MALAWI: SOIL FERTILITY ISSUES AND OPTIONS
A discussion paper1
May 1998
Some could, some could not, shake off misery,
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
Thomas Hardy
1
This paper draws on detailed position papers prepared by Todd Benson, Anne Conroy, Rob Gilbert,
George Kanyama-Phiri, John Kumwenda, Charles Mann, Spider Mughogho, and Alexander Phiri. Malcolm Blackie
coordinated the effort and produced the initial draft precis. These were reviewed by the group and amended as agreed.
Inputs from Stephen Carr, Andrew Dorward, Jonathan Kydd, and Ken Giller were used and are duly acknowledged in
the text. Stephen Waddington was instrumental in developing the initial scenarios reported towards the end of Section II.
Stephen Carr, Ken Giller, and Stephen Waddington commented on earlier versions of this paper. This document reflects
the views of the primary authors who accept responsibility for errors of interpretation or fact.
1
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.....................................................................................................................................3
TECHNOLOGY .....................................................................................................................................3
POLICY ..................................................................................................................................................5
IMPROVING ACCESS TO THE IMPROVED MAIZE SEED AND FERTILISER TECHNOLOGY ......................6
INCREASING THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF N-FIXING GRAIN LEGUMES .................................................7
CLOSING COMMENTS........................................................................................................................8
SECTION I: TECHNOLOGY ..............................................................................................................................10
SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE IN MALAWI.............................................................................10
SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY TRENDS IN MALAWI ...........................10
AGGREGATE DATA AND THE ILLUSION OF SUCCESS .......................................................................11
ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL LIBERALISATION .................................................................................14
THE ECONOMICS OF MAIZE PRODUCTION, SUBSIDIES, AND INFLATION ..........................................14
AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY CHOICES: 1960S-1990S .................................................................15
TRENDS IN SOIL ORGANIC MATTER LEVELS ..................................................................................16
TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE................................................................................17
OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................................................17
IMMEDIATE TECHNICAL CHOICES FOR CHANGE..............................................................................18
LONGER TERM AND MORE DIFFICULT OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING SOIL FERTILITY...........................27
CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................30
SECTION II: POLICY - BREAKING FREE ......................................................................................................33
LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH ................................................................................33
A COMPREHENSIVE SMALLHOLDER STRATEGY ..............................................................................33
THE POLICY FRAMEWORK ...............................................................................................................33
THE FOOD SECURITY CRISIS ............................................................................................................34
POLICY OPTIONS ..............................................................................................................................35
SUSTAINABILITY, LIBERALISATION, AND SURVIVAL – ARE THEY COMPATIBLE IN THE
CONTEXT OF MALAWI SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE? ..................................................................35
IMPROVING ACCESS TO THE IMPROVED MAIZE SEED AND FERTILISER
TECHNOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................38
“BEST BET” STARTER PACKS FOR ALL SMALLHOLDERS .................................................................38
COMPLEMENTARY OPEN MARKET SMALL INPUTS PACK PROGRAMME ...........................................40
FERTILISER FOR WORK ....................................................................................................................42
REVIEW ...........................................................................................................................................43
SECTION III: POLICY - BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY...............................................................................46
INCREASING THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF N-FIXING GRAIN LEGUMES................................46
MPTF VERIFICATION/DEMONSTRATION OF MAIZE/GRAIN LEGUME ROTATIONS: ..........................46
IMPROVED SMALLHOLDER MARKETING SERVICES, ESPECIALLY FOR GRAIN LEGUMES: ................47
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS..............................................................................................................49
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTIONS ...................................50
SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................................51
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................................................53
2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TECHNOLOGY
Maize is a very efficient converter of carbon dioxide to carbohydrate and thus has a high yield
potential. Maize is well suited to the climate of the high southern Africa plateau of Malawi,
western Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It has been a highly reliable crop and has
suffered few catastrophic crop failures, and is not widely attacked by pests and diseases,
especially birds (a major source of grain loss from other cereals in the field). Nevertheless,
there is a strong indication of a decline in Malawian maize yields over the last 20 years.
Despite a national maize surplus until the early 1980s and the highest per capita maize
consumption in the world, household food security has declined, as indicated by widespread
and pervasive malnutrition, and one of the highest levels of child mortality in the world.
In the early 1980’s, Malawi was one of the showcases of economic growth in Africa, fueled
by rapid growth in tobacco production by the estate sector and by the introduction of fertilised
hybrid maize in the smallholder sector. The promising overall agricultural sector
performance, with the growth rate in agricultural GDP averaging 4.7 percent annually over
the decade, was primarily export growth in which smallholders played a minor role.
Agricultural growth in Malawi requires widespread adoption by smallholders of improved
production technologies, particularly for maize. The economic basis of improved maize seed
and fertiliser technology has been undermined by the escalation in input prices and by the
inability of the consumer to pay more for staple foods. Pricing grain at a level that makes
fertiliser economically attractive to use at Malawian smallholder levels of productivity means
that many consumers (who are likely to be smallholders as well as town dwellers) cannot
afford to purchase it. If the majority of food-deficit smallholders have to pay the full
undistorted cost of fertiliser as delivered to their farms, then fertiliser use on the staple food
crop is simply not an option to a large majority of them. Under these same circumstances,
they will find that they cannot afford to buy the food necessary to fill in the gap between their
inadequate harvests. The end point is, at best, a steady decline in already unsatisfactory
nutrition and living standards; at worst, the result is widespread starvation.
The success of the germplasm-led Green Revolution in Asia, under very different conditions and
with more fertile and uniform soils, has biased the research agenda in Africa away from crop
nutrition studies towards tempting but illusory gains from plant breeding. These gains will
remain illusory until the fundamental issues of providing the plant with adequate nutrients (soil
fertility management) are properly addressed.
The data are clear that poor soil fertility, dominated by nitrogen deficiency, is the major
constraint to maize productivity in Malawi. There are effectively only three sources for
supplying the key nutrient nitrogen in arable farming:
• organic sources recycled from within the cropped area or concentrated from a larger area,
• biological N-fixation, or
• mineral (inorganic) nitrogen fertilisers.
3
There are no quick fix solutions to maintenance of soil fertility. The conundrum is that all
restorative technologies for the improvement of soil fertility involve either import of organic
materials from surrounding land or the allocation of land to produce organic materials. In the
most densely populated areas, land scarcity prohibits the devotion of land to the restoration of soil
fertility. In such regions practical soil fertility interventions (as opposed to wishful thinking) will
be hard to find, at least in the short term, without either:
• some additional source of income generation or short term assistance to buy inorganic
fertilisers,
• direct assistance to compensate for loss of agricultural production, or,
• continuing food aid.
For the remainder of this century and beyond, on present trends, population growth will
exceed growth in food production by one percent or more annually. Maize seed and fertiliser
technology is essential to the survival of most Malawians into the foreseeable future. Farmers
still receive a good response if they apply inorganic-nitrogen.
This is not wholly to discount organic strategies. Observations of farmer management
practices lead most observers to conclude that organic matter contents in the soil are
declining. Inputs of organic soil matter will reverse this trend. Nitrogen may also be added to
the soil through the growing of an N-fixing legume in association with the maize crop. However,
not all legumes fix significant amounts of nitrogen, and not all produce sufficient cash or calories
to compensate for the maize which is displaced.
Grain legumes potentially have the advantage of both adding nitrogen to the soil, and providing
the farmer with an alternative food or cash crop to maize. Grain legume rotations have been
shown to be successful under Malawian conditions, although the variability of performance is
high (reducing their attractiveness to risk averse smallholders). The rotation of maize with
grain legumes such as promiscuous soyabean, groundnut or Bambara groundnut is one of the
more promising technological options available for Malawian farmers. Intercropping with
pigeonpea is also attractive.
There may be a decline in N-use efficiencies caused by nutrient losses that could be mitigated
by increasing soil organic matter. But the evident and serious decline in unfertilised maize
yields simply cannot be reversed by an organic strategy alone. The constraints to adoption,
and the limitations in terms of crop response to feasible widespread exclusively organic
options are simply too great. Without a reliable supply of adequate soil nutrients, preferably
from a combination of modest amounts of inorganic nitrogen and organic sources of nutrients,
both the food security of many farming households and of the nation as a whole will remain at
considerable and increasing risk.
Importantly, there is an immediate and short term soil fertility crisis which needs swift action.
The technical options are few and each season that passes without concerted, coherent, and
widespread action to address the critical issues narrows further the choices for change.
The technology elements of a soil fertility strategy are:
• the widespread deployment of inorganic nitrogen fertiliser and improved maize seed, and,
4
• increasing the grain legume component in maize based cropping systems through rotations
or pigeonpea intercropping.
POLICY
Malawi needs urgently to implement a strategy for broad-based income growth to capitalise
on the promise of the technology that Malawian farmers are desperate to implement. It is not
enough to keep the poor alive - Malawi itself needs a safety net.
The only realistic hope for Malawi to break out of its current downward spiral is to restart
vigorous economic growth in a non-inflationary environment. The best way to do this is to
get hybrid seed and fertiliser into the hands of all of Malawi’s farmers. Nothing would help
quell inflation and dispel the current state of gloom and insecurity like a bumper maize
harvest shared by all of Malawi’s farmers, and delivered to the consumers at lower and
reasonably predictable maize prices.
The liberalisation upon which Malawi’s future growth depends is being tarnished in people’s
minds by the high prices they face in the market and the enormous rents conspicuously being
extracted by private traders. The economy is experiencing all the downside effects of
liberalisation, but is deprived of many of its benefits. Malawi’s deteriorating food security
situation threatens to undo completely the impressive progress made in laying the policy
framework for growth. Despite real substantial technological promise in food production,
events are spiraling downwards. The only realistic and practical way to reverse this spiral and
simultaneously to restart economic growth is to use the promise of the best bet technology
Malawi’s scientists have established to jump-start maize production for all smallholders. This
would simultaneously improve the food security of all food-deficit smallholder households,
and sharply increase the marketed surplus available to urban consumers.
Previous policy focused, quite logically, on intensifying maize production. The policy was
undoubtedly popular with farmers. Under the circumstances pertaining, those that were able
to adopt the necessary technologies did so. Those that were unable to do so universally
expressed a desire for the key components of seed and fertiliser. But adoption came at the
cost of major distortions to the economy, distortions which Malawi was unable to fund from
its own resources. Once these distortions were removed and a largely liberalised economy
established, the use of the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology was no longer
financially viable for many smallholders. The outcome has been tragic. After the 1996/97
season, in spite of relatively good rains, marketed maize fell precipitously, the village level
purchase price of maize quadrupled, and there was widespread hardship amongst the majority
poor section of the population.
It is evident that, in the peculiar circumstances of Malawi, the pursuance of a strict policy of
non-intervention in the market comes at an unacceptably high cost. In the longer term, prices
may rise to allow greater investment at the farm level and thus to increased productivity. Yet
it is quite possible that many Malawians will not survive to benefit from these changes. This
is not a stable or sustainable situation. The strategies required must primarily be concerned
with the immediate survival of rural households, and especially children, while longer term
policies are developed to meet the needs of Malawi into the next century. As with the
technical options, the choices are few:
5
Subsidies: Subsidies on inputs and on credit are discredited. Even were the subsidy
somehow limited only to fertiliser applied to maize, the only effect on production would come
from the marginal increase in fertiliser purchases. While the shortage of cash with which to
purchase inputs is a dominant constraint on their widespread use, credit schemes aimed at
funding inputs for food crop production in Africa have almost universally failed. Malawi is
developing a viable commercial credit system to support cash crop production; this initiative
would be inevitably and seriously undermined by the introduction of a parallel credit system
for food crops which accepted a higher level of default. Increasing smallholder access to
credit, for most households, has only marginally beneficial effects on household annual
income.
Increasing cash crop production: Even at generous estimates of involvement in cash crop
production, only some 20 percent of the farming population will be affected. Despite the real
progress that has been made in recent years to promote cash cropping amongst smallholders,
it will remain a minority occupation for the next decade at least. Many primarily subsistenceoriented producers justifiably remain unwilling to accept the risks involved in depending on
the market for a significant part of their subsistence. Thus it seems unwise to rely solely on
the cash generated by cash crops to produce the volume of maize necessary for national food
security.
Changing the food staple: Maize has become dominant in the high plateau of southern
Africa, not because it has been promoted by the authorities at the expense of other choices,
but because it is an excellent choice for the environment. Existing proposals to change the
food staple (as opposed to adding some modest diversity to the farming system) are seriously
compromised by technical flaws and misconceptions. Regardless of the staple food crop,
continuous cropping without adding nutrients will lead to reduced soil fertility, declining
yields, and increased food insecurity for Malawi.
Improving the productivity of smallholder maize based cropping systems: The preceding
technical review has shown that, in the immediate future, there are only two real options;
• increasing access to the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology, and,
• diversifying the cropping system through the adoption of grain legume rotations.
These are complementary to one another and have the prospect of being widely adoptable.
Improving access to the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology
This strategy has several components:
• providing all smallholders with small “starter” packs of improved seed and fertiliser with
which they can learn, on their own fields, how to use the new area-specific
recommendations provided by the work of the MPTF,
• insuring that supplies of improved seed and fertiliser are available for purchase in all rural
markets in small bags (1-3 kg) at a price which is comparable, per kilogram, to those of
existing large bags,
• providing opportunities for able-bodied individuals to increase their purchasing power for
seed and fertiliser through a structured fertiliser (and seed) for work programme, and,
• rebuilding an effective savings club movement tied to the purchase of agricultural inputs
along the lines of that which has proved so successful in Zimbabwe.
6
Extending the reach of the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology is absolutely
essential to establishing conditions for productive economic growth. Without securing the
food supply, all other efforts at poverty alleviation - job creation, education reform, expanded
health services - will come to naught. This is not a programme for recovering from drought.
It is a programme to lay a solid foundation for long-term growth. All smallholder farmers
need the chance to have in their own hands the new technology packages long enough for real
learning and experimentation to take place, and to develop confidence in the package over
different weather and market conditions.
The most feasible growth strategy for Malawi is one that centers on increasing the
productivity of the smallholder, especially in maize production. The starter pack programme
proposed here could put an extra bag of maize in every smallholder household. Combine that
with the other three initiatives and the return could quickly be affordable maize prices to the
urban poor and middle classes.
The strategy as a whole could help stem the tide of inflation and stagnation. It could help win
support for liberalisation and stimulate the private sector, both directly through increased
demand for inputs and indirectly by reducing wage pressures. Given the resources, such a
programme can be done quickly and on a large enough scale to change the national mood of
despair over the deteriorating food situation.
Increasing the attractiveness of N-fixing grain legumes
There are disturbing signs of an unsustainable smallholder farming system as soils erode, the
diversity of the farming system declines, and household diets become reliant on an inadequate
supply of a single calorie rich crop. Maize/grain legume rotations (groundnuts and
promiscuous soyabean) and, where livestock do not graze extensively after the maize harvest
(as in the south of the country), maize/pigeonpea intercropping are the only other promising
technologies that:
• look to be at a stage suitable for large scale adoptions, and,
• are competitive with unfertilised local maize in terms of calories and cash, and,
• start to address, in part, the genuine concerns regarding sustainability, soil erosion, and soil
degradation that form an important component of discussions on Malawi smallholder
agriculture.
The MPTF has shown that, with good leadership and organisation, it is possible swiftly to
develop area-specific recommendations for smallholder fertility management technologies.
The achievement in producing area-specific fertiliser recommendations efficiently and with
the use of existing resources is considerable. This experience should be built upon and
expanded for grain legume technologies.
Required also is a policy environment which is conducive to the adoption of improved
technologies. Farmers need reliable markets in which to buy inputs and other goods and to
sell their produce, such as these promising grain legumes. These markets need to operate
efficiently and consistently. Innovation is needed to create an appropriate market
infrastructure and to bring into the market a greater proportion of those farmers currently
excluded from it. This is more than simply liberalising markets. The low purchasing power
7
of most Malawi smallholders, combined with the overall poverty of the country, means that
more must and can be done to improve marketing services.
Marketing cooperatives, as opposed to producer cooperatives, have worked well, and proved
popular and successful with farmers, in a wide range of agricultural economies. In the
developed world, they have become major businesses in their own right. Cooperatives
provide the chance for smallholders to sell and buy in bulk and thus have greater market
power. In Malawi, VEZA International, an NGO, has been active in setting up farmer
cooperatives with very poor smallholders and there is growing interest in this approach.
