convenient means for a political elite to gain economic strength (Mtewa, 1986), and for new estate
operators to join the elite.
The intensification of Malawi's estate-based development strategy was accomplished through both
deliberate means and unforeseen opportunities 10. In
the 1970s, a number of large corporate estates were
opened by holding companies and parastatal marketing institutions with special political status (Gulhati,
1989). Malawian businessmen, politicians and active
and retired civil servants were also encouraged to
open estates in the spirit of Chitukuko, a term that
referred to the development process. The estates were
viewed as the training ground for the country's future
commercial farmers (Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli,
1990). Estate development was facilitated by favorable access to low-cost financing from the commercial
banks and the willingness of village headmen to lease
large tracts of land at low cost (Gulhati, 1989;
Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli, 1990). The government's policy of restraining wages through discouraging trade unions, controlling inflation, and regulating
wages in the private sector contributed to main
taining a flow of labor from small farms to estates
823
"MAIZE IS LIFE"
(Gulhati, 1989, p. 12). International outmigration was
curbed.
Structural shifts were reinforced by fortuitous
marketing developments. In 1965, the government
of Ian Smith issued the Unilateral Declaration of
Independence in Zimbabwe. When trade sanctions
were subsequently imposed by the United Nations,
major international tobacco buyers encouraged
Malawi to expand tobacco and sugar production to
compensate for reduced Rhodesian output and sales
(Chembezi, 1991; Gulhati, 1989; Mkandawire, Jaffee
and Bertoli, 1990). After the 1973 Lome convention,
Malawi's tobacco also attained preferential access to
the EEC market over US and South American tobacco
through duty-free market status (Mkandawire, Jaffee
and Bertoli, 1990). Similarly, the esclation of the
Rhodesian civil war provided the opportunity to fill
gaps in technical cadres by hiring Rhodesian farmers
as managers of tobacco estates in Malawi.
The net result of policies and events was a decline
in the prominence of smallholder agriculture in commercial and export production II. The Special Crops
Act of 1972 imposed a licensing system for burley and
flue-cured tobacco, which were produced by estates,
and sold by international auction to the cigarette
industry. Smallholders were permitted to produce
only dark-fired, sun-cured, and oriental tobacco,
which fill a limited international market in plug, roll,
snuff and pipe mixtures. Smallholder tobacco was
sold to ADMARC, the parastatal marketing institution
and holding company that for many years had effective monopsony and monopoly status for agricultural
inputs and smallholder crops. Flue-cured and barley
production increased annually at an average rate of
almost 18% between 1967-82, but smallholder production of dark-fired, sun-cured and oriental tobacco
grew at an average annual rate of only 4.7%
(Chembezi, 1991). Small farms grew smaller l2 • Land
quality declined as maize monocropping increased
and more marginal areas were opened for food crop
production. Smallholder agriculture was implicitly
taxed by a growing differential between adjusted producer prices and prices paid to the marketing board for
exports (Kydd and Christiansen, 1982; Lele, 1989).
From the I960s, per capita maize output stagnated and
the output of other smallholder crops either declined
or showed no trend (Kydd and Christiansen, 1982;
Lele, 1989).
Since independence, Malawi's estate owners were
the interest group with the political clout to promote
publicly funded maize research. Yet they had only a
limited demand for improved maize seed because they
grew maize as a secondary crop in rotation with
tobacco l3 • They produced only an estimated 8-10% of
the nation's maize (Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli,
1990). The true clients of the maize research system
were over a million silent smallholders who grew 90%
of Malawi's maize with family labor and a hoe.
Although their demand was potentially large, their
willingness to pay for improved maize seed was virtually unknown. Stratified administratively by region
and district and developmentally by holding size qualifications, smallholders could not represent a unified
interest group (Christiansen and Kydd, 1985). In those
years, the political expression of rural Malawians was
also vertically controlled through a strong. effective,
single-party system. In terms of the Pineiro and Trigo
approach, neither case 1 nor case 2 conditions for
maize seed innovations held.
