IPS | 11 Jan 2010
By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jan 11, 2010 (IPS) - Let the rains fail, even for several successive seasons, and Malawi should still be able to produce enough to feed itself.
This is the motivation for the country's green belt concept. It is strengthened by painful memories of the severe drought beginning early 2002 which triggered three years of hunger. By 2005, five million people were affected by famine, all while large quantities of water flowed out of the country to the oceans of the world.
Local agriculture experts explain that two districts in the southern tip of the country could feed the entire country all year round if the Shire River, which cuts through the length of this southern plain, was utilised for intensive irrigation farming.
Yet, the two districts, often troubled by floods, are among the most desperately poor in Malawi, and their inhabitants survive on food handouts from government and donors.
The programme seeks to make Malawi independent of rain-fed agriculture. For all the much-publicised success of subsidies for small-scale farmers over the past four years, Malawi must also thank good rains for the increased production.
The plan is to protect the gains in food security, reduce vulnerability to drought and to boost production still further by irrigating a million hectares of land in a swathe lying within 20 kilometres of the country’s three lakes and 13 perennial rivers.
Last season, Malawi produced 3.5 million tonnes of maize, the country’s staple crop. This is 1.1 million tonnes more than the country's total annual consumption. Of the total harvest, only 300,000 tonnes came from irrigation farming.
Irrigation agriculture is presently practiced on just a third of the one million hectares of land earmarked for the green belt programme.
The plan will also attempt to diversify crops, targeting increased production of wheat, rice, millet, cotton, lentils and beans for export.
The Lake Malawi-Shire River stretch is the most important in the project. A section of the East African Rift Valley, the watercourse extends a thousand kilometres from the head to the toes of Malawi - from the northernmost point to the southernmost one.
Apart from identifying new sites for irrigation, development of the belt will also include restoring infrastructure that has fallen into disuse. In February 2009, government invited bids from construction companies to establish, rehabilitate and manage 12 irrigation schemes as part of the programme.
Land issues
But what about issues of land, probably one of the most delicate factors in the implementation of the programme?
Much of the land in the designated belt is customary. The deputy minister for agriculture and food security, Margaret Mauwa, says government will not expropriate land. "Our interest is particularly on small scale farmers. We will be grouping them and we believe that will help to deal with the problem of land holding through creation of ownership of the irrigations schemes," says Mauwa. The national irrigation policy says that management of the schemes will be the full responsibility of the beneficiaries through their legally constituted local farmer organizations Through their organisations, the farmers will be encouraged to apply for a lease of the customary land. Alternatively, the farmers may apply to register the land as private land owned by a group of farmers, says the irrigation bill. During his visits to Brazil and the U.S. in September 2009, president Bingu wa Mutharika invited foreign investors to come to Malawi to participate in the implementation of the project.Invitation of foreigners into the programme has often stirred criticism from organisations such as the Civil Society Agriculture Network (Cisanet) who argue that government is fuelling foreigner land grab at the expense of the welfare of locals.
"We need to be cautious on this one. It brings no harm to have foreigners in the programme as long as they are not coming to grab land and displace local people," says Cisanet national coordinator Victor Mhoni.
Mhoni argues that promises of job creation and forex earnings for Malawi through foreign investment should not substitute the need for policies that would grow domestic investment.
"If we allow foreigners to grab land in the belt, we will lose out on the market because they will be producing what they need for their countries instead of us producing what they would need and sell it to them," he says.
But Mauwa is quick to allay fears of a land grab in the programme.
"That land is for Malawians. Those people that are there are the ones to be working on the schemes. But we need others to help us in financial, material and technical terms," she said.