Several other NGOs have recently agreed to adopt the VEZA model and to extend the
cooperative marketing option to a wider area. There is already a substantial trade in legumes ICRISAT report some 30,000 tons of pigeonpea are exported annually. This trade offers real
potential for development.
Cooperatives also allow the introduction of innovations such as forward contracting - which
provides a pre-planting guarantee of price. They can act as an intermediary in the credit
system since they are legal entities with collateral. Both the risks and the rewards of
marketing are spread, which provides a more benevolent environment through which
smallholders can make the transition from subsistence to commercial production.
CLOSING COMMENTS
Particular attention needs to be paid to the agricultural production problems of the poorest
farmers. Their numbers may be substantial (as high as 40 percent of the smallholder population
in Malawi) and it certainly is a group that is growing. These are typically farmers who do not
reliably feed themselves and their families year on year. Thus their highest priority will be to
secure their family's food supply. A food crop productivity strategy will be the starting point, but
not the total answer. The poverty trap faced by the poorest families precludes their active
participation, under present circumstances, in a market economy (except as distress sellers of
labour and, sometimes, food).
Cash crops can play an important role in priming the soil fertility input pump, by bringing extra
income to the farmer. But, in Malawi, most smallholders are desperately short of cash, cannot
afford the luxury of experimentation, and often lack the confidence and the ability to deal,
unaided, with many aspects of modern, market-centered society. It is unrealistic to expect
sophisticated and possibly risky cash cropping to provide them with the first step to a better life.
Credit is often proposed as a solution, but credit is only of value to individuals who are
periodically short of cash to purchase inputs. For those farmers who are chronically short of
cash, other alternatives will need to be sought. Savings rather than credit, therefore, provide the
mechanism for introducing cash poor smallholders to improved technologies.
The successful implementation of the technology development and transfer processes outlined in
this paper will require commitment of substantial resources over extended periods. The
agricultural technology development and dissemination system in Malawi is not well adapted to
comprehending and responding to the long term problems of the country. Field level personnel,
particularly the Field Assistants, bear the burden of successfully implementing any new
agricultural extension initiatives with few additional resources. Institutional memories are poor,
inadequate budgets (and the poor use of the funds that are available) lead to short lived, disparate
project-orientated research and extension efforts which rarely are able to "follow through" to the
farmer.
8
The donors, likewise, exhibit a frightening lack of consistency and long term institutional
memory. Given that so much of what actually happens in Malawi is the result of donor pressure
and priorities, the absence of consensus and a long term strategy amongst the donor community is
as much a problem as is the much vaunted lack of commitment amongst nationals.
It is imperative that the donor community engage with the public and private sectors of
Malawi in a concerted effort to prevent an imminent food crisis in the country. We request
immediate support for the following activities:
• best-bet technology starter packs for all smallholders.
• ensuring the availability of small (1 to 3 kg) bags of improved seed and fertilizer for
purchase by smallholders.
• a structured fertilizer-for-work programme.
• the establishment of rural savings clubs.
• Maize Productivity Task Force efforts to demonstrate and multiply grain legumes.
• the development of marketing cooperatives, with a particular focus on building market
demand for grain legumes.
We believe that support of these activities, which are outlined in this document, will greatly
improve the fertility of Malawi’s arable land and the food security of Malawi’s smallholder
farmers who take their subsistence from that land.
9
SECTION I: TECHNOLOGY
SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE IN MALAWI
Malawi smallholder agriculture is based on maize as the dominant cereal, with small grains
and cassava adding diversity. In the wetter parts of the country, the cereal crop is interplanted
with common bean (Phaseolus) - in the drier, pigeonpea. Groundnuts are typically rotated
with maize (and have been an important cash crop).
The reasons for the preference for maize are not difficult to find. Maize is a very efficient
converter of carbon dioxide to carbohydrate and thus has a high yield potential. Maize is well
suited to the climate of the high southern Africa plateau of Malawi, western Mozambique,
Zambia and Zimbabwe. Relative to other crops, the labour demands of producing and
processing maize are lower. It has been a highly reliable crop and has suffered few
catastrophic crop failures, and is not widely attacked by pests and diseases, especially birds (a
major source of grain loss for sorghum and millets in the field).
SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY TRENDS IN MALAWI
The poverty of most smallholder farming households in Malawi on smaller and smaller
landholdings prevents most from adequately investing in the fertility of the soils they crop to
safeguard its future productivity. Yields decline and food security through subsistence
production is less and less often assured for increasing numbers of households.
Figure 1 presents data from available on-farm nutrient response trials in Malawi from 1972 to
the present time.2 The data suggest a continuing decline in unfertilised maize yields over
time. Excluding the 1960 data (which were based on local maize and observation of farmer
yields) the trend is downwards. This trend may be somewhat less dramatic than shown here
because the unfertilised maize yields of the 1970s seem unusually high. Nevertheless, there is
a strong indication of a decline in maize yields over the last 20 years. Unlike some
neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, these declines are associated with a deteriorating
resource base rather than the result of expansion into drier zones. This diminution has
occurred due to declining soil fertility. This despite the fact that the yield potential of the
improved maize germplasm used in these trials over this period has risen. Potential yield
gains from plant breeding will be largely illusory until the soil fertility decline in smallholder
cropping systems is addressed.
Other data support this hypothesis. Maize has become increasingly dominant in the farming
system as farm households seek to maintain their calorie production under declining soil
fertility and land holdings. The crop now occupies around 85 percent of smallholder
cropland. Rotation crops and intercrops have declined in importance, or, in many cases,
disappeared. Despite a national maize surplus until the early 1980s, household food security
declined, as indicated by widespread and pervasive malnutrition, and one of the highest levels
of child mortality in the world.
2
The data come from a range of sources within Malawi and are not fully consistent in terms of fertiliser source, maize
variety, trial design or objectives. Some trials were not replicated, and the data are not disaggregated according to agroecological zone, or by rainfall season (although a preliminary analysis did not show obvious differences between good
and bad years). No results were available for the 1980s.
10
Figure 1: Mean maize yields at 0 kg N/ha from nutrient response research trials in Malawi, by year.
3410
3500
2950
3000
2760
2420
2500
Maize yield (kg/ha)
This data on maize yield when no nitrogen is
applied to the crop is taken from on-farm trials,
most of which were researcher-managed. The
gaps in the record represent years in which no or
very few on-farm nutrient response research trials
were implemented. Farmer's unfertilized maize
yields would be significantly lower.
2160
2120
2000
1760
1660
1560
1550
76/77 77/78 78/79
92/93
1500
1000
500
0
ca. 60
71/72 72/73 73/74 74/75
95/96
Season
Aggregate data and the illusion of success
In the early 1980’s, Malawi was one of the showcases of economic growth in Africa, fueled
by rapid growth in tobacco production by the estate sector and by the introduction of fertilised
hybrid maize in the smallholder sector. However, the promising overall agricultural sector
performance of the previous years, with the growth rate in agricultural GDP averaging 4.7
percent annually over the decade, was primarily export growth in which smallholders played
a minor role (see Figure 2 and Table 1).
Figure 2: Percentage growth in agricultural GDP in Malawi.
10
8
Estates
6
Smallholders
4
Total Agriculture
2
0
-2
1973-80
1980-87
1987-94
Source: World Bank, 1995
11
Table 1: Malawi smallholder maize production statistics, 1984/85 - 1991/92.
Season
84/85
85/86
86/87
87/88
88/89
89/90
90/91
91/92
Maize area ('000 ha)
Local
Hybrid
1048
75
1104
69
1131
37
1137
59
1160
86
1184
135
1193
179
1131
216
84/85
85/86
86/87
87/88
88/89
89/90
90/91
91/92
Output and sales ('000MT)
Output
Sales
1355
245
1295
297
1202
273
1427
111
1510
59
1343
123
1590
233
657
201
Yields ('000 kg/ha)
Local
Hybrid
1.03
3.1
0.96
2.9
0.95
2.7
1.09
2.6
1.05
2.9
0.81
2.6
0.87
2.9
0.33
1.3
Fertiliser nitrogen
supplied ('000 MT)
Total supplied
Paid for
16.4
16.4
15.4
15.4
17.2
6.8
20.7
16.2
25.6
21.0
30.1
25.0
33.4
27.1
38.8
10.9
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development; Whiteside and Carr, 1997
Exporting maize to its neighbours, Malawi built the state-of-the-art maize silo complex at
Kanengo to store the accumulating maize surpluses. When the costs of carrying these large
stocks brought ADMARC to the brink of financial collapse, Government took them over as
the Strategic Grain Reserve. The critical food policy problem then was how to prevent the
maize price from collapsing under an avalanche of hybrid maize. No one then was imagining
the conditions experienced in early 1998: ADMARC markets without maize; people queuing
overnight to buy food; the widespread theft of maize cobs from farmers’ fields; and a
household’s accustomed monthly maize consumption costing the equivalent of 40 days’
wages.
From Table 1, it is evident that, in the smallholder sector, neither improved nor unimproved
maize showed any clear increase in yields per hectare in the period from 19853. Figure 3
shows that that the smaller the holding size the greater the proportion of land planted to maize
and other food crops. There are two main reasons for this phenomenon:
• High priority is given by each household to securing its food consumption requirements,
largely calories through maize, before venturing to produce other commodities.
• Smallholders were excluded from the production of lucrative cash crops (primarily burley
tobacco).
In 1986, courageous researchers presented to a reluctant Government compelling evidence
that outside the well-stocked ADMARC markets, tens of thousands of Malawian households
were too poor to buy this maize. In the face of the national surpluses, chronic malnutrition
afflicted nearly half of Malawian children. Three other crises exacerbated the situation. The
cassava mealy bug decimated the staple crop of Malawi’s northern lakeshore population;
3
Subsequent years data suggest that unimproved maize yields were trending downwards towards around 800 kg/ha, with
improved maize yields to around 2500 kg/ha. The very low figures for 1991/2 are the result of a particularly bad drought
in that season. The area planted to new hybrid seed has been declining since 1992/3.
12
Figure 3: Cropping pattern in Malawi, by size of household farm holding.
90
80
70
60
Percent
of area 50
planted
Maize
40
Other food
Tobacco
30
Cotton
20
10
0
<.5
0.5-1
1-1.5
1.5-2
2-2.5
2.5-3
3+
Farm size group (ha)
Source: World Bank, 1996
drought ravaged the Shire Valley; and Malawi became a safe haven for large numbers of
Mozambicans fleeing a devastating civil war.
Initially, draw-downs from the Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR) masked the seriousness of the
mounting food crisis. Viewed initially as a temporary measure to offset a transient food
shortage, Government requested the donor community to provide food aid. However, as the
intensity of the war in Mozambique increased, the refugees became a flood, numbering
eventually over a million: equivalent to about 12 percent of Malawi’s total population. They
swelled the demand for food, shelter, firewood, water, and health care. With high praise for
the hospitality and refuge provided by Malawi, the donor community effectively mobilised
large quantities of food aid, but in the meantime, relief purchases from the SGR had
exhausted Malawi’s own national reserves.
Long accustomed to finding maize in ADMARC markets in the hunger season, in the early
1990s Malawians suddenly found themselves queuing for rationed supplies. The free market
price of maize in the seasons following 1996 soared to quadruple the ADMARC price. With
maize weighted heavily in the consumer price index, inflationary pressures mounted. This set
the stage for the long and continuing slide in the value of the Malawi kwacha and made more
difficult and painful the opening of the economy to market forces.
13
Economic and political liberalisation
The Malawi Government has long recognised throughout that economic growth is essential to
the nation’s future - which explicitly requires making efficient use of the country’s scarce
resources, particularly through open and liberalised markets. More recently it has also moved
to a more conventionally democratic political system. One casualty of this political
restructuring has been the farmer credit clubs that delivered subsidised seed and fertiliser to
the larger smallholders. Closely integrated into the structure of the previous ruling party, this
credit system has not survived its demise.
The impressive repayment record that sustained the clubs rested heavily on the coercive
power of the party to enforce repayment. The debt repayment relief granted in the great
drought of 1991-92 further undermined repayment incentives. The post-drought credit
expansion that boosted fertilised hybrid maize to new records also brought in new and less
credit-worthy borrowers. What was intended to be an expanded credit programme in reality
became a large free inputs programme for the final round of credit recipients. Figure 4
illustrates the growth in the use of fertiliser that was not paid for as the fertiliser subsidies
were withdrawn. While Government and donors seek to implement a sustainable credit
system, rebuilding credit for maize production will be a long and slow process.
The economics of maize production, subsidies, and inflation
Even when the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology was widely used in the late
1980s and early 1990s, per hectare yields of smallholder maize remained well below
attainable levels. Widespread poverty and chronic lack of cash explain this phenomenon.
Only 33 percent of the rural population have surplus maize to sell - part of which is
transferred to food-deficit rural households, the poorest of whom pay for maize by selling
their labour (known locally as ganyu labour). Most maize producing households therefore
rely on the market (as ganyu or for cash) for an important part of their consumption. Since
Figure 4: Nutrients used by smallholders on maize in Malawi: 1987/88 - 1996/97.
35000
Nutrients paid for
30000
Nutrients given free
25000
20000
Metric
tons
15000
10000
5000
0
87/88 88/89 89/90 90/91 91/92 92/93 93/94 94/95 95/96 96/97
Year
Source: Whiteside and Carr, 1997
14
Table 2: Smallholder nitrogen fertiliser subsidies in Malawi, 1991/92 - 1994/95 – Percentage subsidy
on final price.
Fertiliser
1991/2
1992/3
1993/4
1994/5
CAN
7.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
23:21:0+4S
20.0
15.3
7.4
0.0
Urea
23.0
15.5
10.7
0.0
Source: Malawi Government (1993)
their income levels are so small, purchases of food leave little to spare for other things housing, education, or farm inputs. Even with the subsidies provided (see Table 2) and an
overvalued currency, fertiliser use was uneconomic for many households (Conroy, 1993, and
Kumwenda et al, 1995).
Essential to the economic restructuring needed to support a more dynamic growth process is a
realistic valuation of the kwacha to stimulate exports and reflect the true cost of imports.
Failure to restrain inflation has brought the value of the kwacha from its pre-election level of
about MK 4.00 to the US dollar to the current level of around MK 25.
While there is much farmer and political talk about the phase-out of seed and fertiliser
subsidies, , this was a relatively minor event relative to the impact of devaluation. The
devaluation caused a four-fold increase in fertiliser prices, whereas the subsidy at its highest
never accounted for more than 20 percent of the fertiliser cost. Retaining the subsidy would
only increase the incomes of those already able to pay cash for fertiliser. It would not
substantially expand fertiliser use within the smallholder sector.
Agricultural technology choices: 1960s-1990s
Separate studies carried out by national analysts, donors, and international research agencies
came to common conclusions. Agricultural change in Malawi required widespread adoption
of improved resource efficient production technologies, particularly for maize. With respect
to maize, the initial diagnosis focused mainly on deficiencies in the maize germplasm
available - partly because there was more national and international expertise in crop
breeding, and partly because of a reluctance to recognise the implications of a more
comprehensive review of smallholder development needs.
The improved maize varieties available in the 1970s and 1980s did not suit the circumstances
of the majority of smallholders. The grain type was too soft for household processing and
allowed the harvest to become quickly infested with weevils.
With donor support, and technical input from CIMMYT, two improved maize hybrids (MH17
and MH18) were released to the farming community in 1990. These hybrids had a semi-flint
grain with good storage and household processing characteristics. Their yield was as good as
other locally available hybrids, although their advantages were quickly lost if the farmer
recycled the seed.
In the mid-1990s a wider range of maize varieties became available as the maize seed market
was opened up. But, as shown earlier, aggregate maize yields showed no upward trend.
15
Promotion of the associated fertiliser technology over most of this period was unhelpful.
Farmers know that the yield response to fertiliser is broadly linear, additive, and closely
related to soil type and to available soil moisture, as well as a range of other exogenous
factors such as weeds, or previous farming practice. National fertiliser policy ignored these
facts, although it was the subject of numerous discussions, workshops, and agronomic
research4. It was not until 1995 that Kumwenda et al (1995), through a comprehensive
analysis of on-farm fertiliser response rates, confirmed that the blanket recommended level of
fertiliser use was too high to be sufficiently profitable for widespread adoption.