4. GRAIN TEXTURE AND THE SUPPLY OF
VARIETAL RELEASES4
(a) The grain texture issue
The difference between the interests of estate producers and smallholders is also the key to understanding how the other factor in the maize research equation
- the supply of maize varietal releases - was
affected by germplasm availability. Estate owners
valued yield above all other criteria because they grew
maize as a secondary commercial crop or to feed it to
their laborers IS. As a commercial crop, maize is not
stored on-farm but sold after harvest on official markets, to be stored by the official marketing agency or
industrially processed. Smallholders produced maize
for consumption as well as for sale, and one characteristic they valued highly was flinty grain texture.
Malawi's smallholders need flinty maize to produce nsima, the stiff porridge that is the staple of their
diet. The preferred type of nsima is the nearly iridescent porridge made from the refined maize flour called
ufa woyera (meaning "white" or "pure" flour). The
dominant farmers' varieties, loosely categorized as
chimanga cha makola or local maize, have a flinty
grain texture. Flinty maize types have a higher proportion of hard starch granules in the kernel than
dents. On the farm, they have a higher flour-to-grain
extraction rate because the germ separates more easily
from the bran when pounded in the mortar. Their tip
cover and harder grains protect them longer from
the weevils that compete for the family's stored
grain supply.
Until recently, however, all of the maize hybrids
developed by the national research program or
imported since independence have been dents. In
Malawi, as in other parts of the world, most breeding
efforts have emphasized dents because of the belief
that dent maizes have higher yield potential than flints
(Blackie, 1988). A major contention of this paper is
that the emphasis on harvest yields (rather than yield
from the mortar) in Malawi also reflected the interests
of estate owners since independence. Grain texture
does not affect economic returns to the farmer when
the maize crop is sold immediately after harvest, but
824
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
any yield advantages of dent hybrids are significantly
eroded by processing and storage losses when produced for home consumption by smallholders.
(b) The rate and type of varietal releases
The importance of flint grain texture to smallholders was recognized by Nyasaland's first maize
breeder, R. T. Ellis (1959). The most promising of the
new cultivars he developed were the flint synthetics
SYI7 and SY37 and the flint hybrid LH11.
Preindependence pressures within the colonial administration led to Ellis's resignation in 1959. After independence in 1964, the post of plant breeder was filled
intermittently by a series of expatriates on short-term
contracts (GOMIDOA, 1964-74). Plant breeders had
responsibility for both maize and tobacco. Research
efforts focused on the testing of existing lines rather
than the release of new maize materials. Through
much of 1959-67, breeding lines deteriorated because
of vacancies and shortage of supplies and funds
(zambezi, 1992). In 1967 the hybrid maize research
program was officially discontinued (Mloza-Banda,
Mtambo and Chavula, 1988). Coincidentally, suspension of the Malawi hybrid program at this point also
eliminated any opportunities for borrowing genetic
material from the Zimbabwe program during the
period when R201 and R215, two early-maturing dent
hybrids that have since gained regional popularity,
were being developed.
In 1971, a British Overseas Development Team led
by Bolton was posted to the Malawi research system,
with Bolton's research time devoted exclusively to
maize. In a series of trials comparing the performance
of the hybrids and synthetics bred before independence to imported composite and hybrid materials,
Bolton concluded that the dent hybrid SR52 (of
Zimbabwean origin), and the semi-flint composite
UCA (of Tanzanian origin) were most promising l6 •
Bolton described SR52, the highest yielding cultivar
in the trials, as appropriate for the few Malawian commercial farmers (estate owners and progressive, surplus-producing smallholders) who could produce it
for sale under high-management conditions. National
breeding efforts could then be concentrated on the
development and adaptation of semi-flint composites
for consumption or sale by small farmers (Bolton,
1974). SR52 seed could then be imported directly
from Zimbabwe.
