Failure Not an Option for Malawi's Farmers

Farming is unpredictable at the best of times.

Too hot, too dry, too cold, too wet or too windy are all variables that can affect crop yields.

And that’s not to mention the uncertainty that farmers face over the price they will be paid at harvest time. Indeed, a good year for production can mean a lower price for crops because of over-supply.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the stakes are high. For millions of African families, farming can literally be a matter of life and death.

The majority of Africa’s farmers work on small farm plots, in poor soil and with limited access to irrigation. They also frequently struggle to access good quality seed and fertilizer, while up-to-date farming knowledge and information can be in short supply.

If these don’t present challenges enough, a spate of recent crises faced by farmers in Malawi further undermine how tough it can sometimes be on African farmers.

Following two years of unseasonal droughts caused by the El Ñino phenomenon, it looked as though 2017 was going to be a better year for Malawi.

That was before an outbreak of swine flu, a plague of destructive ‘armyworm’ caterpillars, and a deluge of flooding caused widespread destruction to crops, livestock and other property.

On a recent trip to Malawi, I visited a young mother whose farming success was featured in a newsletter from my organisation, Self Help Africa, just last year.

32-year-old mother of four Ethel Khundi spoke at that time about how pig rearing was transforming her life. She had earned nearly 220,000 Malawian Kwacha (€300) from selling piglets the previous year – a huge sum in a country where average household income is only €250.

Hers was a simple story of the success that can result from a combination of enthusiasm and a little bit of external support. Or so I thought.

However, when I visited Ethel, there wasn’t a pig in sight.

In October of last year, all nine pigs that Ethel was rearing had succumbed to swine flu, and were burned and buried in a nearby field, I was told.

Although sanguine about her loss, Ethel was “moving on to different things,” and hoped to establish a small trading post where she planned to sell soap and other goods. “I don’t plan to rear pigs again,”she said.

I learned that nearly all of the pigs in surrounding villages had been wiped out by swine flu.

Less than a month later, reports crossed my desk of an invasion by the destructive ‘fall armyworm’ which was obliterating thousands of acres of maize in Northern Malawi. The caterpillar from the Americas was first reported in West Africa a year earlier.

The farmers of Northern Malawi were ill-prepared for the armyworm attack when it came in February. Although army units equipped with knapsack sprayers and insecticide had been deployed to combat the threat in neighbouring Zambia, there had been no such coordinated response in Malawi.

Farmers like Aidi Phiri in Chambowo village said that her entire crop had been destroyed, and hundreds of other farmers estimated that upwards to 50% of their maize had been lost, just weeks before harvest.

To compound this catastrophe, earlier this month a tropical deluge left nearly 3,000 acres of crops under water, and destroyed more than 660 mud-built homes. Three people, 160 cattle, and numerous other livestock drowned.

The stories above are dramatic, and extreme. But they also bring into sharp relief the enormous challenges that face rural poor farmers in Africa. Farmers that we work with, and for whom failure is not an option.