Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts
LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.
But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.

In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.

Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

“As long as I’m president, I don’t want to be going to other capitals begging for food,” Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers, “Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the water we have.”

The country’s successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.

Malawi, an overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an extreme example of what happens when those things are missing. As its population has grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished farmers have planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their families, they could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilize it. Over time, their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper into poverty.

Malawi’s leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.

In a withering evaluation of the World Bank’s record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa’s declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production.

“The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi’s fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa’s farmers.

Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt to 2.7 million metric tons in 2006 and 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in 2005, the government reported.

“The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,” said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank’s principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. “This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.”
Women in the Dezda district of Malawi pounding corn to make nsima, the thick cornmeal porridge that is the national staple. Malawi's government ignored experts and supplied heavy fertilizer subsidies to farmers, contributing to record-breaking corn harvests.
The Malawian countryside, with lands plowed and read for planting to begin. Farmers explained Malawi's extraordinary turnaround - one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa - with one word: fertilizer.
Community leaders attended a workshop to learn how to use fertilizer on their maize crops. This year, Malawi is selling more corn to the United Nations World Food Program than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.
A woman planting maize seeds in her field in Zomba. Malawi's successful use of fertilizer subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa.
Chief Zaudeni Mapila addressed villagers during a fertilizer coupon meeting. Last year, roughly half the country's farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land.
Workers loaded fertilizer bags onto trucks for distribution. Malawi, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world, is instead feeding its hungry neighbors.
After the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Malawi's newly-elected president led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain.
A grain storage building was constructed in Malawi. The country's successful use of fertilizer subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.
Lontiya Samuel removing corn kernels from the cob in her maize storeroom. As a recipient of the government fertilizer subsidies, she managed to increase her crop yield.
Source: The New York Times / Photo: Evelyn Hockstein / 12.2.2007
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Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, suffering from famine, drought, poverty, and and diseases like HIV?AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
Raising Malawi is a grassroots initiative offering lasting solutions to the orphans of Malawi. Our approach is comprehensivee, compassionate, and effective. Unhindered by obstacles such as bureaucracy and red-tape. Raising Malawi is run and staffed by volunteers, allowing us to raise these children uo from powerlessness into self-empowerment - quickly and directly.
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MADONNA'S INVOLVEMENT
Madonna’s involvement with Raising Malawi began indirectly through her series of children’s books. The impetus to write these books (such as The English Roses and Mr. Peabody’s Apples) came from her desire to communicate practical, spiritual wisdom in a way that would help kids make smarter choices in their lives.
This successful endeavor led her to join forces with an organization with the same goal of empowerment, called Spirituality for Kids (SFK). SFK is a unique educational program for children and families from at-risk communities that teaches them how to overcome the challenges of poverty, violence, drug abuse, and a host of other social ills.
Madonna has now worked with SFK for many years, promoting and supporting its programs to children and parents all around the globe. With Raising Malawi, she is taking it to the next level by bringing this life-saving wisdom to kids in areas of the world that would never find it on their own.
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