Through the late 1970s, the government adopted a
two-pronged strategy of importing SR52 seed from
Zimbabwe for estates and breeding flinty composites
for small farmers. This strategy in part reflected the
dominant perspective that improved open-pollinated
varieties (OPYs, composites and synthetics) are more
appropriate for small farmers than hybrids. This perspective was founded on several mistaken beliefs: (i)
that all hybrids require high input levels, (ii) that all
hybrids have poor storage and hand-pounding characteristics, (iii) that small farmers will never use hybrids
without seasonal credit, and (iv) that seed systems
for delivering hybrids are necessarily more difficult to
maintain than seed systems for the delivering
improved OPYs. Instead, the only consistent generalization about seed types is that while breeders recommend that farmers replace hybrid seed every season,
they suggest that farmers purchase replacement seed
for improved OPYs after two or three seasons. The
positive aspect of the two-pronged strategy was that it
allocated scarce national research resources to breeding for the mass of smallholders rather than the few
estates.
In 1977, after a lO-year hiatus, the hybrid maize
research program was officially restored (MlozaBanda, Mtambo and Chavula, 1988). One of the motivating forces behind this decision was the high cost of
importing SR52 seed for estate production after UN
sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe in 1965.
Pressure to replace costly seed imports also led to the
release in Malawi of the dent hybrid MHI2 (Malawi
Hybrid 12) in 1978. MHI2 is based on SR52
germplasm obtained from Zambia.
Releasing MH 12 was only an "import-replacement" strategy. The two-pronged breeding strategy of
dents hybrids for estates and progressive, surplUS-producing smallholders and flinty OPYs for the mass of
smallholders continued through the 1980s. During
1978-81, the national breeders and technicians developed the lines for the adapted, denty hybrids,
MHI4-16, and the semi-flint composites, CCC and
CCD. When all of the national breeders left for
advanced training in 1981, the technicians maintained
the newly developed hybrid and composite lines. In
the mid-1980s, the National Seed Company of Malawi
(NSCM) obtained foreign exchange clearance to
import NSCM41 (Ciba-Geigy 4141, related to
Zimbabwe hybrid R201), a denty, short-season
hybrid. MHI4-16, CCC and CCD were officially
released by the national program.
Shortly thereafter, donor pressure to develop flint
hybrids intensified J7 • In 1987, when B. T. Zambezi
returned from overseas training to assume the post of
Chief Maize Breeder, the national maize research
team initiated their flint hybrid program. For the first
time since the late I950s, grain texture became a
breeding objective with both hybrids and open-pollinated varieties. In 1990, B. T. Zambezi, E. M. Sibale
and W. G. Nhlane released the national maize program's first adapted, semi-flint hybrids, MHI7 and
MHI8. Using a nonconventional breeding technique,
dent hybrid material from Malawian lines and flint
material from CIMMYT, they were able to develop
and release the new hybrids in three years, an unexpectedly short time period. The establishment by
CIMMYT in 1985 of their mid-altitude station in
"MAIZE IS LIFE"
Zimbabwe enabled the direct collaboration between
Malawian and CIMMYT scientists that reduced both
the time-to-release and the cost to the national
research program of developing new hybrids that meet
acceptable grain texture and yield criteria. The sustained support and flexibility of the Rockefeller
Foundation has since enabled a talented, well-trained
team of maize researchers to further their agenda.
With the promising new materials in hand, NSCM
and a new entrant to that seed industry, Lever Bros.,
could commence active production and seed sales
campaigns.
About 30 calendar years passed from the development of the semi-flint hybrid LHl1 to the release of
the semi-flints MH17 and MH18. The breeding lines
developed during the late 1950s deteriorated in the
years following independence. Staffing changes and
shifts in breeding strategy between a mixed (hybrid
and improved OPV) program and an improved OPV
program, and back again, led to dormant periods in
hybrid maize breeding. In the 1980s, the three senior
breeders traveled back and forth in overseas training
programs, while technicians maintained the breeding
lines.
