* The agriculture sector is the main driver of the Malawi’s economy, which contributes nearly 22.6% of GDP and over 60% of the country’s export earnings
* The main contributor to food and nutrition security in country, and it accounts for 76.4% of total employment
* The sector is composed of two main sub-sectors — smallholder subsector and estate subsector, which contribute 70% and 30% to national agriculture GDP, respectively
By Duncan Mlanjira
Despite challenges of poor coordination on food systems interventions; underdeveloped market systems; limited access to markets, technologies, and limited access to finance for smallholder farmers, Ministry of Agriculture has robust policy and strategy formulation and implementation in line with MGDS and MW2063 national vision.
This was unveiled to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) during the sectoral workshops which NGO Regulatory Authority (NGORA) hosted from Wednesday to Friday ahead of the NGO Day 2024 to be held on October 16.
The interface meetings were held at Amaryllis Hotel in Blantyre, organised in collaboration with Council of NGOs in Malawi (CONGOMA) and the Ministry of Gender & Social Welfare and the theme for the NGO Day 2024 commemoration is; ‘Strengthening Partnerships and Capacity in the NGO Sector: Panacea for Achieving MW2063 Agenda’.
The workshops were in three parts, focusing on NGOs that deal in education on the first day (October 9); health on Thursday (October 10) and agriculture on Friday, October 11 — ahead of the NGO Day 2024 to be presided over by President Lazarus Chakwera at Sanjika Palace mini stadium in Blantyre.
In his presentation, Agriculture Ministry’s deputy director for food & nutrition, Gibson Mapopa Jere, the delegates from NGOs that deal in food security were appraised that the agriculture sector is the main driver of the Malawi’s economy, which contributes nearly 22.6% of GDP and over 60% of the country’s export earnings.
Gibson Jere
It is the main contributor to food and nutrition security in country, that accounts for 76.4% of total employment and that the sector is composed of two main sub-sectors — smallholder subsector and estate subsector, which contribute 70% and 30% to national agriculture GDP, respectively.
Jere added that smallholder farmers production are predominantly subsistence focuses on food crops such as maize, rice, cassava, sweet potatoes and potatoes, whose average land holding size is 0.45 hectares per household.
About 4.2 million smallholder farmers are on 3.3 million hectares under communal land tenure while the estate sub-sector focuses on commercial production of high value crops such as tobacco, tea, sugarcane and macadamia — with medium scale farmers cultivate at least 5 hectares but less than 50 hectares of land.
Sector coordination set up
Agricultural Productivity and Commercialization Pillar Coordination Group (APC-PCG) — formerly called Agriculture Sector Working Group — is subdivided into three TWGs that deal with specific technical issues:
1. Agriculture policies and regulations: To improve the institutional capacities in development of technologies, policies and regulatory frameworks for the creation of an enabling environment for all the players in the agriculture sector.
2. Agriculture commercialisation: To enhance market access, value addition, and trade of agricultural commodities by empowering agribusiness entrepreneurs and farmer organizations.
3. Agriculture resilient systems: To strengthen resilience and improve agricultural systems for sustainable livelihoods; Promote climate-smart technologies and practices for sustained and resilient productivity; Ensure that farmers have timely availability of quality inputs and modern farm machinery and equipment for improved agricultural productivity and production.
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Implementation structure
The Ministry of Agriculture has a number of technical departments that work in complementarity to provide extension and advisory services to farmers — Department of Agriculture Planning Services (DAPS); Department of Agricultural Research Services (DARS); Department of Agricultural Extension Services (DAES); Department of Crop Development (DCD); Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development (DAHLD); Department of Land Resources and Conservation (DLRC); and Department of Irrigation Services (DIS).
Crop development
It is aimed at increasing crop production and productivity through promoting supply of improved planting materials to smallholder farmers; access and use of improved and recommended farm inputs (fertilizers, seeds etc); irrigated crop production and diversified crop production
It also promote reduction of pre and postharvest crop losses; mechanisation and agro-processing of crop enterprise.
Livestock development
It aims at increasing livestock population, livestock production and broadening the ownership and consumption through ensuring increased availability of improved breeding stock; improving livestock productivity; ensuring adequate domestic supply and utilisation of livestock and livestock products.
It is also to promote trade in livestock and livestock products; protect the general public from zoonotic diseases through veterinary services; promote animal welfare.