By 1995, the subsidies to fertiliser and credit for smallholders that had apparently facilitated
the adoption of hybrids and fertiliser in the early 1990s had been eliminated. Unsurprisingly,
the upward trend in the use of the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology disappeared.
The economic basis of the maize seed and fertiliser technology was undermined by the
escalation in input prices and by the inability of consumers to pay more for staple foods.
Pricing grain at a level that makes fertiliser economically attractive to use at Malawian
smallholder levels of productivity means that many consumers (who are likely to be the 80
percent of smallholders who are routinely food deficit, as well as town dwellers) cannot
afford to purchase it.
If the majority of food-deficit smallholders have to pay the full undistorted cost of fertiliser as
delivered to their farms, then fertiliser use on the staple food crop is simply not an option to a
large majority of them (Carr, 1996). Under these same circumstances, they will find that they
cannot afford to buy the food necessary to fill in the gap between their inadequate harvests.
The end point is, at best, a steady decline in already unsatisfactory nutrition and living
standards, and, at worst, widespread starvation.
Trends in Soil Organic Matter levels
Much of the debate regarding the importance of organic fertility sources (particularly longer term
interventions) revolves around the need to build up and maintain soil organic matter (SOM) in the
soil, since declining SOM typically results in soils with lower nutrient holding capacities and
lower levels of available plant nutrients. The difficulties of achieving this objective in the tropics
are well presented in Giller et al, 1997. Their conclusion is clear - long term fallowing, whether
natural or planted, is the only way to enhance the SOM capital store of the critical nutrient
nitrogen. Only repeated additions of high quality organic residues and/or inorganic fertilisers will
produce an adequate yield response on a field scale.
There is much anecdotal evidence that SOM levels have declined in Malawi. The data are
equivocal. Benson (1998) reviewed data sets of Organic Carbon analyses of soil samples
collected under two separate programmes5. The first came from the Mass Soil Analysis
programme carried out by the Soil Fertility Unit at Chitedze in the 1970s, with most of the data
from 1970-72. The second source was the nation-wide soil sampling exercise carried out in the
early 1990s by the extension staff in each ADD on behalf of the Soils Commodity Team.
Comparable data sets from both programmes could only be compiled for Blantyre, Kasungu, and
Lilongwe ADDs. In both cases, samples were collected from the top 15 cm of the soil profile.
4
There was some evidence (although subject to considerable controversy) that, on the most fertile soils, the use of
improved maize seed, without applying fertiliser, was sufficiently attractive for adoption by smallholders.
5
There is a direct relationship between the Organic Carbon content of the soil and the Soil Organic Matter (SOM)
content – the percent SOM is typically calculated as being 1.75 times the percent Organic Carbon content of the soil.
16
Table 3: Organic Carbon data for three ADDs in Malawi
BLADD
data set:
Mean Organic Carbon (%)
number of samples
KADD
LADD
1970s
1990s
1970s
1990s
1970s
1990s
1.38
1.24
2.05
1.75
2.29
1.58
94
204
118
242
120
171
significance of t-test comparing
differences of means
0.096
<0.001
<0.001
samples (%) characterised as
sandy (S or LS)
11
-
37
24
93
31
samples (%) characterised as
loamy (SCL or SL)
68
-
56
76
4
68
Although it needs to be interpreted with caution, Table 3 does provide some evidence for a
decline in SOM:6
• Only in Blantyre ADD is there not a statistically significant difference in the mean Organic
Carbon values for the two data sets.7
• Considering the soil texture characteristics of the two sets, the later data set has a higher
proportion of loamy samples. On the basis of texture alone, one would expect the 1990s
samples to have a higher Organic Carbon content. The opposite is the case, indicating that
the decline in Organic Carbon levels may be somewhat greater than is indicated.
• However, although the trend is cause for concern, the mean Organic Carbon values are not
extremely low yet. The Soils Team at Chitedze uses a critical value for Organic Carbon of
0.90 percent to define a sample with low organic matter. The means from both periods are
well above this level. The Organic Carbon values for 10 percent of the samples examined
from the 1970s and 20 percent from the 1990s are below this critical value.
TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE8
Overview
The evidence is clear that varietal maize improvement has had a transitory impact on smallholder
farming in Malawi unless farmers address widespread declines in soil fertility. Without such
technology, the productivity of smallholder maize-based farming systems in Malawi will fail to
improve. Further evidence for this position (using examples from elsewhere in southern Africa)
is reported in Kumwenda et al, (1995)
6
Bias in the collection of samples cannot be ruled out. It is quite conceivable that soils were collected, particularly in
the 1970s, from ‘progressive’ farmers – those who have considerable contact with the extension service and who likely
manage their soils well. Moreover, laboratory analysis procedures may have differed between the two data sets.
7
This spatial pattern is reasonable if one considers that demographic pressures in BLADD were such that already in the
1970s rotations, long-term fallows, and other SOM maintenance strategies were becoming difficult to practice. Hence,
declines of SOM in BLADD are not as pronounced. It has only been in the past two decades that these pressures have
especially been felt in the other two ADDs, with a resultant loss of SOM.
8
See Buresh R., Sanchez P., and Calhoun, F., eds. (1997) Replenishing soil fertility in Africa, Madison: Soil Science
Society of America for an accessible, detailed and comprehensive review of the choices. Chapter 7 by Giller et al ,
“Building soil nitrogen capital” is especially pertinent.
17
Immediate technical choices for change
The success of the germplasm led Green Revolution in Asia, under very different conditions and
with more fertile and uniform soils, has biased the research agenda in Africa away from crop
nutrition studies towards tempting but illusory gains from plant breeding. These gains will
remain illusory until the fundamental issues of providing the plant with adequate nutrients (soil
fertility management) are properly addressed.
There are effectively only three sources for supplying the key nutrient nitrogen in arable farming:
• organic sources recycled from within the cropped area or concentrated from a larger area,
• biological N-fixation, or,
• mineral (inorganic) nitrogen fertilisers.
Giller et al, 1997, in a comprehensive review of the options for building soil nitrogen capital in
African soils, discuss the potential for the restoration of soil nitrogen capital in relation to
potential sources of nitrogen, management methods, and the ability of soils to store and supply
nitrogen for crop growth:
“The most striking conclusion is inevitably that there are no quick-fix solutions to
maintenance of all forms of N capital, or SOM [soil organic matter]. Any proposed
interventions must generate cropping systems that are productive, sustainable, and
economically attractive for smallholder subsistence farmers. The conundrum is
that all restorative technologies for improvement of soil fertility without the use of
mineral fertilisers involve either import of organic materials from surrounding land
or allocation of land to produce organic materials. In the most densely populated
areas, land scarcity prohibits the devotion of land to restoration of soil fertility. In
such regions methods for replenishment of the short-term capital N store in soils
will be hard to find without either some other form of income generation or shortterm assistance to buy fertilisers or direct assistance to compensate for loss of
agricultural production, at least in the short term (p.153).”
Inorganic fertiliser
For most households in Malawi, the cash requirement needed to buy inorganic fertiliser far
exceeds their total annual cash income (HIID, 1994a). Fertiliser will remain a high cost item for
Malawi farmers for the foreseeable future even if more efficient delivery methods are found. As
noted earlier, it is not profitable to use on maize in Malawi in many instances. In Malawi,
value:cost ratios in 1995 averaged just 1.8 for fertiliser use on hybrid maize and 1.3 for
unimproved maize (Conroy and Kumwenda, 1995).
A recent economic analysis of fertiliser policy in Malawi (see HIID, 1994a) suggested that
improvements in fertiliser use efficiency could substantially outweigh feasible price changes in
either fertiliser or maize in making fertiliser economically attractive to smallholders. Nitrogen is
the most important limiting nutrient for maize production in Malawi. Table 4 presents the
analysis from available on-farm nutrient response trials in Malawi over the last 30 years. The N-
18
Table 4: Average N-use efficiency and unfertilised maize yields from nutrient response
trials in Malawi, by year.
Average
unfertilised
maize yield
(kg/ha)
Year
number of
trials
Average N-use
efficiency
(kg maize per
kg N)*
Brown & Young
ca. 1960
unknown
30
1660
Bennett
1971/72
66
33.9
2950
Bennett
1972/73
86
36.5
3410
Bennett
1973/74
96
37.3
2760
Maize Team
1974/75
51
32.6
2420
Maize Team
1976/77
95
22.7
2120
Maize Team
1977/78
88
25.9
1560
Maize Team
1978/79
71
24.5
2160
FAO fertiliser trials
1992/93
137
23.1
1550
Fertiliser Verification Trial
1995/96
1676
33.9
1760
Source
* These N-use efficiencies were calculated using the lowest rate of nitrogen applied in each trial programme - between 35
and 60 kg N/ha -and represent efficiencies under on-farm trial conditions, rather than responses farmers should expect. Nuse efficiencies are generally highest at the lowest rates of application. N-use efficiencies on farmers’ fields, under farmer
management, and using higher rates of nitrogen will be lower. The yields from the 1995/96 Fertiliser Verification Trial,
adjusted downwards to reflect potential on-farm yields and over all levels of N-application (ranging from 35 to 96 kg N/ha),
gave a national mean N-use efficiency of 18.7 kg grain/kg N-applied.
use efficiency data are equivocal. There may be a decline over the period but this is contradicted
by the most recent and comprehensive data set - the fertiliser verification trial 9.
This last trial shows (over the full range of agro-ecologies in Malawi) N-use efficiency estimates
remain within the expected range and that good physical returns from fertiliser use can be
expected. The trial was implemented to a generally high standard by Ministry of Agriculture
field staff on farmers’ fields. Addressing micronutrient deficiencies can make some extra gains
but virtually all maize in Malawi will respond well to nitrogen. Also, the chance of a low
response to nitrogen due to drought is much lower than in some neighbouring countries. Overall,
there is a good grain return to applied nitrogen.
Fertiliser composition: Although nitrogen is the dominant limiting nutrient, N-use efficiency is
affected by the availability of other nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S). The
introduction of high analysis fertilisers after 1990 (which do not include sulphur) may be
exacerbating sulphur deficiencies. Sulphur deficiency in maize has been reported by Lungu
(1974), MacColl (1984), and Matabwa and Wendt (1993). The maize fertiliser verification trials,
conducted at some 2000 sites, (Benson, Kumwenda, and Gilbert, 1997) have shown that the
application of the new compound basal fertiliser 23:21:0+4S, which supplied sulphur at 4 kg ha-1
gave mean yield increases of between 4-13 percent over DAP and urea.
The response of maize to additional phosphorus is only economically significant in some areas of
the country (Matabwa and Wendt, 1993). Benson (1997) cites studies reporting deficiencies of
boron, zinc, molybdenum, copper, magnesium and manganese in addition to sulphur (Brown,
9
In the 1995/96 season, 2000 maize fertiliser verification trials were conducted on-farm to develop area specific
fertiliser recommendations for smallholders under the aegis of the Maize Productivity Task Force.
19
1962; Bolton and Bennett, 1975; Silanpaa; 1982; Matabwa and Wendt, 1993). Such deficiencies
are probably locally significant.
Timing of fertiliser application: Malawi data show that splitting nitrogen fertiliser application
in Malawi is most effective on the lighter soils (Ngwira and Nhlane, 1986; Saka and Chisenga,
1990). Many smallholders delay applying the basal fertiliser until some weeks after planting10.
This has serious effects on fertiliser use efficiency (Ngwira and Nhlane, 1986; Kabambe and
Kumwenda, 1995; Kumwenda, 1994). Research conducted on farmer’s fields by Kabambe and
Kumwenda (1995) showed a reduction in maize yield of 700 to 1500 kg ha-1 when the basal
dressing fertiliser containing nitrogen and phosphorus was applied 2 weeks after planting.
Preliminary data from 157 on-farm trials by Sakala (1998) in the 1994/95 season indicate that
farmers can lose from 1000 to 1500 kg ha-1 of the maize grain by delaying the basal dressing
fertiliser by 4 weeks after planting.
Weeding: The interaction between crop yield and weed management is high. Weeds compete
with crops for soil nutrients, soil water and light, reducing maize yields by more than 50 percent
(Kumwenda, and Kabambe, 1995). Many smallholders in southern Africa use animal draft
power to control weeds - but few Malawi farmers own cattle11. Thus most weeding is done by
hand - a hard and time consuming operation where timing is critical to success. Weeding twice,
but at the appropriate times, will give as high a yield of maize on half the fertiliser, than weeding
once and using the full recommendation (see Figure 5 and Table 5) (Kabambe and Kumwenda,
1995).
Grain legume rotations
The rotation of maize with grain legumes such as soyabean, groundnut or Bambara groundnut
is one of the more promising technological options to improve soil fertility for Malawian
farmers. Brown (1958) compared several rotations involving maize and groundnuts at
Chitedze, Thuchila and Mbawa. Maize yields following groundnuts were 8 to 78 percent
higher than continuous maize. Groundnut yields after maize were 18 to 156 percent higher
than continuous groundnut yields. MacColl (1988) examined residual nitrogen left for maize
following legume crops of groundnuts, soyabean, lab-lab and pigeonpea near Bunda in central
Malawi. The nitrogen left for the maize varied from 0 to 52 kg N ha-1 depending on previous
species, soil type and precipitation. MacColl found that a higher nitrogen harvest index in the
legume led to a decreasing soil fertility benefit for the subsequent maize. This is now
translated into a general rule that the less high yield potential (low harvest index) legumes are
the ones with the greater benefit in terms of soil fertility.
10
If only modest amounts of fertiliser are used, then the best response is obtained if it is applied just after maize
emergence.
11
The expansion of cropping into the grazing area is a major factor in the decline of livestock holdings in Malawi.
20
Figure 5: Weeding by fertiliser management in maize
W4
5000
4000
Maize 3000
yield
(kg/ha) 2000
1000
W3
Weeding
W2 Regime
W1
0
92
46
0
Nitrogen applied (kg/ha)
Source: Kabambe & Kumwenda, 1995
W1 = no weeding.
W2 = weeded 21 days after planting.
W3 = weeded 21 & 45 days after planting.
W4 = weeded 21, 45, & 54 days after planting.
Table 5: An economic analysis of grain yields of the weeding by fertiliser management demonstration
from 118 on-farm sites in Malawi, 1996/97 season.
Weeding regime and
fertiliser rate applied
Trt 1
Trt 2
Trt 3
Trt 4
weed x 1,
half rate
weed x 2,
half rate
weed x 1,
full rate
weed x 2,
full rate
Mean yield (kg/ha)
2457
2892
3103
3704
Value @ MK2.00/kg
MK 4914
MK 5784
MK 6206
MK 7408
1
MK 975
MK 975
MK 1950
MK 1950
2
MK 400
MK 800
MK 400
MK 800
Net benefits
MK 3539
MK 4009
MK 3856
MK 4658
Cost of fertiliser
Cost of weeding
1
The cost of the fertiliser is 1.25 times the ADMARC price. The additional charges cover transport and the
opportunity cost of credit.
2
The cost of weeding assumes a ganyu labour charge of MK20/day and 20 man-days to weed a hectare, for a
per hectare weeding cost of MK 400.
Source: Action Group I - MPTF, 1998.
In the Midwestern US, a legume-derived fertiliser credit of 0.2 kg N kg-1 harvested soyabean
seed has been estimated (Karlen and Sharpley, 1994). This benefit is likely to be higher when
using a freely nodulating, promiscuous soyabean variety such as Magoye. The promiscuity of
Magoye allows it to form symbiotic associations with native soil rhizobia; thus it is able to fix
atmospheric N2 in a wide variety of agro-ecosystems without rhizobial inoculation. In
addition, it has a low nitrogen harvest index, and its leaves stay green longer than traditional
soyabean varieties, indicating a greater residual soil fertility benefit. Magoye has a seed yield
potential of 3000 kg ha-1 and has produced yields > 2000 kg ha-1 in Zambian soils low in
nitrogen (Javaheri, 1996). Zimbabwe data indicate that potentially Magoye soyabean can add
some 20 kg of nitrogen per hectare, although the availability to the following crop may be
compromised by the high lignin content of the residues (Mpepereki, 1998).
21
It is unlikely that any grain legume will be adopted solely for a soil fertility benefit alone.