Staffing and funding discontinuities lengthened the
time period before the release of semi-flint hybrids by
the national program (see Kydd 1989), but another
critical constraint was scientific. Suitable germplasm
for developing flinty hybrids was scarce. Inbred lines
developed from local flint materials are too tall and
their growing season is too long (B. T. Zambezi, personal communication). Exotic flint germplasm was
difficult to locate regionally.
(c) Comparing maize research in Malawi
and Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's maize research story is often cited as
one of the two examples (with Kenya) of maize-based
"Green Revolutions" in Africa. Malawi's has been
cited as a failure (Kydd, 1989). In 1949, 17 years after
the hybrid maize program was initiated by H.C.
Arnold, the first Zimbabwean hybrid (SR-1) was
released but was biologically unstable. Research continued until 1960, when the hybrid SR-52 was released
to commercial farmers. By 1968, around 65% of commercial maize area was planted to SR52 (MuirLeresche, 1984). Today, virtually all of both the
commercial and communal maize area is planted to
hybrids (Rohrbach, 1988).
Zimbabwe's maize research team was also small
(two to four researchers) but known for its continuity,
scientific leadership and commitment (Eicher, 1990).
The Zimbabwean team enjoyed several advantages
relative to Malawi's national team. First, in breeding
825
for commercial farmers who would grow denty
hybrids under high management conditions, the
Zimbabwean team had access to a broader international germplasm base because most of the world's
hybrids are denty. Second, mass selection 18 by commercial farmers preceded the team's scientific
research and provided them with a national
germplasm collection as a starting point. Third,
Zimbabwe's early research breakthroughs occurred in
a comparatively stable and protected scientific environment during 1930-50, long before the major events
of its 1965-80 civil war, which culminated in independence in 1980}9 Malawi's first maize research
efforts were caught in the transfer of political power
from the colonial administration to the independent
government, and thereafter, suffered from the shifts in
strategy and ideologically based conflicts that often
accompany donor financing.
One of the most important distinctions between the
Malawi and Zimbabwe stories reflects the composition of maize research clientele. In Malawi, both the
first and most recent hybrids were semi-flints bred
specifically to meet the on-farm processing and storage needs of small farmers. Each of Malawi's senior
maize breeders in Malawi recognized the significance
of flint texture by breeding either semi-flint hybrids or
semi-flint OPVs. Yet the farmers who had the political power to lobby for greater investment in maize
research had more interest in grain yield than in grain
texture criteria, and more interest in tobacco than in
maize research.
Eight decades ago, Zimbabwe's settler farmers
formed the first farmer associations to promote agricultural interests in the political area. Five decades
ago, commercial farmers established the first maize
seed association to produce certified maize seed and
deliver maize research results to farmers (Eicher,
1994). It is important to recognize that all of the
hybrids released by the Zimbabwean team were developed for commercial farmers. The first shorter season
Zimbabwean hybrid that was appropriate to small
farmer conditions (R200) was not released until 1970
- 21 years after the first hybrid release. R201 and
R215, the hybrids that spread most widely in the communal areas (Friis-Hansen, 1992), were released in
1974 and 1976, respectively. Even these hybrids were
bred for the commercial farmer operating in marginal
areas. They were the product of a program to breed
short-seasonlshort-stature maize suitable for use as
livestock feed in the sandy-soiled "tobacco belt," and
provided a cropping alternative for commercial farmers after tobacco exports were curtailed by trade sanctions imposed by the UN in 1965. It is likely that the
subsequent popularity of these cultivars among smallholders is largely incidental.
826
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
5. MALAWI'S EMERGING GREEN
REVOLUTION: 1988-93
During 1988-92, the percent of Malawi's smallholder maize area planted in hybrids rose from 7% to
24% (Figure I). Maize hybrids now playa crucial role
in national food security. In 1992, a drought year, they
represented half of total maize output (Figure I).
