2 August 2024
The decline of FISPs in Malawi – debt, corruption and hunger
Agriculture is the backbone of Malawi’s economy, with three-quarters of production coming from smallholder producers. The Malawian government has long recognised the need to support smallholder producers to consolidate and expand their production. Due to the influence from external actors, oriented towards Green Revolution technologies and ideologies, farmer support has primarily taken the form of subsidies for conventional inputs, in particular synthetic fertiliser and hybrid maize seed.
The farm input supply programmes (FISPs) have received the largest share of agricultural budgets over their many years. Originally, they were designed to provide input support for a limited number of years to each farmer. But they ended up rolling over from year to year without end as the programme became a tool for patronage and corruption, and as farmers became increasingly dependent on the subsidised inputs.
The results have not justified the expense. Soils have become degraded, yields have fluctuated and overall not shown a sustained or substantial increase. Farmers have become dependent on this costly programme. The main beneficiaries are multinational fertiliser and seed corporations as well as local elite involved in the supply and distribution chain. In fact, despite their main objective to increase food and nutritional security, chronic food insecurity has deepened. The conflation of maize production with food security has meant dietary and nutrient diversity are marginalised.
There is an intention to shift scarce resources away from the FISP (now known locally as the Affordable Inputs Programme), due to the many challenges faced by the programme, and its overall inability to realise its objectives. However, much of this is driven by extremely high debt levels that are forcing the Malawian government to reduce public expenditure to meet repayment obligations. Funding reductions and reallocation of the remaining scarce resources towards large-scale commercial projects such as the Mega Farms programme threaten to leave many smallholder farmers with declining public sector support.
Policies and plans are contradictory. On one hand, they promote large-scale, export-driven, commercialisation and industrialisation, especially through mechanisation, irrigation, and commercial farm blocks. The role of smallholder farmers is reduced to being producers of cheap raw materials to feed into corporate value chains. Land consolidation in the hands of larger land owners, and dispossession of smallholder farmers and their communities, is well underway.
Seed law revisions consolidate the power of large corporations, cement a particular agricultural system, and marginalise and exclude farmer seed systems from state support or recognition, despite the continuing importance of farmers’ systems. Farmers’ rights are neglected despite Malawi being a contracting party to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which requires recognition and operationalisation of farmers’ rights to freely use and exchange their seeds.
On the other hand, there are elements in policies and plans that are beginning to suggest alternative pathways for the Malawian agri-food system. In places, policies and plans such as the National Agricultural Policy 2024-30, the Agriculture Sector Food and Nutrition Strategy, and the National Resilience Strategy acknowledge the need for more ecological production practices, and crop and dietary diversification. The challenge facing those who favour more ecological production is to translate these elements into programmes and budgets. Despite these policies, the FISPs failed to include nutritional components into the programme. What diversity existed in previous iterations of the programme was reduced, instead of building from there.
Resources could be reoriented towards collective goods and services such as extension (retrained to encompass agroecology), research and development, and bulk infrastructure and services. The FISP itself must include nutrition and diversification and be reoriented to support farmer and small enterprise production and distribution of ecological inputs. This would offer farmers alternatives, build on farmers dynamism, and increase resilience at local levels, thereby supporting local food and farming systems.
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