The legume also must have a nutritional and/or economic value. In the 1996/97 growing
season, Action Group I of the Maize Productivity Task Force planted a grain legume at 300
on-farm sites of the 1995/96 area-specific fertiliser verification trial. The goal of this trial
was to determine the effect of residual phosphorus added in 1995/96 on legume growth and
yield in 1996/97. In addition, Action Group I wanted to compare the benefits of a maizelegume rotation to continuous unfertilised maize.
The preliminary results of this trial have been extremely encouraging. Figure 6 shows yield
data for 132 Magoye soyabean sites and 39 CG7 groundnut sites. The absolute yield of the
legume crop was considerably higher than continuous unfertilised maize for both species.
Mean soyabean yields ranged from 1380 - 1720 kg ha-1 across treatments, compared to 1090
kg ha-1 for maize. Mean groundnut yields were 1560 - 1890 kg ha-1, compared with 1170 kg
ha-1 for maize. Also note the increase in legume yield with increased residual phosphorus.
This residual effect from hybrid maize fertilisation provides an important corollary benefit to
maize-grain legume rotations.
These grain legume yields are from on-farm plots following fertilised maize, planted on time,
using improved varieties at optimal plant populations. Farmers who plant legumes late using
local varieties and sparse populations will obtain much lower yields12. An ICRISAT
groundnut trial in 1996/97 at 19 locations in Lilongwe ADD found that the yield gap between
CG7 and the farmer variety (Chalimbana) was 40 percent. When recommended agronomic
practices were combined with CG7, the yield improvement over farmer variety and farmer
management was 95 percent. Since the heavy rainfall in the 1996/97 season favoured the
farmer’s traditional long-season variety, the researchers state that this is the minimum yield
gain that would be achieved by CG7 using improved agronomic practices (Snapp and
Boughton, personal communication). CG7 yields on-station in Malawi averaged 1700 kg ha-1
from 1988-1992, and on-farm trial yields were 1400 kg ha-1, 71 and 117 percent higher than
Chalimbana during the same period (ICRISAT, 1997). Grain legume yields obtained will
depend on variety, management, soil and climate.
12
Groundnuts are often planted after maize and at low plant populations. Late planting is, at least in part, due to the
need to plant the main food staple first. Low populations are to optimise yield per seed planted (as seed is expensive and
scarce), rather than yield per unit area. It will be difficult to increase seed yields and soil fertility benefits under these
constraints. Smallholder legume seed multiplication (such as the work of Action Group II of the Maize Productivity
Task Force) is a crucial step to relieve seed constraints and enable smallholder farmers to achieve the full benefits of
grain legume rotations.
22
Figure 6: Grain legume yields in rotation with maize, with unfertilised maize control
2500
SOYABEAN
Grain yield (kg/ha)
2000
MAIZE
1500
1000
500
0
40
0
10
21
21
0
Treatment (P2O5 added in 1995-96, kg/ha)
2500
GROUNDNUT
Grain yield (kg/ha)
2000
MAIZE
1500
1000
500
0
40
0
10
21
21
0
Treatment (P2O5 added in 1995-96, kg/ha)
Even with these qualifications, grain legume rotations, particularly with CG7 groundnut and
Magoye soyabean, are competitive with continuous unfertilised maize in terms of both cash
and calories. The large amount of protein and energy (in the form of oils) in grain legumes
provides an important nutritional benefit to the relatively carbohydrate-rich Malawian maizebased diet. Figure 7, calculated from the same yield data, shows the clear superiority of the
grain legume rotation to continuous maize in terms of calories and protein generated. Protein
23
Figure 7: Grain legume rotation: estimated calorie and protein yields
12000
Soyabean
Calories
Protein
10000
600
400
-1
8000
6000
300
4000
Protein (kg ha )
Kilocalories ha
-1
500
200
2000
100
0
0
40
0
10
21
21
0
-1
Maize
Treatment (P2O5 added in 1995-96, kg ha )
12000
Groundnut
Calories
600
Protein
10000
400
6000
300
4000
-1
8000
Protein (kg ha )
Kilocalories ha
-1
500
200
2000
100
0
0
40
0
10
21
21
0
-1
Treatment (P2O5 added in 1995-96, kg ha )
Maize
produced was over four-fold higher in the leguminous cropping systems. Legumes such as
soyabean and groundnut have an important role to play in establishing household food
security in Malawi.
The grain legume rotations also compare favourably in terms of economic net benefit (on a
cash basis). After subtracting for fertiliser and legume seed costs, the groundnut rotation is
24
Table 6: Economic net benefits in Malawi (on a cash basis) of a maize-soyabean rotation (132 sites) and a maize-groundnut rotation (39 sites), 1997 market
prices.
SOYABEAN
Treatment
(N:P2O5:S added
in 95/96)
1.
3.
4.
5.
6.
2.
(96:40:0)
(35:0:0)
(35:10:2)
(69:21:4)
(92:21:4)
(0-Maize)
Maize
1995/96 Yield
(kg/ha)
Soyabean
1996/97 Yield
(kg/ha)
1995/96
Adjusted
Yield*
1996/97
Adjusted
Yield*
1995/96
Output
(MK/ha)
1996/97
Output
(MK/ha)
Seed Costs
1995-97
(MK/ha)
Fertiliser Cost
95/96
(MK/ha)
3990
2820
3010
3810
4170
1780
1720
1380
1500
1610
1690
1170
3190
2250
2410
3050
3330
1420
1380
1100
1190
1280
1350
940
7180
5070
5430
6850
7500
3200
3440
2760
2990
3210
3370
2110
465
465
465
465
465
600
2070
580
780
1560
1950
0
Maize
1995/96 Yield
(kg/ha)
Groundnut
1996/97 Yield
(kg/ha)
1995/96
Adjusted
Yield*
1996/97
Adjusted
Yield*
1995/96
Output
(MK/ha)
1996/97
Output
(MK/ha)
Seed Costs
1995-97
(MK/ha)
Fertiliser Cost
95/96
(MK/ha)
3800
2580
3060
3510
4030
1750
1870
1510
1670
1730
1890
1090
3040
2060
2440
2810
3230
1400
1490
1210
1330
1380
1510
870
6830
4640
5500
6310
7260
3160
7470
6060
6670
6910
7560
1960
1290
1290
1290
1290
1290
1290
2070
580
780
1560
1950
0
Two-year
Economic Net
Benefit
(MK/ha)
8080
6790
7170
8040
8460
4710
GROUNDNUT
Treatment
(N:P2O5:S added
in 95/96)
1.
3.
4.
5.
6.
2.
(96:40:0)
(35:0:0)
(35:10:2)
(69:21:4)
(92:21:4)
(0-Maize)
Two-year
Economic Net
Benefit
(MK/ha)
10940
8830
10100
10380
11580
4510
* Yields adjusted downward by 20 percent for small plot size and extension agent management.
25
still 96 to 157 percent more profitable using this criterion: the soyabean rotation is 44 to 80
percent higher (Table 6). Bambara groundnut returns (not shown) were 134 to 173 percent
higher.
The constraints to increased farmer adoption of grain legumes include:
• Groundnut has a low seed multiplication factor, and seed storage and planting costs tend to
be high. It also has significantly higher labour demands than many alternative crops.
• Seed of promising varieties, such as CG7, is often scarce at planting time and difficult to
find13. Few farmers know about the new varieties and their characteristics. The promotion
of CG7 and other new groundnut varieties should be a priority activity for organisations
such as the Maize Productivity Task Force.
• While soyabean has a higher seed multiplication factor than groundnut, the local market
price for soyabean is low relative to groundnuts. The economic analysis (Table 6) was
done using the median 1996/97 soyabean price of MK 2.50 per kg. If the goal for adoption
of a new technology is to have double the net benefits of unfertilised maize, then the
soyabean rotation does not meet this criterion at present soyabean prices. In order to have
all soyabean treatments meet this goal, either soyabean yield or soyabean prices must
increase by 28 - 81 percent over 1996/97, depending on treatment.
• Additionally, the MK 2.50 price is one-quarter the price that farmers obtained after the
1995/96 season. Farmer adoption rates of soyabean would be benefited greatly by stable
market prices. In addition, soyabean value and utilisation is constrained by unfamiliarity
with processing procedures.
Grain legume intercrops
Common bean or cowpea are often intercropped with maize and provide a useful supplement
to family diet and possibly income. But they are unlikely candidates as rotation crops, and, as
traditionally grown in intercrop, contribute little to soil fertility amendment. Pests and
diseases often render cowpea growth and yield negligible in Malawi. While bean is common
in higher altitude regions of Malawi, it is a poor fixer of atmospheric nitrogen. Yields are
low, and CIAT has found that soil N-deficiency is the most common constraint to bean
production in southern Africa.
The soil fertility benefit in grain legume rotation systems is often reduced by poor leguminous
residue incorporation. The residues, which are much richer in nitrogen than maize residues,
need to be put back into the soil to provide nitrogen for the subsequent maize crop. Often,
farmers take grain legumes such as soyabean and groundnut home for threshing, and the
residues never make it back to the field. Early incorporation of residues is important if the soil
fertility benefits of residues are to be realised.
13
Action Group II of the Maize Productivity Task Force is multiplying 33 ha of CG7 seed via their smallholder seed
multiplication programme during the 1997/98 season. Assuming a seed multiplication rate of 20:1 this will generate 50
tons of CG7 seed. If all the seed were replanted, 1000 tons would be available at the end of the 1998/99 season, and
20,000 tons at the end of 1999/2000. Clearly, it will take several years of concerted effort before enough CG7 seed is
available for the 1.6 million farming households of Malawi.
26
Long-duration pigeonpea is the one legume which has considerable potential to improve soil
fertility when grown as an intercrop14. Pigeonpea is widely intercropped with maize in
southern Malawi. It sheds its leaves in the field as it matures, leaving the N-rich biomass it
produces. Although checked in the early part of the season by vigorous maize growth, it
continues to grow after the maize harvest and to produce large quantities of biomass (Sakala,
1994). MacColl (1988) examined residual nitrogen left for maize following pigeonpea near
Bunda and found it varied from 0 to 52 kg N ha-1 depending on species, soil type and
precipitation. Pigeonpea grown for two years left between 24 and 107 kg N ha-1 for maize.
Sakala (1994) reported that pigeonpea (variety ICP9145) intercropped in maize gave a dry matter
yield of 3 t ha-1 from leaf litter and flowers, which accumulated 27 kg N ha-1. Data from the
1996/7 season indicate that leaves falling under pigeonpea in a maize/pigeonpea intercrop can
add 70 to 90 kg N/ha to the soil (Sakala, 1998).
Pigeonpea grows very slowly, and has a deep tap root which acts as a “biological plough” to
penetrate the soil impedance layer just below the ridge. It matures on residual moisture after
maize harvest, and is noncompetitive with maize. Since pigeonpea/maize systems exhibit
such an excellent temporal and spatial complementarity, pigeonpea should be promoted
exclusively for intercropping systems with maize.
The principal constraint to its use is that long season pigeonpea, suitable for such
intercropping, yields poorly in areas where livestock roam the fields freely after the maize
harvest, since it is readily browsed before it has time to mature.
Longer term and more difficult options for improving soil fertility
Undersown green manures
Intercropping, where two or more crops are grown mixed together on the same ground for all or
much of their life cycle is a widespread age-old practice in traditional African food agriculture
(Andrews, 1989). However, with the exception of long-duration pigeonpea, the soil fertility
benefits of most common intercrops are limited. Only small amounts of nitrogen are returned to
the soil by intercropped legumes when they are shaded by the associated cereals (Dalal, 1974;
Manson et al., 1985). Under smallholder management in Malawi, the potential for soil fertility
enhancement is even more modest. Legume intercrops produce very little biomass (and
consequently little nitrogen) because they are planted at low populations and suffer from
competition from the maize crop and from weeds (Kumwenda, Kabambe and Sakala, 1993;
Kumwenda, 1995) (see Table 7). However, on the fertile soils of Chitedze Research Station,
Crotalaria (sunnhemp) did improve maize yields of the subsequent crop by 1.1 t ha-1 as
compared with continuous maize without fertiliser.
However, cropping systems based on intercropping green manure species such as Mucuna
pruriens, Tephrosia vogelii or Crotalaria juncea (sunnhemp) into maize could potentially
increase soil fertility and maize yields in Malawi (Davy, 1925). Sunnhemp was used
extensively as a green manure in Zimbabwe until the 1950s (Rattray and Ellis, 1952) - but not
as an intercrop. The challenge in these systems is to produce enough green manure biomass
14
The shorter season varieties of pigeonpea do not compete well with the companion maize crop and yields are reduced.
Insect damage and difficulty in procuring seed also limit the potential of these varieties. At present only the long-season
varieties of pigeonpea in intercrops are seen as offering a promising, adoptable agricultural technology.
27
Table 7: Effects of intercropping maize and legume crops on dry matter production and nitrogen
content (kg/ha) of legumes at Chitedze Research Station in Malawi 1995.
Treatment
Dry matter
N-content
Maize/pigeonpea intercrop
1181
42
Maize/sunnhemp intercrop
4267
166
Sole pigeonpea
3322
133
Sole sunnhemp
5211
215
Pigeonpea and sunnhemp were planted on the same day as maize and
sampled 12 weeks after planting.
to have a large effect on subsequent maize yields without being overly competitive with the
intercropped maize.
Several studies have been undertaken looking at different ways of intercropping green
manures with maize. Preliminary results after one season of growth indicate that Tephrosia,
Crotalaria and Mucuna, when undersown early, can produce significant amounts of biomass
(> 2000 kg ha-1) when intercropped with maize at low -fertility sites in Malawi (Gilbert,
1997). Crotalaria matures quickly and thus it is difficult to manage the synchrony of its
nutrient release with maize nutrient uptake. Mucuna reduces maize yields through being
strongly competitive unless carefully managed. Tephrosia undersown at two weeks after
planting maize was the most promising treatment studied. Tephrosia, like pigeonpea, matures
on residual moisture and exhibits a strong temporal complementarity with maize. Tephrosia
planted simultaneously with maize has shown promising growth at 300 Malawi Agroforestry
Extension Project demonstration sites.
Late maturing green manures such as Tephrosia are ready when farmers find it easiest to
incorporate - during the mid dry season re-ridging, rather than at the end of the rains when
incorporation needs an additional operation. This adds to their value as a soil fertility
enhancer since there is a large time of incorporation effect on soil fertility benefits from
legume materials.
While Tephrosia/maize systems appear promising, the evaluation of maize yields in these
systems is in its infancy. Research and demonstration efforts involving green manures should
continue, but in the clear recognition that the time is not yet ripe for large-scale development
efforts or policy reforms regarding their use.
Leaf biomass transfer
Some species found near farmers’ fields produce large amounts of high quality leaf prunings
that, when applied to maize, can raise maize yields. The most promising of these are Tithonia
spp.. These species are worth encouraging on an opportunistic basis - but none will be
available in sufficient amounts to make a difference on its own. In combination with other
inputs, they may prove of value on a local scale.
Animal manures and composts
As pressure for arable land rises, cropping encroaches into areas previously used for grazing.
Agricultural intensification can be associated with a decline in the availability of animal manures
28
as livestock are squeezed out15. For example, manure from cattle and other animals is very
important for most farmers in Zimbabwe, less so in Zambia, but is rarely available in Malawi.
Even in the best areas, its supply (and, as importantly, its quality) is inadequate to maintain soil
fertility on its own.
Leaf litter from trees can make significant contributions in areas close to woodlands - but
deforestation associated with the demand for arable land and for building and firewood work
against this option as population rises. Composted crop residues are used in wetter areas and
where crop biomass production is relatively high - but composts are rarely sufficient for more
than a modest part of the cultivated area16. These technologies require a substantial labour
commitment on the part of farmers, and the availability of water to facilitate breakdown of woody
material. Organic manures alone will only rarely provide the productivity boost needed by
smallholders. They will need to be combined with the judicious use of chemical fertilisers,
improved pest and weed management techniques, and high yielding crop varieties.
Crop residue management
Crop residues available in Malawi after harvest include cereal stover, weeds, and legume
residues. In southern Malawi, smallholder farmers incorporate some residues into the soil, or
leave some on the soil surface17. In most parts of the Central and Northern Regions, the burning
or removal of crop residues is common to release nutrients quickly (although nitrogen and
sulphur are lost into the atmosphere), to ease land preparation, and to reduce pests and diseases.