Other data show that as the percent of smallholders
planting hybrids has grown, farmers in smaller size
classes are adopting. The most rapid increase in the
use of hybrid seed in recent years is observable in
Blantyre and Liwonde Agricultural Development
Divisions, where farm sizes are considerably smaller
than in the Central and Northern Regions (Smale and
Heisey, 1994). The stereotype of the hybrid maize
grower as a credit-financed, surplus-producing, large
farmer is being replaced by a much more diversified
picture that includes farmers who purchase inputs
with cash, those who grow hybrids primarily for home
consumption, and those who grow small plots of
early-maturing hybrid maize to sell green in periurban areas (Smale et at., 1991).
What explains these changes? First, because they
have a flint grain texture, the Malawi hybrids released
by the maize research program are appropriate for production by those who consume their own maize.
Survey and experimental results show that the semiflint hybrids can be processed and stored on the farm
like local maize - consistent with the objectives of
smallholders (Smale et at., 1993). Second, trial and
demonstration results show that there are, on average,
only minor yield differences among the various
Malawi hybrids (GOMlDAR, 1987-93). The new flint
hybrids are therefore as suitable for sale as dent
Hybrid percent
of maize area, output
60
50
40
30
I -------l
l
Outpurl
i
I
~I
I
Table I. Ulladjusted meall yields. MOAIUNDPIFAO
Fertilizer Demollstratioll Program (MT Hk l )
"Normal" seasons (1989-90, 1990-91, and
1992-93 combined)
Local maize
Fertilizer rates
0-0
1.0
40-10
1.8
95-37
n.a.
Drought year (1991-92)
Fertilizer rates
Local maize
0-0
0.4
::1
o
Malawi hybrids. The harvest yield performance of the
dent hybrids has not been sacrificed to grain texture in
the semi-flint hybrids. Third, recent research evidence
demonstrates conclusively that both the denty and
semi-flint hybrids currently grown in Malawi mature
more rapidly and yield more than local maize even
under low management conditions with low nitrogen
levels (Byerlee and Heisey, 1993; Jones and Heisey,
1994). The figures in Table I, for example, show that
both in the drought year and otherwise, unfertilized
hybrid maize outyielded unfertilized local maize.
Coupled with the greater fertilizer responsiveness of
hybrid maize, this finding suggests that at any level
of fertilizer application, the expected yield of hybrid
maize is greater than the expected yield of local maize.
Analysis of extensive on-farm demonstration data
show that for any year and for any treatment for which
spatial yield distributions could be compared, hybrid
maize yield distributions dominated local maize yield
distributions in the first order stochastic sense (Jones
and Heisey, 1994)20.
Flint grain texture has not been the only factor that
has contributed to the emerging popularity of hybrids.
Farmer adoption rates began to rise before the release
of the semi-flint hybrids. Major institutional factors
include changes in the organization of seed production
and distribution and the design of extension programs.
From the beginning of the maize-breeding program
until the organization of the National Seed Company
of Malawi (NSCM) in 1978, seed multiplication and
distribution were the responsibility of the Ministry of
Agriculture and the Agricultural Development and
Marketing Corporation (ADMARC). During that
period, the government relied on imports to meet the
demand for hybrids. NSCM has since played a major
role in establishing the basis for foundation seed production and maintenance, organizing and training
seed growers, and inspecting seed together with
40-10
95-37
I
1980
Figure I.
I
\
82
I
T-----r-
84
I
86
I
I
88
\
I
90
I
I
92
Hybrid maize diffusioll ill Malawi.
I
0.9
n.a.
Hybrid maize
1.6
2.5*
3.8
Hybrid maize
0.8
n.a.
1.9
Source: Jones and Heisey (1994), based on analysis of data
from MOAIUNDPIFAO Fertilizer Demonstration Program,
1989-93.
*1992-93 only.
827
"MAIZE IS LIFE"
government seed officers (Rusike, 1994). In 1990,
Cargill21 purchased a majority interest in NSCM. The
seed company rationalized operations and embarked
on a more aggressive marketing strategy for Malawi
maize hybrids. In 1993, Lever Bros. entered the seed
industry as a competitor with NSCM.
