Although replacing millet and sorghum with maize meant that people would have more food from less land, maize cultivation had its own limitations. Unlike the traditional crops, maize proved to be labour intensive and was not very resistant to drought. These limitations, particularly the latter, have over time contributed to periodic poor maize harvests in Malawi. The first maize crop failure was reported by Livingstone (1863) when he said:
I took a journey with some of our own people down the Shire a short time before I left Mikarango, to try if anything was to be bought in the way of seed or corn, but I could get nothing:..at present the complaint is famine…The whole country is in a state of utter ruin and destitution, and the drought still continues (pp. 275- 276).
30 Interestingly, this is exactly the way people characterized maize (zea mays) in the land of its
origin. According to McCann (2001a, p. 248), “the Aztec and Mayan civilizations had long called the descendants of that plant “maize,” literally “that which sustains life,” and claimed that the crop was flesh and blood itself.”
78
It appears that the drought of 1863 was so severe that even the traditional crops (millet and sorghum) failed. At that time, it is reported that for the following planting season, chiefs collected seeds from their subjects that had surplus maize from previous harvests and distributed it to those that had nothing. No other droughts or maize failures were reported until nearly two decades after the country became a British protectorate in 1891. According to Ng'ong'ola (1986), in 1912 and 1922, Nyasaland experienced rain failures that led to poor maize harvests. In both cases, the British government helped to normalize the situation through free maize seed distribution.
However, Malawi‟s crop failure that has so far attracted most oral and written attention is the one that occurred in 1949. The problem started in 1948 when swarms of locusts destroyed many crops. This was followed by drought. According to Vaughan (1985):
“The situation had started as a small joke, but it turned into a bad joke, and a serious issue”. The main features of the famine were firstly the extreme mobility of the population (especially men) in search of food to buy, earn, beg or gather; and secondly, the progressive breakdown of whatever community support and family solidarity had existed earlier (p. 185). By January 1950 people began to show signs of severe malnutrition…feeding camps were set up to deal with the worst cases of malnutrition…The really bad cases were taken to the Blantyre mission hospital for further “food treatment” (pp. 193-194).
Although the exact number is not known, many people died of hunger between 1949 and 1950, particularly in the southern region. The government intervened with several measures. Selling of maize was rationed to a tune of 5 shillings per family head. Those that had no cash were asked to work for food by gathering large stones that were used to construct roads, bridges and in some cases rail way lines. It was only the sick and old which were occasionally provided with free food. In 1950, the government distributed free maize seed to farmers throughout the country. This was followed by a famine tax of 2 shillings 6 pence per adult
79
male. In 1951, the National Resource Ordinance of 194631 was strengthened “which made ridge cultivation and erosion bunding compulsory, set planting and uprooting dates and even required the cultivation of cassava as an insurance against maize shortages” (Thomas, 1975, p. 36). Those who did not comply were either fined or imprisoned.
Many people viewed the imposition of the famine tax and the National Resource Ordinance that came with “the fines and arrests of people who infringed the laws as being direct punishments for having caused the government so much trouble with the famine” (Vaughan, 1985, p. 195). As a result, there was a widespread discontentment amongst the natives which, in 1959, sparked political unrests that culminated into independence in 196432. After independence, the Malawi government repealed the National Resource Ordinance making the control of soil erosion a voluntary act. At that time, the president would cautiously say that it was the soil and not the government that would punish the bad farmer. On the other hand, the government strongly advocated for maize to be cultivated by all smallholder farmers in the country. This appeal was particularly meant for the people of the northern region most of whom were still growing cassava as their staple crop.
The government campaign for turning maize into a national food crop was supported by policy interventions such as fertilizer and seed subsidies. These subsidies were channelled through the state owned Agricultural and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), which by then was the sole seller and buyer of agricultural inputs and harvests, respectively. Losses that ADMARC incurred on its subsidized maize trading were recuperated through profits made from exportable tobacco and other cash crops that it purchased from smallholders at
31
The Natural Resources Ordinance of 1946 was decreed mainly with the aim of controlling soil erosion that was the major problem particularly in the Shire highlands. The problem emanated from poor farming methods and wanton cutting down of trees (Mulwafu, 2002).
32 It is worth noting that the drive for independence in Malawi included other factors such as the
John Chilembwe uprising in 1915, the campaign by the Nyasaland African Congress party from the 1940s and discontentment about the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the 1950s.
80
below export parity producer prices. Currently, the subsidies are administered directly by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security through various regional and district outlets where coupons are distributed to beneficiaries in all administrative areas in the country (see Appendix 3).
Over a period of twenty years after independence in 1964, maize production and hence national food security was a success story for Malawi. During that period, the country became a net exporter of maize to countries such as Zambia and Tanzania. However, the food security policy was fragile as it hinged on an overall agricultural strategy that favoured the estate sector. The smallholder sector, the core producer of maize, was largely regarded as a provider of food to the nation and low cost labour to the estate sector, which, at that time, was the sole producer of the lucrative burley tobacco and tea. Consequently, by the end of the 1970s “whilst the estate sector grew at over 17 percent per annum, smallholder growth was less than 3 percent” (Harrigan, 2008, p. 241).
The smallholder maize sector started to falter from the early 1980s mainly due to inconsistent fertilizer subsidies as explained in the following section. Since then, Malawi has registered erratic trends in smallholder maize production and food security. The situation has drawn interest from a number of researchers. For instance, Dorward (2006), Chirwa et al.(2006) and Harrigan (2008) have carried out insightful explanatory work regarding performance of the agriculture sector, poverty and food security in Malawi. However, studies based on empirical analysis to examine the impacts of maize fertilizer subsidies on food security are surprisingly scarce. It is this shortfall that motivates this chapter. The following question is addressed. What has been the effect of maize fertilizer subsidy on national and, more importantly, household food security?