Low quality (low nitrogen) crop residues incorporated into the soil reduce yields of subsequent
crops through N-immobilisation (Giller et al, 1997). Research at Chitedze on residue
management showed that burning of maize stover gave a significant increase in maize yield over
removal, incorporation, or leaving on the surface as mulch (Department of Agriculture, 1957,
1962, 1967). (See Table 8.)
To use the low quality cereal crop residues available in most smallholder fields in Malawi to
improve soil nutrient status, without affecting crop yields requires careful management (Giller et
al., 1997). Practical considerations rule this out under smallholder conditions. Options include the
addition of large quantities of inorganic N-fertilisers, legume green manures or residues rich in
nitrogen, or other high nitrogen organic sources to overcome the nutrient immobilisation potential
of poor quality residues (Giller et al., 1997; MacColl, 1988); composting; or feeding to livestock
to create manure. As shown previously, there are major difficulties for Malawi smallholders to
adopt such practices on a widespread scale.
15
This is more of a problem in the mono-modal rainfall areas of southern Africa - where the long dry season makes zero
grazing techniques difficult or impossible for smallholders - than in the bi-modal rainfall areas of eastern Africa.
16
17
And, like manures, quality is often poor.
However, much of the woody part is burned as domestic fuel, leaving only the leaves and light trash for incorporation.
29
Table 8: Response of maize to various methods of field preparation, Chitedze, 1956/57
Treatment
Yield (kg/ha)
Ridges split
2480
Ridges rebuilt
2715
Stover burned
3085
Stover buried
2770
Stover left as mulch
2315
Stover removed
2545
Mean
2665
LSD (0.05)
CV (%)
535
13.7
Minimum tillage
Soil losses under low productivity cropping on sloping land can be high. As noted
previously, labour for land preparation and weeding is short, especially under the hand hoe
systems practiced in Malawi. There are vocal advocates for zero or minimum tillage systems
which are promoted to reduce soil erosion and reduce the labour required for weeding. While
such systems may have potential merits, as they are not adequately proven, their promotion
should be tempered with caution under low fertility situations such as Malawi. They are only
suitable for improving soil fertility in situations where large amounts of organic residues are
produced, and where inorganic nitrogen fertiliser can be added to overcome the Nimmobilisation caused by the low quality residues.
Conclusions
For the remainder of this century and beyond, on present trends, population growth will
exceed growth in food production by 1 percent or more annually. Kumwenda et al reckoned
that in 1995 there was a structural food-deficit in Malawi of some 300,000 tons of maize which, if present productivity trends were continued, led to a deficit of some 2 million tons by
the year 2015. The improved maize seed and fertiliser technology is essential to the survival
of most Malawians into the foreseeable future. Carr (1998) estimates that, on conservative
productivity and adoption figures, some 19,000 tons of improved maize seed and 78,000 tons
of urea equivalent would provide a generous national food self sufficiency. This compares
with the present use of about 3,000 tons of seed and 25,000 tons of urea equivalent. The
incremental cost of providing this seed and fertiliser at present prices is about US$30m per
year.
Inorganic fertiliser is central to closing this food gap. Farmers still receive a good response if
they apply inorganic-nitrogen. The data are clear that soil infertility, dominated by Ndeficiencies (see the Fertiliser Verification Trial), is the major constraint to maize
productivity.
There may be an associated decline in N-use efficiencies caused by nutrient losses that could
be mitigated by increasing soil organic matter (see Figure 8). But the evident and serious
decline in unfertilised maize yields simply cannot be reversed by an organic strategy alone.
30
Figure 8: Mean N-use efficiencies in maize from nutrient response research trials in Malawi, by year
40
36.5
33.9
35
N-use efficiency
30
30.0
37.3
The N-use efficiency represents the units of maize
grain harvested per unit of nitrogen applied. The
efficiencies reported here are for nitrogen applications
of below 60 kg/ha.
32.6 These data are taken from on-farm trials, most of
which were researcher-managed. The gaps in the record
represent years in which no or very few on-farm
nutrient response research trials were run
25.9
25
24.5
22.7
23.1
76/77 77/78 78/79
92/93
30.7
20
15
10
5
0
ca.60
71/72 72/73 73/74 74/75
95/96
Season
The constraints to adoption, and the limitations of an exclusively organic strategy in terms of
crop response to feasible widespread options are simply too great.
This is not wholly to discount organic strategies. At present in Malawi, farmers do not have
enough cash to afford sufficient fertiliser, nor enough land to supply sufficient high-quality
organic materials to boost maize yields high enough to ensure food self-sufficiency. However
by combining the small amounts of inorganic and organic materials they can acquire, they
may be able to significantly increase their maize productivity. Moreover, anecdotal evidence
of farmer management practices leads most observers to conclude that organic matter content
in the soil is declining. Table 3 provides some qualified evidence for this. Without a supply
of nutrients to these soils, preferably from a combination of inorganic and organic sources,
both the food security of many farming households and of the nation as a whole will remain at
considerable and increasing risk.
The Maize Productivity Task Force is planning, for the 1998/99 cropping season, a largescale research and demonstration exercise comparing soil fertility amelioration options such
as area-specific fertiliser recommendations, grain legume rotations, maize-pigeonpea
intercrops and undersown green manures. This effort will serve to evaluate, on a widespread
basis, the available basket of “best bet” soil fertility options. The results should be valuable
in:
• helping farmers choose, in terms of their own situation, the best option for their needs, and,
• providing a sound basis, as already undertaken for inorganic fertilisers, for area-specific
recommendations for organic matter technologies.
31
There are other medium and long term changes and investigations that should be commenced
and /or strengthened without delay. However, as the following section will outline, there is
an immediate and short term soil fertility crisis which needs swift action. As the preceding
review has indicated, the technical options are few - each season that passes without
concerted, coherent, and widespread action to address the critical issues narrows further the
choices for change.
32
SECTION II: POLICY - BREAKING FREE
LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH
A comprehensive smallholder strategy
Malawi needs urgently to implement a strategy for broad-based income growth; a strategy to
capitalise on the promise of the technology that Malawian farmers are desperate to
implement. In present circumstances and disillusionment, there is a risk that donors will lose
sight of Malawi’s growth potential and invest mainly in targeted programmes that leave
untouched those whose productivity is essential to national food security. It is not enough to
keep the poor alive as the nation itself is sinking. It is not just the poor who need a safety net.
Malawi itself needs a safety net.
The only realistic hope for Malawi to break out of its current downward spiral is to restart
vigorous economic growth in a non-inflationary environment. The best way to do this is to
get hybrid seed and fertiliser into the hands of all of Malawi’s farmers. Nothing would help
quell inflation and dispel the current state of gloom and insecurity like a bumper maize
harvest shared by all of Malawi’s farmers, and delivered to the consumers as lower and
reasonably predictable maize prices.
The policy framework
National policy makers and donors have set a high priority on protecting food security as
agricultural marketing is transformed from dominance by ADMARC to a more dynamic
private trading system. Prices of all crops except maize have been fully liberalised. Private
traders are now free to buy and sell maize at prices dictated primarily by market conditions,
with the maize price band system operated by government. The system is designed to damp
out extreme variation (largely driven by growing season weather conditions) in maize
availability and prices. This price band system has four objectives:
• to encourage use of purchased farm inputs by assuring farmers a market for their maize at
harvest time at an assured producer floor price;
• to protect consumers of maize by releasing maize from the SGR (Strategic Grain Reserve)
into the market at a target ceiling price to assure that maize is available at reasonable
prices;
• to provide enough scope between the floor and ceiling prices so that private traders can
profitably buy maize at harvest time and store it properly for sale in the hungry season;
• to operate the band system in a way that facilitates maximum opportunity for the private
sector to participate in government purchase and sale activity.
Under circumstances foreseen when the band was designed, Malawi was expected to range
from surplus maize production in bumper crop years such as 1992-93 to maize deficits in
years of poor weather. Because of the long transportation distances to international maize
markets, the difference between import and export parity prices is great. Price swings of that
magnitude between surplus and deficit years would make it risky for producers to invest in
hybrid seed and fertiliser and would place consumers at risk of not being able to afford the
staple food crop in a shortfall year. Therefore, the band is narrower than the difference
33
between export and import parity prices. SGR purchases and sales are to stabilise prices with
the band representing the target floor and ceiling prices.
The food security crisis
Neither Government nor donors anticipated how fundamentally the twin events of the
collapse of the credit system and the increased cost of fertiliser would cripple maize
production in Malawi. The real impact was obscured for several years by emergency
distributions of free hybrid seed and fertiliser, combined with some of the best production
weather ever experienced in the region.
A price band system was introduced in the 1995/6 season, with ADMARC intervening
directly in the market to defend the price floor. The private sector purchased around 35000
tons of maize in that season. In the 1996/7 season, ADMARC continued to intervene to
defend the price band through its access to the SGR when necessary. There was marked
growth in private sector maize marketing. In 1997/98, maize offered for sale to marketing
agencies fell precipitously and Malawi was exposed to the full adverse impact of the
productivity collapse. People began queuing at ADMARC in August to buy maize, a
phenomenon normally expected following years of dire drought. Private traders paid linestanders to buy rationed ADMARC maize for MK 3.90/kg to resell it outside ADMARC’s
gates at prices as high as MK 10/kg.
The Malawi government responded to the crisis by releasing 78000 tons of maize from the
SGR, and sought maize on the international market using its own funds. It also sought, with
modest success, support for further imports from the donor community. Despite the release of
SGR maize and the importation of a further 122000 tons of maize, the consumer price of
maize in some markets rose from MK8 to MK10 per kilogram. The imported maize had to be
sold below its import price; a subsidy that diverted yet more funds away from priority areas.
Nearly half the imported maize arrived after the new harvest had started to come in due to
delays in mobilising resources and the time taken in transport.
The liberalisation upon which Malawi’s future growth depends is being tarnished in people’s
minds by the high prices they face in the market and the enormous rents conspicuously being
extracted by private traders18. At the same time as consumers are facing high prices, the
uncertainty caused by the erratic management of the price band and maize imports undercuts
the potential incentive effect of such prices for producers. There is no certainty that the
current crop can be sold at harvest time at prices to cover the costs of purchased inputs. The
economy is experiencing all the downside effects of liberalisation, but is deprived of many of
its benefits.
Implementation of the price band system has been mixed, while maize production has
collapsed. For the first time that many can remember, Malawians are queuing and paying
dearly for maize bran. The Cabinet Committee on the Economy has recognised that the price
band cannot be defended in the absence of adequate physical or financial resources to operate
the SGR. It has recommended that sufficient funds be made available for this (including a
financial reserve of US$8m to enable swift action on maize imports when necessary).
18
These are not profits received for the services of assembling, storing and marketing the crop, but rents from
successfully competing with consumers for ADMARC maize.
34
As the rains ended this year, small and large growers alike reported massive theft of green
maize despite extraordinary security measures. Large commercial producers and those
smallholders who are growing maize productively jointly say that the theft losses undermine
the textbook profits that the outside observer sees in today’s high maize prices. The
incentives promised under the economist’s ceteris paribus market conditions do not apply.
They can only be restored with some minimum of food security for all Malawian households.
It is essential to increase the food production on all smallholder farms, not just to increase the
production of the surplus producers.
Malawi’s deteriorating food security situation threatens to undo completely the impressive
progress made in laying the policy framework for growth. High maize prices create powerful
inflationary pressures, compromise household food security, promote labour unrest and fuel
demands for higher wages. Emergency maize imports have contributed to Government’s
runaway expenditure that further feeds inflation. Interest rates rise and the kwacha falls
further, undercutting productive investment and further driving up the cost of fertiliser for the
next crop.
With farmers using little hybrid maize and fertiliser, the current crop is likely to fall far short
of initial estimates. As was the case last year, early estimates tend to take more account of
good weather than of limited use of the key inputs of seed and fertiliser. The shortfalls show
up only in the final crop estimates when the maize is harvested and weighed. Under this
year’s crisis conditions (high consumer prices for maize meal and large scale theft of drying
maize from fields), households are eating an unusually high proportion of the crop as green
maize - with consequently less available for next year’s consumption.
A short crop and empty silos will reinforce inflation, the continued erosion in the value of the
kwacha, and the continued rise in fertiliser prices. The only realistic and practical way to
break this cycle and simultaneously to restart economic growth is to use the promise of the
best bet technology Malawi’s scientists have established to jump-start maize production for
all smallholders19. This would simultaneously improve the food security of all food-deficit
smallholder households, and sharply increase the marketed surplus available to urban
consumers.
POLICY OPTIONS
Sustainability, liberalisation, and survival – Are they compatible in the context of
Malawi smallholder agriculture?20
Malawi is unique in sub-Saharan Africa in combining a high human population density,
mono-modal rainfall, and poor soils. Other areas on the continent, with similar human
populations have substantially better rainfall and soils, allowing at least 2 crops per year.
Malawi, with some 80 percent of its population living in the rural areas has:
19
For the purposes of this paper, a “best-bet technology” is defined as a well-tested short-term solution to ameliorating
soil fertility at the smallholder level. These technologies include area-specific fertiliser recommendations, grain legume
rotations and maize/pigeonpea intercrops. However, there are some longer-term “best-bet” soil fertility options being
evaluated by MoAI, such as Mucuna rotations and Tephrosia intercrops, which are worthy of research support but are not
considered well enough established for immediate large-scale development exercises.
20
This section is condensed from a paper of the same title presented by Stephen Carr at the IDEAA Inaugural Meeting,
Lilongwe, March 1998
35
•
•
•
•
72 percent of rural households on plots of less than 1 hectare
80 percent with no formal cash crop,
maize dominating the cropping pattern, and,
most families unable to feed themselves throughout the year.
Previous policy, as outlined in earlier sections, focused, quite logically, on intensifying maize
production. The policy was undoubtedly popular with farmers. Under the circumstances
pertaining, those that were able to adopt the necessary technologies did so. Those that were
unable to do so universally expressed a desire for the key components of seed and fertiliser.
But adoption came at the cost of major distortions to the economy, distortions which Malawi
was unable to fund from its own resources. Once these distortions were removed and a
largely liberalised economy established, the use of the improved maize seed and fertiliser
technology was no longer financially viable for many smallholders. The outcome has been
tragic. The 1996/7 supply of marketed maize (after a good growing season) fell precipitously,
the village level purchase price of maize quadrupled, and there was widespread hardship
amongst the majority poor section of the population.
It is evident that, in the peculiar circumstances of Malawi, the pursuance of a strict policy of
non-intervention in the market comes at an unacceptably high cost. In the longer term, prices
may rise to allow greater investment at the farm level and thus to increased productivity. Yet
it is quite possible that many Malawians will not survive to benefit from these changes. This
is not a stable or sustainable situation. The strategies required must primarily be concerned
with the immediate survival of rural households, and especially children, while longer term
policies are developed to meet the needs of Malawi into the next century. As with the
technical options, the choices are few:
Subsidies: Subsidies on inputs and on credit are discredited. Those that benefit directly from
an input subsidy are mainly farmers who already purchase the fertiliser and seed. There are
not many farmers who cannot afford fertiliser at price x, but who will be able to buy at price x
minus 10 or 20 percent. Since most of the fertiliser purchased goes onto tobacco, much of the
subsidy will accrue to tobacco growers. (Even in the highly controlled previous smallholder
fertiliser subsidy programme, much of the fertiliser ended up on tobacco, and in a liberalised
market, far more would do so, no matter the intent.) Even were the subsidy somehow limited
only to fertiliser applied to maize, the only effect on production comes from the marginal
increase in fertiliser purchases. The subsidy on seed and fertiliser that would have been
purchased anyway increases the income of the user, but does not add any production. In
short, there will not be much production response to a subsidy and virtually all of the direct
benefits will go to the larger growers who can raise cash or credit. As did the previous
smallholder programme, it will leave the lower 75 percent virtually untouched.
While the shortage of cash with which to purchase inputs is a dominant constraint on their
widespread use, credit schemes aimed at funding inputs for food crop production in Africa
have almost universally failed. As indicated earlier, Malawi’s earlier success with rural credit
was reliant on a particular political environment which allowed for the rigorous collection of
debts. Currently Malawi is developing a viable commercial credit system to support cash
crop production - an initiative which would inevitably and seriously be undermined by the
introduction of a parallel credit system for food crops that accepted a higher level of default.