With limited private markets for inputs, the dominant diffusion methods for inputs has been official
credit clubs. Official credit clubs are organized and
assisted by extension agents employed by the Ministry
of Agriculture. Until recently, farmers were instructed
to grow hybrid maize only in pure stand with recommended fertilizer levels. The packages distributed to
club members were of fixed size and composition.
Club members generally used the input amounts and
types allocated to them, on one-acre plots. Package
diffusion, although easy to administer, restricted farmers' adaptation of the technology to their own conditions. Further, in the early 1980s, only 10-15% of
farmer households used credit. Extension messages
that were oriented to surplus-producing smallholders,
the difficulty of qualifying for credit, and the risk of
default curbed the effective demand for hybrid seed.
A decade later, the national percentage of smallholders using credit is 30%, and is higher than 30% in
the major maize-producing zones. In recognition of
the diversity of farmer objectives and the constraints
that the smaller farmers face, the extension service has
begun to distribute smaller seed and fertilizer packages. In response to recent research results, they are
considering a recommendation that cash-constrained
farmers purchase semi-flint hybrid seed and small
amounts of fertilizer, rather than fertilizer for their
local maize. Intercropping of hybrids is no longer
discouraged.
The 1980s was also a period of major changes in
Malawi's economy. Population pressures caused by
returning migrants and Mozambican refugees, and the
closure of port outlets with the Mozambican civil war
meant insecurity of transport and rising import costs
(Lele, 1989). The exorbitant costs of transporting fertilizer inland led to the gradual substitution of highanalysis (higher nutrient content per unit weight of
fertilizers) for low-analysis fertilizers. The price of
nitrogen relative to the price of maize fell slightly over
the past two decades (Smale and Heisey, 1993),
increasing the incentives for applying fertilizer to
maize, and because hybrids are more responsive to
fertilizer than local maize, encouraging the use of
hybrids. The dire social consequences of household
food insecurity may also have become more widely
recognized by the official community as the decade of
the 1980s unfolded (e.g., Centre for Social Research,
1988). As that recognition spread in the official and
donor community, the pressure to generate high-yielding maize of suitable grain texture for small farmers
mounted.
Another factor has not yet been fully researched but
may be contributing to changes in smallholder maize
cultivation practices. In recent years, the desire of
smallholders to obtain a license to grow burley
tobacco and to secure their tenure in leasehold rather
than customary rights has contributed to differentiation among estates. Nearly half of Malawi's leasehold
estates are now under 20 hectares. Many are operated
by farm families or middle-ranking civil servants who
registered customary land they had cultivated for
years. The rapid emergence of "graduated smallholder" estates (Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli,
1990) may have finally generated the demonstration
and learning effects so inappropriately attributed to
the large corporate and private estates of the 1970s.
The smaller estates may also embody the learning
effects of the larger estates.
6. CONCLUSIONS
Although Malawi's configuration of agroclimatic
conditions, population density and dietary preferences
have favored technical change in maize production,
farmer adoption of improved maize seed has been
slow. The supply-side reason why technical change in
maize production has not occurred is that the maize
research, seed production and distribution systems did
not provide a high-yielding maize type with the grain
texture suitable for smallholders who consume and
sell their maize, in sufficient qualities and at a price
they were willing to pay. As a complement to this
observation, which has been made elsewhere in the literature on maize research in Malawi (e.g., Kydd,
1989), this article proposes an explanation about the
demand for maize research that is equally simple but
has important implications for the future of agriculture
research in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unlike in Zimbabwe and Kenya, the European population in Malawi during the colonial period had neither the demand for high-yielding maize varieties nor
the political clout to ensure that a strong national
research system was developed. Following independence in 1964, Malawi's estate owners were politically influential but they were more concerned with
enhancing exports such as tobacco, and more interested in maize yield than grain texture criteria.
Malawi's maize research clients have always been
over a million smallholders who lacked the formal
organization and supporting political institutions to
enable them to articulate their research needs to the
government. Moreover, as the recent market experience Cargill and Lever Bros. suggests, smallholders
have also been prevented by price controls from communicating their demands to the private sector.