Sustainable land and water management
* Promote interventions that ensure proper management of land based natural resources for improved agricultural production and resilience to climatic shocks; and
* Promote sustainable land management technologies such as low cost soil fertility improvement technologies, conservation agriculture and others.
On irrigation development, the programme aim at safeguarding agriculture production and productivity through developing and managing irrigation and drainage for sustainable irrigation systems; increase land under sustainable irrigation; enhance capacity for irrigated agriculture; and promote a business culture in the small-scale irrigated agriculture sector.
Agricultural research services
It is to generate agriculture technologies in response to the changing environment (pests and diseases, drought, nutrition) for increased agricultural productivity; and provides regulatory and specialist services (phytosanitory certificates, seed services unit, pesticide control, soil analysis and clean planting materials).
Enhances research-stakeholder linkage to promote dissemination and utilisation of improved technologies; and provide an enabling environment for sustainable agricultural research services.
Agricultural extension services
It’s a vehicle which moves all the agricultural technologies and innovations to the farmers to enhance production of agriculture commodities and to develop and disseminates technical messages on agribusiness development, dietary diversification and mainstreaming of gender and HIV in agricultural programmes.
Provide appropriate and quality agricultural extension and advisory services for enhanced adoption of improved technologies and promote innovative agriculture outreach systems, approaches, and techniques of engaging with farmers of different gender categories and agriculture stakeholders.
Agricultural extension services also provide capacity building to farmers and stakeholders on good agricultural practices through trainings, on-farm demonstrations, field days, agriculture fairs, food displays, agriculture shows among other.
And also promote access to appropriate and up-to-date agriculture technology, information, messages to all farmers and all other stakeholders as well as providing printing services; manuals, booklets, leaflets, posters etc.
Mega farm unit
It aims at fostering commercialisation of private sector mega farms through technical, financial and market support; empowers mega farmers across Malawi with the necessary resources, technology, and market access to significantly boost agricultural productivity for both local and international markets.
On policy framework, the deputy director highlighted that the Ministry of Agriculture leads Pillar number 1, Agriculture Productivity and Commercialization in MW2063 agenda.
The overarching policy frameworks for the Ministry are National Agriculture Policy (NAP-2016) and National Irrigation Policy (NIP-2016) which have already been reviewed, approved and pending launch.
The Ministry implements its programmes, projects and activities through the National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP), which also expired.
Following the migration to MW2063 agenda, the successor NAP, NAIP and NIP have been aligned to the MW2063 vision and its first 10-year Implementation Plan (MIP-1).
National Agriculture Policy was approved by Cabinet and pending launch set to promote agricultural production and productivity through; sustainable use of natural resources, increased mechanisation; increased agro-processing and value addition; enhanced risk management; strengthened marketing systems; accelerated export growth; improved food security and nutrition, and improved inclusiveness and equitable participation of all stakeholders.
Irrigation Policy was also approved by Cabinet pending its launch, which focuses on promoting and expanding irrigation to enhance agricultural productivity and resilience to ensure food security and rural livelihoods.
It addresses critical issues affecting the irrigation sector, including poor land and water management practices, poor access to finance, and poor operation and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure.
Also approved by Cabinet is the Livestock Development Policy, which aims at accelerating growth in livestock production and productivity; improving livestock contribution to nutritional security; promoting structured livestock markets and reducing livestock imports.
National Agriculture Extension and Advisory Policy was finalised and submitted for approval by the cabinet, which promotes quality farmer and client-driven agriculture extension and advisory services for increased and sustainable agriculture productivity, income and nutrition security.
It promotes agriculture extension & human capacity development; knowledge management, technology packaging & dissemination; farmer organisation & empowerment; agribusiness development services & market linkages; food & nutrition, youth in agriculture development; gender, HIV and other crosscutting issues.
National Land Resource Conservation Policy, which was approved and pending launch set to promote sustainable use of the land resources in order to increase and sustain its productivity and climate change resilience while contributing to national food and nutrition security and economic growth of the country.
This policy identified the following areas to achieve the overall goal of land degradation control and climate change resilience; institutional capacity strengthening and partnerships; land information, knowledge acquisition and management; and enforcement and incentivizing sustainable land management.
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National Horticulture Policy is in draft that was submitted to the Office of the President & Cabinet (OPC) for due diligence and the Ministry is awaiting feedback from the OPC.