36
Diagne (1997), in probably the most comprehensive study of smallholder credit in Malawi to
date, shows that increasing access to credit, for most households, has only marginally
beneficial effects on household annual income. The effect is still too small, except for
households who are actively involved in cash cropping, to create an significant difference in
per capita incomes, food security, and nutritional status between credit programme members
and those of non-members21.
Increasing cash crop production: Increased income from the sale of cash crops could enable
smallholders to purchase the necessary inputs for maize. There is good evidence that the
successful smallholder burley initiative has been linked to improved maize production on the
farms involved (although it may also have served unintentionally to compromise national
food security). Other cash crops - cotton, chilies, paprika - may serve a similar purpose. But
even at generous estimates of involvement in cash crop production, only some 20 percent of
the farming population will be affected. Despite the real progress that has been made in
recent years to promote cash cropping amongst smallholders, it will remain a minority
occupation for the next decade at least. Many primarily subsistence-oriented producers
justifiably remain unwilling to accept the risks involved in depending on the market for part
of their subsistence. Thus it seems unwise to rely solely on the cash generated by cash crops
to produce the volume of maize necessary for national food security.
Changing the food staple: There are sensible reasons for Malawi to reduce its reliance on a
single food staple but the challenges to achieving this are considerable. Firstly, as indicated
earlier, maize has become dominant in the high plateau of southern Africa, not because it has
been promoted by the authorities at the expense of other choices, but because it is an excellent
choice for the environment. Farmers have increased the proportion of unimproved maize in
their cropping system because it is a reliable and relatively easy crop to grow.
Other food staples, to be competitive with maize, have to be reliably more productive at lower
cost and less risk than the preferred technology of improved maize and fertiliser. Existing
proposals to change the food staple (as opposed to adding some modest diversity to the
farming system) are seriously compromised by both by technical flaws on the performance of
the proposed alternative staple crops and misconceptions about the agronomic and socioeconomic suitability of the alternative crops relative to maize. Moreover, regardless of the
staple food crop, continuous cropping without adding nutrients will lead to reduced soil
fertility, declining yields, and increased food insecurity for Malawi.
Improving the productivity of smallholder maize based cropping systems: the preceding
technical review has shown that, in the immediate future, there are only two real options:
•
increasing access to the improved maize seed and fertiliser technology, and,
•
diversifying the cropping system through the adoption of locally suitable combinations
with grain legumes, principally as rotations.
21
Diagne notes that, in the longer term, credit programme members may establish a wider difference between
themselves and others. However, he emphasises that this is most likely to occur where the farmer is borrowing for a cash
crop rather than for maize. He also observes that it is those farmers on small holdings who are least likely to benefit
from access to credit.
37
These are complementary to one another and have the prospect of being widely adoptable.
The following sections add substance as to how these may be developed in a policy context.
IMPROVING ACCESS TO THE IMPROVED MAIZE SEED AND FERTILISER TECHNOLOGY
This strategy has several components:
• providing all smallholders with small packs of improved seed and fertiliser. These they can
use to learn (and appropriately modify for their own circumstances), on their own fields,
the new area-specific recommendations from the work of the Maize Productivity Task
Force (MPTF). They can also learn improved management techniques to realize yield,
cash, and soil fertility benefits from legume rotations.
• ensuring that supplies of improved seed and fertiliser are readily available for purchase in
all rural markets in small bags of 1-3 kg at a price which is comparable, per kilogram, to
those of existing large bags, and
• providing opportunities for able-bodied individuals to increase their purchasing power for
seed and fertiliser through a structured fertiliser (and seed) for work programme
implemented during the dry season.
“Best bet” starter packs for all smallholders
By way of a concrete proposal, the starter pack would be a specially packaged 2.5 kg packet
of hybrid seed and the fertiliser recommended for that quantity of seed when grown for home
consumption. This will plant 0.1 of a hectare. If it yields 1,800 kg/ha on average and
replaces local unfertilised maize yielding 800 kg, then the household will gain an extra 100 kg
of maize on the 0.1 ha of fertilised hybrid maize. This incremental production will feed a
household for more than a month in the hungry season. Its hungry season market value this
year would be at least MK500, which is more cash income that a poor family would see in a
year. It is a meaningful contribution to family welfare at the household level. At the national
level, 1.8 million households producing 100 kg more per household provides incremental
national production of 180,000 tons.
The programme provides all smallholders the means to test for themselves improved maize
seed and fertiliser technology under their own conditions, without the risk inherent in
purchasing the necessary inputs. It is a technology testing and demonstration programme for
a small part of each farm, facilitating experimentation by farmers of promising but not yet
widely adopted technologies. This programme is a long-term development effort and requires
the security of at least a five-year time horizon.
A starter pack programme will result in more production than an equivalent subsidy since it
goes directly to people who have no hope of purchasing inputs - all inputs thus generating
incremental production. It would also be more robust than a credit programme for the poor
and reinforces the effective operation of the liberalised market. Food aid interventions have a
far greater potential to undermine motivation, emerging market structures, and initiative since
the benefit is the same no matter how much or how little effort was expended to produce food.
The vast majority of the smallholders are so short of cash that they presently represent no
market for hybrid seed or fertiliser. Giving these a starter pack will not displace any
commercial purchases. If the package is small, it will stimulate, not diminish the incentive to
38
purchase more inputs22. Even with such a small package of high productivity inputs, there are
large rewards to good husbandry, especially to timeliness of planting, fertilising, and
weeding. There is a strong incentive and reward for using effectively any inputs provided.
Familiarity and confidence with this recommended technology should help to expand its use.
As farmers accumulate experience with hybrid seed and fertiliser, it is reasonable to expect
them to start buying small supplementary quantities on their own. Thus the programme
should stimulate, not substitute for, market demand.
From several hundred applied research trials and two thousand farmer verification sites,
Malawi’s Maize Productivity Task Force has developed recommendations for the use of
improved seed and fertiliser for maize production according to agroclimatic zone and
farmers’ economic circumstances. For the nation, the investment in the research and trials
programme has virtually eliminated the risk of failure inherent in the universal
implementation of these recommendations. For individual farmers, especially first-time
users, there remain risks with the technology. From a national point of view, introducing the
improved maize seed and fertiliser technology into all zones and to all smallholder farmers
will have a high payoff. The wider and more comprehensive the programme, the less is the
risk and the higher is the payoff to the nation. While, in the first instance, the recommended
focus is on improved maize seed and fertiliser, the strategy can be developed and modified to
encourage the introduction of new and more diverse cropping systems as proven options
become available.
Malawi’s current national food security problem arises because even the “rich” smallholders
cannot raise the cash to buy fertiliser and hybrid seed. Thus, for this programme, the target
population is the smallholder population23. Excluding “larger” smallholders omits from the
programme many of the most promising farmers, community leaders, and innovative
elements. If starter packs are intended for all, it is far more likely that all will receive them.
In any large scale programme, there is always some problem of leakage and diversion.
However, based on experience with the most recent supplemental inputs programme, such
losses can be kept modest through careful household level registration and requiring personal
collection of the package.
The poor will be a bit better off with this programme, but still will be poor. Thus this effort is
complementary, and does not substitute for, ongoing activities. The poverty alleviation
programme will still be needed. A national fertiliser for work programme as proposed in a
subsequent section would allow many smallholders to fertilise all their maize. Sustaining the
steady increase in food production that is fundamental to Malawi’s growth will require an
effectively functioning credit and savings programme to finance both the purchase of inputs
and storage of the crop. The large swings in production due to variable weather will require
some variation of the price band arrangement to accumulate maize in surplus years and inject
it into the market in short years.
22
The package should be of a size that can be carried away easily by an individual on foot. Consistent with the “starter”
concept, they should not contain inputs for more than 0.1 hectare. The package needs to be small enough, at a household
scale, that it really is a starter pack, but yet adequate, on a national scale, to create a significant production difference
when distributed to 1.8 million households.
23
Only 12 percent of smallholder households have more than 2 hectares. In the survey of all smallholders in the target
EPAs of the most recent drought inputs program, the top income quartile had an annual cash income of around MK600.
Only in a relative sense are they rich compared to the bottom quartile with annual cash incomes of around MK40.
39
The indicative cost (in US$) of a representative pack is estimated roughly in Table 9. This
illustrative pack also includes a grain legume24. Since there is not enough soyabean or
groundnut seed in the country for anything like 0.1 ha per smallholder, only a small amount
of such seed could be included in early years. For this, an allowance is shown without details.
The fertiliser provided, if applied to 0.1 ha, represents a per hectare rate of application of
69:21:0+4S (kg of N:P2O5:K+S). This corresponds to the predominant area-specific fertiliser
recommendation nationally when growing maize for home consumption25.
Table 9: Estimated cost of a representative best-bet starter pack
2.5 kg hybrid seed @ $1.00/kg
US $ 2.50
10 kg 23-21-0+4S basal fertiliser @ $0.50/kg
$ 5.00
10 kg Urea top-dressing fertiliser @ $0.50/kg
$ 5.00
Sachet of Actellic @ $0.20
$ 0.20
26
Allowance for rotation and intercrop planting materials
$ 2.80
Instructional materials and packaging
$ 2.50
Total
US $18.00
If the cost were US $18 per household, this would make a total direct annual programme cost
of $32.4 million. Assuming that the benefits from the rotation and intercrops roughly offset
the programme administration costs, if the value of the incremental maize is in excess of
$180/tonne, the programme would more than offset its cost 27.
Complementary open market small inputs pack programme
Farmers are interested in income, and income is affected by the price of both inputs and
outputs, as well as by the physical ratio of input to output. In Section I of this paper, the
focus was on addressing the technological options for improving the ratio of input to output
for smallholder maize in Malawi. It is also apparent from previous discussion that the price
of one of the most important inputs to maize production in Malawi, nitrogen, has increased
markedly in recent years. This is despite the fact that, internationally, the price of fertiliser
has been trending downwards (Donovan, 1996). Two main factors account for this:
• failure to constrain inflation in the Malawi economy, and
• a doubling in transport costs in getting fertiliser from the supplier to the Malawi farmer.
24
In the example which follows, the starter pack also includes a grain legume rotation component. This would be an
“ideal” starter pack. However, the availability of adequate quantities of suitable grain legume seed in the immediate
future make it unlikely that such a complete pack could be offered on a nationwide scale.
25
A single size fertiliser package is offered to facilitate pack assembly. Information will be provided with the pack on
how the rate of application should be modified to provide the greatest benefits to the farmer, given his or her location,
resources, and production aim, as well as the soil texture of the maize field.
26
Soyabean seed @ $0.25/kg; seeding rate of 70-90 kg/ha.
Groundnut @ $0.50/kg; seeding rate of 90-110 kg/ha.
Pigeonpea @ $0.25/kg; seeding rate of 6 kg/ha.
27
If this program cost exceeds what can be financed, then the package could be reduced as needed, or introduced more
gradually starting with areas where highest benefits are expected. A starter pack as small as one kg of hybrid seed and
accompanying fertiliser distributed to all smallholders would accomplish many of the program’s objectives, although
with less immediate impact on national production.
40
As noted in the preceding section, one major factor in reducing inflation would be a
productive smallholder sector and a reliable supply of maize at a price which is affordable to
Malawi’s majority poor. Reducing the cost of the key input, fertiliser, would do much to
improve smallholder maize productivity in Malawi.
Malawi’s market infrastructure
Malawi, partly as a consequence of population density and partly as a result of deliberate
policy (through ADMARC), has a surprisingly active and accessible system of periodic and
local markets. Smallholders use these markets extensively. Commodities of all kinds
(including fertilisers) are broken down in these markets and sold in small amounts to whoever
wishes to purchase them. Along the better roads, there is active trading to supply the urban
centers, especially with vegetables. There are local stores which stock modest supplies of
household essentials and cheap consumer goods.
Despite all this market activity, price differentials between markets are high and much
trading, outside the ADMARC stores, is under-capitalized and dependent on the cash flow of
the trader. Farmers desperate for cash in the hungry season will bring produce for sale at
whatever price they can realise. Petty traders will use expensive and unreliable transport to
bring consumer goods from town and sell them at an inevitably high mark up. Many stores
are only open for a few months around harvest time since, at other times, no one has money to
buy.
The private agricultural market sector in Malawi consists mainly of these poorly capitalised
and scattered rural operations and a few larger firms mainly dealing with estates. Market
liberalisation has provided opportunities to private firms to expand into the area previously
monopolised by various government agencies, but the reality is that these firms will
inevitably deal with the small numbers of farmers who have access to credit and who are
marketing cash crops. Earlier discussion indicated that, for the immediate future, such
farmers will remain a small, if important, minority.
The place to reach smallholders, therefore, is to stimulate and develop the existing
infrastructure of small rural trading centers and periodic markets. These operate by catering
to the needs of the very poor. Mainly through making commodities available in small
quantities, they enable the poor to gain at least some access to items that would otherwise be
outside their grasp.
Marketing fertiliser in small bags
ADMARC plans to make fertiliser available in bags of 25 kg as from the 1998/99 season.
However, even this amount is too expensive and too risky for most smallholders. The agency
has, in the past, experimented with selling fertiliser in any amount from bags opened in its
main markets but problems of stock control and theft made the programme unworkable.
In Western Kenya, an NGO called Sustainable Community Orientated Development
Programme (SCODP)28 has been experimenting with the commercial marketing of fertiliser in
small bags to smallholders. It operates a central store where fertiliser is packed into bags of
28
SCODP is supported by USAID and the Rockefeller Foundation, and has informal credit with a major commercial
fertiliser supplier in the form of fertiliser on a 90-day credit basis
41
between 1 and 3 kg and then either sells these bags through its own stores, or through existing
trading outlets. Their market research showed that these bag sizes would be most attractive to
farmers and that farmers would travel 1-2 km on foot in order to buy them.
This information has been borne out in practice, with the greatest demand being for bags of 13 kg, even though bag sizes of up to 50 kg were available at SCODP stores. Their results
have been encouraging. Their first store opened with a stock of 30 tons of fertiliser in July
1996. By the end of September, the supplier was paid in full and an additional 24 tons had to
be purchased to meet demand. A new store opened in a neighbouring district in 1997 sold 2.5
tons in the first month of opening. Sales through another store, this time an existing
operation, also showed a similar pattern.
A strategy for developing a market for fertiliser in Malawi’s smallholder areas could revolve
around dividing the country as follows:
Remote and very low income areas: these correspond to those in which the SCODP
programme is operating in Western Kenya. There are few viable stores and markets (except
in a seasonal basis) and the demand for fertiliser is minimal (if it exists at all). The SCODP
experience shows that fertiliser demand can be awakened quickly, but the effort required is
intensive, time consuming, and unprofitable in the short term at least. It is unlikely territory
for private sector involvement but lends itself to a coordinated NGO effort. The donor
community can assist through start up resources, such as providing the initial cash to set up a
revolving fund to purchase the fertiliser. The fertiliser industry might, at a minimum, provide
a line of credit (say, 90 days) plus some modest resources (bag sealers, a start up fund of
fertiliser). In the longer term, through NGO and other efforts, community based commercial
organisations could take over the operation.
Commercially viable markets: such areas lie along the main roads and in the more
prosperous farming areas. There are stores which are open most of the year and which sell a
variety of consumer items already. Selling farm inputs would expand the range of items sold
from these stores (but it is unlikely that there would be sufficient sales to enable a solely
agricultural inputs business to operate in the first instance). Store owners would need to be
helped to understand how to store agricultural inputs in a general store without causing health
risks to customers. In return for providing them with a revolving line of credit (say, 90 days)
plus some capital items such a bag sealers, traders would be required to sell their bags at an
agreed price which was not excessively above the price per kilogram of fertiliser in 50 kg
bags29. SCODP has developed several innovative marketing techniques, such as “minipacks”
(fertiliser in 100-300 g bags which can be sold to farmers to experiment with at very low
cost), information posters, and promotion methods, which help quickly build up the local
fertiliser business.
Fertiliser for work30
In 1995, an impressive free inputs programme was implemented to address a previous food
crisis following a drought year. This programme reached some 600000 families and resulted
in a maize crop sufficient to stabilise grain prices for a year - which is indicative of the
29
Small lots of fertiliser sold in rural markets are around 3-4 times more expensive per kilogram than the large bags.
30
This section is drawn from “Sustainability, liberalisation, and survival: are they compatible in the Malawian
smallholder sector?”, a paper presented by Stephen Carr at the inaugural IDEAA meeting in March, 1998.