In the Pineiro and Trigo paradigm, the conditions
for successful collective action by maize producers
828
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
were not satisfied in Malawi. Pineiro and Trigo argue
that in similar cases, when the commodity is of
national significance as a wage good or a source of foreign exchange, the state may act on behalf of numerous, unorganized producers. Yet although maize is a
vital wage good in Malawi, national development
policy has not acted on behalf of the ultimate beneficiaries of technological change in maize. One
interpretation of this story is that the government has
too long monopolized maize development in Malawi
or has directed maize research away from being
responsive to small farmers' needs. In any case,
regardless of the optimal mix of public and private
sector activity, the government has the responsibility
of ensuring that maize seed research and development
can respond to farmer demand.
Malawi's ongoing process of political change may
now permanently affect how interest groups engage in
collective action in that nation. While the evidence
presented here argues for the importance of farmer
organizations in shaping the demand for technical
change, the converse may also be true. Bates (1993)
has recently argued, based on evidence from Asia and
.Latin America, that one previously unrecognized but
positive political consequence of technical change is
the growth of farmer organizations and industrial lobbies protective of agrarian incomes.
The process of technological change in maize seed
may have been slow in Malawi, but individual maize
breeders have always oriented their research, in principal and in part, to the perceived needs of smallholders. What is revolutionary about Malawi's hybrid
maize research program since 1990 was, however,
unanticipated. First, the semi-flint hybrids yield
almost as much as Malawi's denty hybrids but can be
processed and stored on the farm like local maize consistent with the objectives of either commercial
farmers or smallholders. Second, agronomic research
is demonstrating that the semi-flint hybrids perform
well compared to local varieties even under low-input
and low-management conditions. One of the reasons
why MHI7 and MH18 hold so much promise is
because, after a long gestation period, the technology
released by the national program appears to be well
adapted to both agroclimatic conditions and smallholders' objectives. This positive outcome illustrates
the potential for localIy adapted maize hybrids to
spread among Africa's smallholders, particularly
where private seed companies work in partnership
with public breeding programs. In Malawi, ongoing
technical innovation in maize production, if adequately supported by the development of private and
public institutions, could become a smalIholder
"Green Revolution."
NOTES
1. For example, until recently, research in international
agriculture research centers (lARCs) such as CIMMYT
focused almost exclusively on population improvement and
the development of open-pollinated varieties (OPVS) over
hybrids because of their conviction, and that of the development community in general, that OPVs were more suitable
for cash-constrained small farmers and for the agenda of
international public breeding programs. Other examples
include "integrated rural development," "basic needs,"
"farming systems research," and more recently. "sustainability."
2. Increasing reliance on purchased grain to meet subsistence requirements does not reflect growing cash incomes
among smallholders. Long-term trends in the real wage and
off-farm employment opportunities are stagnant or negative
(Sahn and Arulpragasam. 1991).
collectively and the rights for its use are allocated by
traditional authorities.
6. When the Nyasaland government declined special
Federal support to European settlers during the Federation of
Rhodesia and Nyasaland. European tea planters established
their own tea research organization.
7. Additional detail on the administration's response to the
Great Famine is found in Vaughan (1987).
8. The Land Bill of 1965 defines an estate in terms of a
legal conception rather than a farm size. Any freehold or
leasehold land held under some form of documentary or
registered title is an estate - although all such enterprises
were large before the 1980s.
4. Although the colonial administration began to screen
varieties as early as 1909, active breeding work did not commence until the 1950s with the appointment of R. T. Ellis to
service (Rusike, 1994).
9. For example, the 1980/1 National Sample Survey of
Agriculture estimated 1.2 million smallholdings with an
average area of one hectare and an average of 4.5 persons per
holding. Data compiled by Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli
(1990) indicate about 1,300 leasehold estates in 1980, with
an average size of 80 hectares. Through 1970, only 229 leasehold estates were registered; with an average size of 345
hectares.