Agriculture Sector Food and Nutrition Strategy is up to date though expiring end of 2024, which focuses on ensuring access to diverse and nutritious food, improving dietary quality, and reducing malnutrition and food-related health issues.
It provides a more specific and targeted framework for integrating nutrition interventions within the agriculture sector and identifies key focus areas such as maternal and child nutrition, dietary diversity for all, and access to nutritious food.
The Seed Policy, and Bill was enacted in Parliament, and the regulations have been validated by stakeholders and the Ministry is currently addressing its comments.
It aims to ensure the availability of high-quality seeds to farmers and contributes to the development of the agriculture sector by addressing issues relating to seed production, distribution, and quality control.
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Key agriculture sector challenges
They include dependency on rain-fed agriculture compounded with climate change and poor water management; high post harvest losses; pest and diseases outbreak (crops and livestock); limited agricultural diversification; land degradation; inadequate investment in research and extension; and insufficient infrastructure and logistical constraints hindering efficient food distribution and storage.
They also include poor coordination on food systems interventions; underdeveloped market systems; limited access to markets, technologies, and limited access to finance for smallholder farmers.
Institutional and human capacity challenges; low staffing levels — current farmer to extension worker ration (range 2,500-3,000: 1 against the recommended ratio of 750:1); inadequate and poor transport facilities for frontline staff, poor extension; poor infrastructure and equipment.
The Ministry takes note of poor coordination of extension services among stakeholders and low participation of youth in agriculture due to unattractive environment in the sector as a low earning venture.
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In his conclusion, Jere emphasised that the agriculture sector will remain the backbone of Malawi’s economy in the foreseeable future.
“There is therefore a continued need for investment and innovation to overcome the sector’s challenges. This will unlock its full potential for driving economic growth, poverty reduction, and food security in the country.”
On his part, NGORA’s Chief Executive Officer, Edward Chileka-Banda took cognizance that NGOs are one the service sectors that truly love the country as they reach out to the most vulnerable populations to address issues of hunger, poverty, disaster manager and all other challenges.
Chileka-Banda
“But your interventions lack policy alignment, the projects that are done do not speak to each other as most times there is some duplication and lack suitability.
“Hunger is the most form of poverty. In this era, we shouldn’t be struggling to provide for just the basic food, Nsima. We shouldn’t still be getting support for food relief when droughts and other disasters strike.
“Yet we have many NGOs that are active in agriculture and food security. That is why we are here to brainstorm on best practices and in collaboration to be in line with the MW2063 agenda.”
Other presentations included ‘Agriculture Production & Productivity’ by Catholic Relief Services; ‘Food & Nutrition Security’ by SOS Children Malawi/ Good Neighbours International; ‘Agriculture Commercialisation, Agri-processing & value addition’ by Christian Aid Malawi & Small Producers Development & Transporters Association.
Including ‘Sustainable Land Management, Water & Other Natural Resources’ by Total Land Care Malawi/Centre for Environmental Policy Advocacy (CEPA); and ‘Institution Development, Coordination, Capacity Strengthening & Risk Management’ by Tilitonse Foundation/Eagles Relief.
The sectoral workshops were for the NGOs to align their development projects to MW2063 if the national vision is to be achieved of an ‘Inclusively Wealthy, Self-reliant, Industrialised, Upper-Middle Income Economy by the year 2063.
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Presented by Ivy Chauya, senior development planning specialist in National Planning Commission (NPC) responsible for social sector, the delegates were first taken through the overall MW2063 vision; the First Year Implementation Plan (MIP-1); contents of the MIP-1, progress so far for MIP-1; how NGOs should align projects to MW2063 and the MW2063 implementation coordination & reporting mechanism.
She emphasised that first and foremost, the NGOs should know and understand the MW2063 overall goal of wealth creation; self reliance and inclusivity (gender, youth, people living with disabilities, rural areas, PLWHIVA) among others.
On planning for education, health and agriculture development, the NGOs should focus on how their projects can contribute to wealth creation; self reliance and what interventions can be implemented within a particular project that can contribute to the overall goal.
She emphasised that their projects are not in any way contributing to these three, then it means they are off-track.
She also highlighted that the NGOs need to understand the Pillars and Enablers of the MW2063 vision for them to assess what pillar or enabler of the vision relates to the project they want to implement.
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