42
effectiveness of the approach. Through the programme, free seed and fertiliser were provided
to the worst affected areas of the country (the programme was targeted in a geographical
basis, not by separating out the “poorest” families in any one area).
There are two main problems with such an effort:
• the allocation of inputs is inevitably subject to strong political forces and can engender
serious jealousy both within and between communities, and,
• the large scale distribution of explicitly free inputs interferes with efforts to develop an
efficient market economy.
By linking fertiliser and seed distribution to work for the benefit of the local community, both
these disadvantages can be minimised, if not entirely eliminated. There is a desperate need
for local infrastructure which a large force of local people could help develop. However, it
would require substantial planning and preparation in advance in order to mobilise hundreds
of thousands of people for two to three months in the dry season. There would also be
significant implications for the national budget which need to be kept in mind.
Pilot projects have been tried out by NGOs but there has been little analytical work on the
implications and requirements of a national programme. The actual details of what quantities
of fertiliser and seed would be distributed through such a programme remain to be worked
out. A reasonable target would be to provide participating households with sufficient
fertiliser and seed for between 0.1 and 0.3 ha. It is imperative that private input suppliers are
involved in the operation of such a programme, possibly through a voucher system whereby
participants would be issued vouchers for seed and fertiliser in exchange for their labour.
These vouchers would be redeemed through local private input suppliers. If linked to the two
previous initiatives, the strategy would increase the throughput of private sector suppliers,
help increase their reach and effectiveness, and build future demand for their inputs as
farmers become confident that they can use fertiliser and improved seed profitably.
Review
Government and the donor community are agreed that the most feasible growth strategy for
Malawi is one that centers on increasing the productivity of the smallholder, especially on
maize production (HIID, 1994b). Government, donors, and the farmers themselves know
how to increase maize production. Unless they can work together to make this happen and
soon, no combination of other interventions will stop the downward economic spiral. There
will be increasing disillusion with liberalisation, and growing desperation of the poor.
The starter pack programme proposed here could put an extra bag of maize in every
smallholder household. Combine that with the other three initiatives and the return could
quickly be affordable maize prices to the urban poor and middle classes. These programs
could help stem the tide of inflation and stagnation. They could help win support for
liberalisation and stimulate the private sector, both directly through increased demand for
inputs and indirectly by reducing wage pressures. As competing uses for this amount of
donor and Government funds are reviewed, the benefits that would accrue from this
programme should be the standard by which those other options are judged. Given the
resources, such a programme can be done quickly and on a large enough scale to change the
national mood of despair over the deteriorating food situation.
43
Figure 9 shows the results of a preliminary analysis of the potential effects of such an effort
that combines the three soil fertility interventions of the starter pack, small input pack
marketing, and fertiliser for work programmes.
The methodology used was that reported in Kumwenda et al (1995), with the assumptions,
based on that prior example, as laid out in Figure 9. Four national maize production trend
scenarios result from the additive implementation of the three soil fertility interventions.31.
• Scenario 1: this is a simple continuation of current smallholder productivity performance.
The depth of Malawi’s food crisis is indicated. Continuing reliance on low productivity
food staples (all of which will yield, at best, +/-1000kgs/ha) results in an impossible food
deficit situation.
• Scenario 2: this assumes implementation of the starter pack programme in the 1998/99
season with all smallholder households participating. The pack is sufficient for 0.1 ha.
The starter pack programme has the potential to have an immediate major impact on
national food supply, as well as contributing to household food security for the majority of
poor households who cannot be reached by conventional credit and market systems.
• Scenario 3: in this scenario, the starter pack is supplemented by households buying
matching amounts of fertiliser. Twenty-five percent of households purchase small packs
sufficient for 0.1ha in the 1999/2000 season, 50 percent in 2000/2001, 75 percent in
2001/2002,and all households in 2002/2003. This brings the total fertilised maize per
household by the end of 2003 to 0.2ha.
• Scenario 4: Here the effect of fertiliser for work is added to those of the previous two
scenarios. The model assumptions include a programme reaching 50,000 households
starting in 1999/2000, which enables these households to plant 0.3ha each. One hundred
thousand households participate in the second year, 300,000 in the third, and 600,000 in
the fourth. After that date, there is no increase in the programme. This last effort shows
the capacity of the fertiliser for work programme to bring in the quantities of nutrients
need to address the long term soil fertility crisis.
Figure 9: Scenarios for maize productivity improvement
400000
Current trends
National maize surplus/deficit (t)
200000
Starter pack
0
Starter pack & small input pack
marketing
Starter pack, small input packs, &
fertilizer for work
-200000
Assumptions:
Maize area: 1,400,000 ha.
Initially 10 percent planted to improved seed with
a yield of 2.5 t/ha.
-600000
Yield of unimproved is 1.0 t/ha.
Initial population is 10 million in 1.8 million
households. Increases by 3.2 percent per annum.
-800000
Per capita annual maize consumption of 200 kg.
Starter pack: All households receive sufficient
-1000000
hybrid/fert to plant 0.1 ha.
Small input pack marketing: 25% of households
purchase inputs for 0.1 ha of improved maize in
-1200000
1999/2000; 50% following year; 75% in 01/02;
and 100% of households purchase enough for 0.1
31
The numbers used in scenarios 2 to 4 are illustrative. They are intended to behasuitably
conservative.
Although the
in all following
years.
-1400000
work: Improved
maize on 0.3 ha per
scenarios are projected through to 2010, the immediate purpose is to demonstrateFertilizer
that afor
feasibly
implementable
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 hh involved. 50,000 hh in 98/99; 100,000 next
programme can have a noticeable impact on the current food crisis situation without
disrupting the developing market
year; 300,000 in 00/01; and 600,000 in all later
-400000
forces.
Harvest Year
44
In all four scenarios, the dominating effect of population growth is evident. Although this
paper is unable to deal with population issues, it is evident that immediate steps are needed to
address this area.
Through the thousands of trials and verification plots run by the MPTF, the pilot work already
has been done for a national technology adoption programme. The technology is known; the
need is urgent. The programme can be implemented quickly and in a way that will support
and encourage a liberalised market and dynamic private sector. As USAID’s Food Security
Analysis (Brown, Thompson, and Reutlinger, 1996) concluded, liberalisation alone cannot
empower Malawi’s poor to buy inputs. The effort recommended here falls short of the cash
income transfer recommended for the poorest in that report. But starter packs for all
smallholders, small input packs, fertiliser for work, and savings mobilisation together can
empower all to participate in a shared process of economic growth, improved household and
national welfare. This strategy represents the “Best Bet” to restart the economic growth that
has so far eluded the newly democratic Malawi. Liberalisation and safety nets alone will omit
the only currently available engine of growth: the Maize Productivity Task Force’s Best Bet
technologies for all of Malawi.
45
SECTION III: POLICY - BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY
INCREASING THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF N-FIXING GRAIN LEGUMES
Improved maize seed and fertiliser is unquestionably needed to give the productivity boost
necessary to lift Malawi from its present situation. However, as noted in Section I, there are
disturbing signs of an unsustainable smallholder farming system as soils erode, the diversity
of the farming system declines, and household diets become reliant on an inadequate supply
of a single calorie rich crop. Maize/grain legume rotations (groundnuts and promiscuous
soyabean) and, where livestock do not graze extensively after the maize harvest (as in the
south of the country), maize/pigeonpea intercropping are the only other promising
technologies that:
• look to be at a stage suitable for large scale adoption, and,
• are competitive with unfertilised local maize in terms of calories and cash, and,
• Address, in part, the genuine concerns regarding sustainability, soil erosion, and soil
degradation that form an important component of the discussion on Malawi smallholder
agriculture.
This is not to discount the very many other, but local, options that should also be explored.
Green manures, agroforestry, improved fallows, the expanded use of composts, improved
household gardens all form a component of the matrix of better farming methods which
should be encouraged in Malawi. But, as described in detail in Section I, the widespread
applicability of these efforts is compromised by the need for further testing, the absence of
key components (such as widespread livestock ownership or adequate water supplies), or
simply by their unsuitability for the situation in which most poor smallholders in Malawi find
themselves.
MPTF verification/demonstration of maize/grain legume rotations32:
The MPTF has shown that, with good leadership and organisation, it is possible swiftly to
develop area-specific recommendations for smallholder fertility management technologies.
The achievement in producing area-specific fertiliser recommendations efficiently and with
the use of existing resources is considerable. This experience should be built upon and
expanded.
As reported in Section I, preliminary results after one season of growth indicate that
Tephrosia, Crotalaria and Mucuna, when undersown early, can produce significant amounts
of biomass (> 2000 kg ha-1) when intercropped with maize at low-fertility sites in Malawi
(Gilbert, 1997). Sole crop green manures on sandy soils can give substantial improvements in
subsequent maize yields. Action Group 1 of the MPTF has been studying, in a subset of their
large scale verification effort, the effect of residual fertiliser on the growth of legumes. The
results from this effort are encouraging although another year is required before the effect of
the legume on subsequent maize yields will be available. These research and demonstration
efforts involving green manures and other legumes should continue, but in the clear
32
Large parts of this section were written by Malcolm Blackie. This is not to claim credit, but to avoid any suggestion
that members of the MPTF, who have also been major contributors to this document, were using this opportunity to push
their own agenda.
46
recognition that the time is not yet ripe for large-scale development efforts or policy reforms
regarding their use.
The work of the MPTF should be given greater priority and a higher and more effective
profile within the development efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation. Future
verification/demonstration work should have a greater component of farmer participation in
the design and implementation of the effort so as steadily to alter the historically “top down”
approach of the Ministry.
As new technologies become available, the approach adopted by Action Group 1 in extending
its messages should become a more standard process. In the ‘developed’ world, farmers were
guided in the use of new and expensive technologies by carefully formulated farm management
advice. Such counsel is not available to Malawi smallholders. While clearly the cost of having
highly qualified farm management advisors readily available to all smallholders is prohibitive, so
too are the costs (both social and economic) of accepting the continuing decline in smallholder
farm productivity. It is practical to look, through joint ventures with donors and with private
sector input suppliers, at making good quality farm management advice more readily available to
those farmers already using modern inputs and to those whose efficiency can be readily improved
so as to make the use of modern inputs profitable.
The emphasis moves from making inputs "affordable"33 to making them profitable. It also moves
from the diagnostic (typified by efforts in Farming Systems Research and various forms of rapid
rural appraisal) and the prescriptive (from top down extension efforts to the training and visit
(T+V) system favoured by the World Bank) to a problem solving format in which the farmer is
actively involved. It provides a framework for effective research/extension linkages and
facilitates the evolution of a demand driven technology development process by smallholders.
Malawian farmers need to know how to blend and mix various technologies and management
factors to suit their particular circumstances. This requires “decision tree” type guidance
which is more complex to develop and deliver than the conventional message based
extension.
Action Group1 have set a useful standard in the implementation of decision tree guided
recommendations, and in the incorporation of basic farm management information (primarily
prices of inputs and outputs) into advice given to smallholders. This promising start should
be expanded and developed into a more general methodology for use within the Ministry of
Agriculture and Irrigation, and by others concerned with smallholder agricultural
development.
Improved smallholder marketing services, especially for grain legumes:
Required also is a policy environment which is conducive to the adoption of improved
technologies. Farmers need reliable markets to buy inputs and other goods and to sell their
produce, such as the promising grain legumes. These markets need to operate efficiently and
consistently. Innovation is needed to create an appropriate market infrastructure and to bring
into the market a greater proportion of those farmers currently excluded from it. As indicated
in earlier parts of this section, this is more than simply liberalising markets. The low
purchasing power of most Malawi smallholders, combined with the overall poverty of the
country, means that more must and can be done to improve marketing services.
33
By which is typically meant affordable in a subsidised form (with all the inherent problems and contradictions).
47
The technical interventions which have dominated the discussion in earlier sections of this
paper need to be supported by short term economic and institutional measures that have an
immediate impact, as well as longer term policies which address the underlying institutional
and economic constraints to marketed maize and other crop production and access34. Malawi,
in common with many smallholder dominated economies, is characterised by institutional
failure, especially in market services to smallholders (see Rukuni, 1995, for a graphic
description of smallholder institutional failure in Zimbabwe). Dorward and Kydd (1997)
suggest one of the most promising ways to address this failure in terms of improving access to
input and output markets is to look at the “interlocking” of finance, input supply and crop
markets. Interlocking transactions have recently been examined in competitive and semicompetitive liberalised markets and in conjunction with farmer groups.
A variety of (perhaps complementary) approaches to developing interlocking institutions
might be considered:
• the establishment of local (district or ADD) commercial monopolies,
• the involvement of input suppliers (fertiliser importers or seed companies) and grain users
(millers) in these commercial operations,
• support to small traders to enable them to trade actively in farm input and output markets,
• support to farmer organisations to enable them to participate more effectively in the
market,
• and the development of systems for inventory credit to allow farmers to hold maize and
other crop stocks for longer periods after harvest so as to be able to benefit from higher
prices later in the season.
The development of local market centers for fertiliser sales can, without a great leap of
imagination, be expanded to incorporate better purchasing services for smallholder outputs.
There needs to be active support to rural traders to enable them to service smallholders better.
The Zimbabwe experience with cotton may be relevant here, with its emphasis on quality and
quick payment. Smallholders, who are paid quickly and who receive a reliable and adequate
premium for quality, respond fast to the incentives. Smallholders are now the biggest
producers of cotton, without impairing quality, in Zimbabwe.
It is important to note that the value attributed to the grain legumes for the contribution they
can make in slowing the decline in soil fertility in Malawi stems from an agronomic
assessment of their role in smallholder cropping systems. However, farmers principally grow
grain legumes for the immediate economic benefits which they can derive from so doing, and
not, at least in the first instance, the soil fertility benefits. Consequently, in order to derive the
greatest soil fertility benefit for the nation, it is absolutely vital that the economic benefits
which farmers can derive from growing grain legumes be maximized.
Groundnuts are a crop which could readily be sold, at least regionally, for higher prices, if
there was a reliable quality crop available. In the longer term, the overseas market for
confectionery nuts might be regained. Soyabean and pigeonpea are probably less open to a
quality premium. But processing could be done in country instead of exporting the raw
34
Andrew Dorward and Jonathan Kydd shared a draft research proposal “Policies for fertilisers, food security and
agricultural productivity in Malawi: a research agenda”. Their contribution forms the core of this and several subsequent
paragraphs.
48
material. There is a regional shortage of cooking oils and Malawi could be well placed to
compete for this market. There appears already to be a significant trade in beans and
pigeonpea. ICRISAT report some 30,000 tons of pigeonpea exports in 1997 (Jones, 1998)
and there is a substantial roadside trade in beans, especially in border areas.
Farmers need up to date, easily accessible information on prices and price trends. This
information is currently available, but often late, in the major newspapers and some
government publications. The adoption of new crops and technologies would be enhanced if
regular market information was made available to smallholders, and they were assisted in
making their cropping decisions based on this information.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Particular attention needs to be paid to the agricultural production problems of the large numbers
of the poorest farmers. This group is analogous to the long term unemployed who occupy the
welfare rolls of the developed world (and who remain an intractable problem for those better
endowed countries). It will include the old, the work shy, the handicapped, and many single
mothers and widows. Their numbers may be substantial (as high as 40 percent of the smallholder
population in Malawi) and it certainly is a group that is growing. These are typically farmers
who do not reliably feed themselves and their families year on year. Thus their highest priority
will be to secure their family's food supply. A food crop productivity strategy will be the starting
point, but not the total answer. The poverty trap faced by the poorest families precludes their
active participation, under present circumstances, in a market economy (except as distress sellers
of labour and, sometimes, food). Both equity and reason indicate that they should not be ignored
- which, in fact, they are by the conventional technology development and extension process.
Cash crops can play an important role in priming the soil fertility input pump, by bringing extra
income to the farmer. In Malawi, for example, burley tobacco may be the only viable crop that
can generate sufficient income for smallholders from their tiny land holdings to significantly
improve cash availability (Carr, 1994). But in many situations it is unrealistic to expect
sophisticated and possibly risky cash cropping to provide the first step to a better life for this
group of farmers. They are desperately short of cash, cannot afford the luxury of
experimentation, and often lack the confidence and the ability to deal, unaided, with many
aspects of modern, market-centered society. Moreover, cash cropping depends on reliable and
honest markets for the inputs and outputs, and targeted production advice on a new commodity is
essential for farmers.