5. Customary land, then known as Native Trust Land (land
kept in trust for Africans by the Crown of England), is held
10. In a number of articles and papers, Kydd and
Christiansen have detailed how the development strategy
3. From villagers' statements reported in Peters and
Herrara (July 1989. pp. 47-48).
"MAIZE IS LIFE"
was implemented and what have been its effects. For
example, see Kydd and Christiansen (1982).
•
II. The Government did invest in several large Integrated
Rural Development Projects in the late 1960s (the Lilongwe
Land Development Program, Lower Shire Valley Project,
Karonga Project and Central Regional Lakeshore Project)
and a number of smaller rural development programs during
the late I970s, but Christiansen and Kydd (1987) describe the
results of these interventions as disappointing. Kalinga
(1993) notes that the World Bank-financed Integrated Rural
Development Projects replaced the original Master Farmers'
Scheme, and speculates about the extent to which these farmers reemerged under a different guise after independence.
12. The extent to which farm size distributions have been
affected by rising population density or land alienation to
estates is the subject of controversy - in part because of difficulties in measurement and in reconciling data sources.
Certainly the estates established in the 1980s, described by
Mkandawire, Jaffee and Bertoli (1990) as "graduated smallholders," compete for land with smallholders still farming
land registered as customary. These recently established
estates, small in size, are primarily an attempt to secure customary land rights under leasehold status as well as to acquire
certain rights previously held exclusively by estate owners,
such as the right to grow burley tobacco and auction it to
international buyers.
13. Tobacco research was funded through earnings from
both smallholder and estate-produced exports.
14. For more details on the history of the maize varietal
research in Malawi, see the provocative article by Kydd
(1989), and update by Smale and Heisey (forthcoming). For
more on institutional aspects of the supply side of maize
research (including agronomic research), see Kydd (1989)
and more recently, Blackie and Jones (1993).
15. The limited evidence available suggests that estates
continue to allocate land for tenants to produce their own
local maize, but where estates produce maize to feed laborers, they grow hybrids. In general, estates generally produce
both hybrid and local maize. Certainly a key research issue
that remains to be explored is why, for both the colonial and
the independence period, the equilibrium solution between
829
the estate owners and their labor source was not to produce
the type of maize that suited laborers' or tenants' demands.
To do so might have reduced the price of the main wage good
and released land and labor for further cash crop production.
16. The designations "semi-flint" and "semi-dent" are
based on a kernel index developed by R. Ward and B. T.
Zambezi that classifies maize types on a grain texture continuum from flint to dent, based on controlled tests.
17. Some of the flinty, improved OPVs had performed well
in farmers' fields, household mortars and on-farm granaries
(see Kydd, 1989). But the comparative yield evidence is
sketchy (see also Hildebrand and Poey, 1985), and improved
OPVs were never produced and distributed commercially in
large enough volumes to track farmers' responses through
more than a few isolated case studies.
18. Mass selection is one of two methods of population
selection, and is often called pure phenotypic selection. In
mass selection, the farmer chooses a mature plant or cob
based on the characteristics he or she observes, and plants the
grain from that plant or cob as seed. The seed contains only
the genetic contribution of the female plant, since at maturity,
it has already crossed. Progeny selection is when, instead of
saving the harvested grain for seed, the farmer or breeder
saves the original seed of the plant whose phenotype he or
she wishes to reproduce or cross.
19. This simplified comparison is not to imply that the early
Zimbabwe maize-breeding story is in any way the routine or
deterministic outcome of favorable circumstances. In particular, it must be remembered that during the 1930s commercial application of hybridization to cereals was a new
technology in the United States, let alone in the poorer territories of the British Empire.
20. Certainly not all answers are provided by anyone cultivar. Continued production of a range of commercial
hybrids, as well as continued support of the maize research
system in order to produce new generations of hybrids, is
always critical (Byerlee and Lopez-Pereira, 1994).
21. US-based Cargill is the world's largest grain trader and
the world's largest privately held company, but is not the
largest multinational seed company.
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