Credit is often proposed as a solution but credit is only of value to individuals who are
periodically short of cash to purchase inputs. For those farmers who are chronically short of
cash, other alternatives will need to be sought. In some countries, notably Zimbabwe, the
informal financial sector, which commonly includes such groups as Savings Clubs, and Rotating
Savings and Credit Associations, can be quite large. These clubs are often designed and operated
by smallholders themselves to meet their special needs for financial services and are thus more
responsive to peoples’ needs. In Malawi, where individual savings are minute, an innovative
effort using a combination of start up grants and savings mobilization has been remarkably
successful in reaching the poorest farmers. It has introduced them to improved maize
technologies, quickly moving them to financial viability.
Savings rather than credit, therefore, provides the mechanism for introducing cash poor
smallholders to improved technologies. The conventional wisdom holds that most households in
49
the smallholder sector have a low marginal propensity to save, and therefore are not able to invest
from savings. Experience has shown that the capacity to save is rather larger than typically
assumed - which gives an important leverage point when dealing with rural poverty.
Institutional change in research and development institutions
The successful implementation of the technology development and transfer processes outlined in
this paper will require commitment of substantial resources over extended periods. While the
private sector and the NGO community will be essential partners to this effort, high quality public
sector research and extension will remain a critical element to the process (see Blackie, 1994 for
discussion on the role of the private sector). The poor funding base of many Malawi public
sector institutions means that these institutions face high staff turnovers and low morale - due to
both poor financial incentives and the lack of resources with which to undertake research.
National agricultural service institutions, on their own, are ill equipped to take on the difficult
task of maintaining institutional memory without additional support.
The agricultural technology development system in Malawi is not well adapted to
comprehending and responding to the long term problems of the country. Institutional memories
are poor, inadequate budgets (and the poor use of the funds that are available) lead to short lived,
disparate project-orientated research which rarely is able to "follow through" to the farmer.
The donors, likewise, exhibit a frightening lack of consistency and long term institutional
memory. Given that so much of what actually happens in a small, poor country like Malawi is
the result of donor pressure and priorities, the absence of consensus and a long term strategy
amongst the donor community is as much a problem as the much vaunted lack of commitment
amongst nationals.
It is imperative that the donor community engage with the public and private sectors of
Malawi in a concerted effort to prevent an imminent food crisis in the country. We request
immediate support for the following activities:
• best-bet technology starter packs for all smallholders.
• ensuring the availability of small (1 to 3 kg) bags of improved seed and fertilizer for
purchase by smallholders.
• a structured fertilizer-for-work programme.
• the establishment of rural savings clubs.
• Maize Productivity Task Force efforts to demonstrate and multiply grain legumes.
• the development of marketing cooperatives, with a particular focus on building market
demand for grain legumes.
We believe that support of these activities, which are outlined in this document, will greatly
improve the fertility of Malawi’s arable land and the food security of Malawi’s smallholder
farmers who take their subsistence from that land.
The management issues which are essential to a successful soil fertility implementation
programme are necessarily very location specific and do not lend themselves to the kind of broad
brush support that has proved so useful in crop breeding. The initial successes of the Green
Revolution in Asia were led by improved germplasm, with broad adaptability, that could be taken
up and incorporated into an improved productivity package by national scientists. In Malawi,
50
ignoring management factors is avoiding the core problem. The continuing under-investment in
long term support for high quality crop management technology development has compromised
the ability of the research community to answer the real problems facing the Malawi smallholder.
Crop management research is typically reported in a highly distilled format in the form of farmer
recommendations. Such recommendations suffer from two important flaws. Firstly, as has been
well documented in the literature, they frequently fail to take adequately into account the
diversity of farmer circumstances. Secondly, which is significant with respect to this discussion,
because of their highly distilled nature, they are not a good repository for long term information.
The data from which the recommendations are derived may be lost long before the
recommendation itself becomes outdated. Progress in soil fertility management will require that
information can be retrieved and shared efficiently amongst those concerned with the promotion
and development of improved technologies.
To get the needed impacts from soil fertility work will require a long term commitment to
research and extension by interdisciplinary, inter-institutional and inter-country groups of staff
that not only include technical scientists but also social scientists, extensionists, the private sector,
and NGO staff. Opportunities need to be created for such staff to work closer together on
common topics and trials in a climate of mutual review and criticism. Financial constraints mean
no one country or institution can bring sufficient resources to bear on these widespread, complex
issues. There is a clear need for more continuity in resources focused on soil fertility
improvement, and efficiencies to be gained from regional cooperation in the use of those
resources.
Summary
The dominant smallholder cropping system of Malawi is based on maize. Increasing human
population density and declining land availability have made obsolete shifting cultivation.
Maize is now grown in continuous cultivation rather than as part of a fallow which
traditionally used to restore soil fertility and reduce the build up of pests and diseases. The
soil resource base is now being degraded with a consequent reduction in yield.
There have been notable successes in the development and adoption by smallholder farmers
of high yielding maize germplasm with good resistance to a wide range of pests and diseases.
There is little evidence of an overall increase in maize productivity. Mineral nutrient losses
from soil generally exceed nutrient inputs. The question that needs to be addressed is how to
build up and maintain soil fertility under the income and other constraints faced by
smallholders.
Inorganic fertilisers are expensive and their use, without carefully specified
recommendations, is not very profitable. For farmers that can afford fertiliser, there is an
urgent need to increase the profitability of this expensive input by better targeted
recommendations and improved fertiliser management techniques that are appropriate for
smallholders reliant on human labour.
For many households the cash requirement needed to buy inorganic fertiliser far exceeds their
total annual cash income. The lack of cash that dominates decision making at the household
level needs to remain central in the development of technologies. These households are often
forced to sell their labour in return for food or cash which in turn compromises their own
51
agricultural efforts. For this group inorganic fertiliser, combined, as soon as practical, with
proper legume based crop rotations, is the best strategy for increased fertility.
Legumes are not new to farming systems. Grain legumes, intercropping, rotations, green
manures, improved fallowing, agroforestry, cereal residues and animal manures are all
technologies that can enhance soil fertility and sustain the resource base. However, in broad
terms, the larger the likely soil fertility benefit from a legume technology, the larger the initial
investment required in labour and land, and the fewer short term food benefits it has. The
potential of such technologies is rarely realised on farmers’ fields.
Two essential components are missing from much soil fertility enhancement work:
• Basic research to understand better soil fertility processes on African farms so that
technology can be effective, and,
• an integrated process of follow-through from basic research, through to adaptive research
and extension work with farmers and other clients.
Process-based research provides the foundation for extrapolating from site-specific trials, to
agronomic recommendations for specific agro-ecozones and farmer groups. Past crop
husbandry research is often neglected because the results are distilled into a few
recommendations that ignore the important interactions in the system and fail to address the
widespread diversity that exists. Greater attention needs to be given to integrating crop
management research with other disciplines such as crop breeding and holistic farm
management as there is no single route to improved maize productivity. Emphasis needs to
move away from the rigid and prescriptive to a flexible problem solving format. This will
facilitate the evolution of a demand driven technology development process by smallholders.
Linkages are inadequate to integrate farmers, NGOs, extension services, policy makers and
the private sector. Without concerted action the consequences are all too clear; a rapidly
declining standard of living leading to a degraded natural resource base with a consequent
loss of dignity for smallholder farmers. Carefully targeted and appropriate action including
an emphasis on soil fertility can continue to improve living standards for rural people reliant
on agriculture.
52
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Action Group I - MPTF. 1998. The 1996/97 weeding by fertiliser management
demonstration. The 1997/98 Maize Fertiliser Recommendations Demonstration
Newsletter. 3: 2-3.
Andrews, D. 1989. Intercropping in low-resource agriculture in Africa. OTA. technical Paper
Series. University of Nebraska.
Benson, T.D. 1997. Annotated bibliography of the work on area-specific fertiliser
recommendations for maize in Malawi. Maize Commodity Team Annual Report for
the year 1995/96. Chitedze Agricultural Research Station, Malawi. mimeo.
Benson, T.D. 1998. Historical trends in Soil Organic Matter in Malawi. unpublished report.
Benson, T.D., J.D.T. Kumwenda, and R.A. Gilbert. 1997. The 1995/96 Maize Fertiliser
Verification Trials-Malawi – Hybrid maize yields by treatment. Ministry of
Agriculture and Irrigation, Chitedze Research Station, Lilongwe, Malawi. mimeo.
Blackie, M.J. 1994. Maize productivity for the 21st century: the African challenge. Outlook
on Agriculture. 23: 189-195.
Bolton, A. and A.J. Bennett. 1975. ODM research project R2415: Maize Breeding and
Agronomy, Malawi, 1971 to 1994 – General report. mimeo.
Brown, P. 1958. The results of some short-term rotation experiments in Nyasaland.
Rhodesian Agricultural Journal. 54: 626-633.
Brown, P. 1962. Maize growing in Nyasaland (Malawi), II. Fertiliser requirements.
Experimental Agriculture. 2: 49-60.
Buresh, R., P. Sanchez, and F. Calhoun (eds.). 1997. Replenishing soil fertility in Africa.
SSSA special pub. no. 51. Soil Science Society of America, Madison, Wisconsin.
Carr, S. 1994. The unique challenge of Malawi’s smallholder agricultural sector. mimeo.
Carr, S. 1996. personal communication
Carr, S. 1998. Sustainability, liberalisation, and survival – are they compatible in the
context of Malawi smallholder agriculture?. Paper presented at the inaugural IDEAA
meeting, Lilongwe, Malawi. mimeo.
Conroy, A. 1993. The economics of smallholder maize production in Malawi with reference
to the market for seed and fertiliser. PhD thesis. University of Manchester, UK.
Conroy, A. and J.D.T. Kumwenda. 1995. Risks associated with the adoption of hybrid seed
and fertiliser by smallholder farmers in Malawi. In: D. Jewell, S. Waddington, J.
Ransom, and K. Pixley (eds.) Maize research for stress environments. CIMMYT,
Harare, Zimbabwe.
Dalal, R. 1974. Effects of intercropping maize with pigeonpea on grain yield and nutrient
uptake. Experimental Agriculture. 10: 219-224.
Davy, E. 1925. Crops for green manuring and soil protection. Nyasaland Protectorate
Department Bulletin. 3:1-4.
Department of Agriculture. 1957. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture for the year
1956/7. The Government Printer, Zomba, Nyasaland (Malawi).
53
Department of Agriculture. 1962. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture for the year
1961/62. The Government Printer, Zomba, Nyasaland (Malawi).
Department of Agriculture. 1967. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture for the year
1966/67. The Government Printer, Zomba, Malawi.
Diagne, A. 1997. Impact of access to credit on income and food security in Malawi. Paper
presented at the IAAE XXIII meeting, August 10-16, Sacramento, California.
Dorward, A. and J. Kydd. 1997. The revival of smallholder cash crops in Africa: public and
public roles in the provision of finance. Paper presented at the ESRC conference on
the role of the public sector. Reading, UK.
Gilbert, R. 1997. Undersowing green manures for soil fertility enhancement in maize-based
cropping systems of Malawi. In publication.
Giller, K., G. Cadish, C. Ehaliotis, E. Adams, W. Sakala, and P. Mafongoya. 1997. Building
soil capital in Africa. In: R. Buresh, P. Sanchez, and F. Calhoun (eds.). Replenishing
soil fertility in Africa. SSSA special pub. no. 51. Soil Science Society of America,
Madison, Wisconsin.
HIID. 1994a. Fertiliser policy study: Market structure, prices and fertiliser use by
smallholder farmers. Harvard Institute for International Development and the Office
of the President and Cabinet, Government of Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi. mimeo
HIID. 1994b. Trickle-Up Growth: A development strategy for poverty reduction in Malawi.
Harvard Institute for International Development. mimeo
ICRISAT - Southern and Eastern Africa Region. 1997. Highlights 1996. ICRISAT,
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
Javaheri, F. 1996. Naturally nodulating (promiscuous) soybean varieties for smallholder
maize farmers: the Zambian experience. In: S. Mpepereki, K. Giller, and F.
Makonese (eds.). Soybean in Smallholder Cropping Systems of Zimbabwe: Potential
Contributions from Biological Nitrogen Fixation. Proceedings of a Preparatory
Workshop, 8-9 February 1996. University of Zimbabwe with SFNET. Harare,
Zimbabwe. pp. 63-69.
Jones, R.B. 1998. Personal communication.
Kabambe, V.H. and J.D.T. Kumwenda. 1995. Weed management and nitrogen rate effects
on maize yield in Malawi. In: D. Jewell, S. Waddington, J. Ransom, and K. Pixley
(eds.) Maize research for stress environments. CIMMYT, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Karlen, D. and A. Sharpley. 1994. Management strategies for sustainable soil fertility. In:
Hatfield and Karlen (eds.) Sustainable Agricultural Systems. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis.
Kumwenda, J.D.T. 1994. Fertiliser time of application (on-farm). Maize agronomy annual
report for 1993/4. Chitedze Agricultural Research Station, Lilongwe, Malawi.
mimeo.
Kumwenda, J.D.T., V.H. Kabambe, and W.D. Sakala. 1993. Maize-soyabean and maizebean intercropping experiments. Maize agronomy annual report for 1992/3. Chitedze
Agricultural Research Station, Lilongwe, Malawi. mimeo.
Kumwenda, J.D.T., S.R. Waddington, S.S. Snapp, R.B. Jones, and M.J. Blackie. 1997. Soil
fertility management in southern Africa. In: D. Byerlee and C. Eicher (eds.). Africa's
Emerging Maize Revolution. Lynne Rienner, London.
54
Lungu, N. 1974. Cereals research in Malawi. In: Proceedings of the 5th Eastern African
Cereals Research Conference. Lilongwe, Malawi. mimeo.
MacColl, D. 1984. Mineral deficiency symptoms and responses to fertilisers shown by maize on
soils previously cropped by smallholder farmers. Bunda College Bulletin. 12: 10-35.
MacColl D. 1988. Studies on maize at Bunda, Malawi. II. Yield in short rotations with
legumes. Experimental Agriculture 25: 367-374.
Malawi Government. 1993. Study on agricultural inputs for the Japanese Grant-Aid
Programme. Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Production. mimeo.
Manson, S., D. Leighner, and J. Vorst. 1986. Cassava-cowpea and cassava-peanut
intercropping. III. Nutrient concentration and removal. Agron. Journal. 78: 441-444.
Matabwa, C.J., and J. Wendt. 1993. Soil fertility management: present knowledge and
prospects. In: D. Munthali, J.D.T. Kumwenda, and F. Kisyombe (eds.) Proceedings
of the conference on agricultural research for development. Department of
Agricultural Research and Chancellor College, Zomba, Malawi. mimeo.
Mpepereki, S. 1998. personal communication.
Ngwira, L., and W.G. Nhlane. 1986. Maize research in Malawi. In: J. Maida (ed.). Research
highlights and constraints to crop production, Proceedings of the Research and
Extension Workshop. Mangochi, Malawi. pp.73-80.
Rattray, A. and B. Ellis. 1952. Maize and green manuring in southern Rhodesia. Rhodesia
Agricultural Journal 49: 188-197.
Rukuni, M. 1995. Report of the commission of enquiry into land tenure systems in Zimbabwe.
Government Printer and Stationer, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Saka A. and J. Chisenga. 1990. Nitrogen and water management under rainfed and irrigated
conditions. In: Nitrogen and Phosphorous Management of Field Crops in Malawi. The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem / Malawi Government.
Sakala W.D. 1994. Crop management interventions in traditional maize pigeonpea
intercropping systems in Malawi. MSc thesis. Bunda College of Agriculture,
University of Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi.
Sakala W.D. 1998. PhD thesis. In preparation.
Sillanpaa M. 1982. Micronutrients and the nutrient status of soils: A global study. FAO
Soils Bulletin 48. Rome: FAO.
Whiteside M. and S. Carr. 1997. Services and policies needed to support sustainable
smallholder agriculture in Malawi. Report to the Overseas Development
Administration, UK. mimeo
World Bank. 1995. Malawi: agricultural sector memorandum. Southern Africa Department,
Agriculture and Environment Division, World Bank, Washington.
World Bank. 1996. Malawi human resources and poverty. Southern Africa Department,
Human Resources Division, World Bank, Washington.
55