Monday, November 30, 2009
Dribbling poverty the agricultural way
Agriculture is the main backbone of the Malawi economy. It is improvements in agriculture that make the yard stick for measuring the prevalence of poverty among the people of Malawi. Strides taken in agricultural revolution in the country over the past four years have put the country on the path of attaining the Millennium Development Goals pertaining to the reduction of poverty. According to the government of Malawi 2008 MDG report, poverty levels declined sharply from 52.4 in 2005 to 40 percent in 2007 on account of improved food security situation largely due to the input subsidy programme and favorable weather conditions that have contributed to the bumper crop harvest in the last four years. It is said that at this rate of improvement, poverty levels would be expected to decline to 27 percent by 2015 thus reaching the MDG target on poverty reduction.
The hoe has the power to pay back the master. It is only that the hoe can only pay back depending on the way the master uses it. China’s economic transformation which is called an economic miracle was mainly as a result of effective use of the hoe. The rapid growth made in several sectors in china was led by agricultural reforms. We are on a good footing in agricultural dimension. The thing that matters at present is to move beyond the current level of farming. We need to intensify intensive farming and diversify the range of products we farm. It is intensive farming that makes China one of the world’s largest producers and consumers of agricultural products. Intensive farming has seen China becoming the world’s largest producer of rice and a principal source of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soya beans, peanuts, cotton, potatoes, sorghum, tea, millet, barley, oilseed, pork and fish. Actually, China’s cropland area is only 75 percent of the United States total but produces about 30 percent more crops and livestock than the United States. In accordance with the United Nations World Food Program, in 2003 China fed 20 percent of the world’s population with only 7 percent of the world’s arable land.
It is worth noting that all the progress China has been making in agriculture has not largely been due to improvements in agricultural technology. China has still a relatively lack of agricultural machinery, particularly advanced machinery. For the most part, the Chinese peasant or farmer depends on simple, non-mechanized farming implements just as Malawi farmers do. Our advancement in agricultural revolution in the fight against poverty should model on the China success story. We cannot achieve a lot if we keep on heavily depending on 1 hectare fields. What we need are large farms that can produce hundreds of metric tonnes of products for consumption and exports.
It is high time that our agriculture goes beyond maize and tobacco. How about investing in communal forests? As the demand for energy intensifies and our hills are going bare, the forestry sector becomes of one of the lucrative business initiatives to undertake. There will always be increasing demand for timber as the construction industry keeps on booming. Forests can be an agricultural dimension worthy exploring. Until when shall we keep on relying on Chikangawa forest for timber? Actually, the timber industry is an economic lifeline for some economies. For instance, it is expected that the timber industry would be accounting for 25 percent of the GDP of Liberia. The timber and wood market is worth exploring in the agricultural sector.
Another agricultural sector that the country needs to diversify into is the flowers industry. The flower industry is the economic miracle of East Africa’s giant economy, Kenya. Kenya is the number one supply of ornamental flowers to the European Union, with a market share of more than 35 percent. In 2008, the Kenya flower industry exported 91,000 tonnes of flowers which earned the country US$ 504.4 million, that is 40 billion Kenyan shillings. Malawi has vast quantities of land and favorable climate that can see an economic miracle arising out of the flower industry. It is an industry that should not be underrated. In Kenya, the flowers industry employs more than 100,000 people, that’s making a positive impact in mitigating rising unemployment rates and the adverse impact of poverty.
Amazing so it is that despite having vast quantities of water in Lake Malawi, the water flows all the way to Zambezi through Shire River unutilized in agricultural sector. Lake Malawi is the best source for agricultural revolution. Lake Malawi has the capacity to sustain irrigation all year long thus making it possible for our agricultural season to be three dimensional. Planting of crops could no longer be once a year. Planting could be all year rounder. A resource being underutilized. Probably the Greenbelt initiative will offer a learning opportunity for us to realize the wealth that we had had but unable to utilize. Israel irrigates almost its entire cotton crop of 28, 570 hectares. The water encyclopedia reports that 40 percent of all crops grown in the world today are grown using irrigation. This is the best time to examine what percentage of our agricultural productivity is as a result of irrigation.
To really maximize our earnings from our agricultural productivity and contribute effectively in the fight against poverty, we really have to add value to our agricultural products. As long as we remain perennial exporters of raw materials, we will ever end up at the receiving end of peanuts. Our sweat would never be adequately compensated. Instead of exporting pepper to Arabic countries, why can’t we be processing the pepper, package it nicely and sell it at high value. Isn’t it amazing that we import tomato sauce when farmers in Ntcheu and Dedza produce vast quantities of tomato that can be added value to and exported?
Our agriculture has many missed opportunities. Probably it is high time that the financial services sector consider funding agricultural initiatives that have a seemingly profitable outlook. By and large, our inability to utilize our land could end up pushing us on the cross of jealousy when large scale Chinese investors in agriculture take up vast quantities of land for agricultural produce. But they will be planting the very crops that we the indigenous usually plant. It only takes the transformation of ideas into practice.
While as a nation we embark on diversifying our crops range, the need for updated information on agricultural markets throughout the world need to be made available. Probably we are unable to diversify into other crops as a result of inavailability of information pertaining to viable markets for the products we could diversity in. Do our agricultural offices in all the districts in the country have appropriate information on markets for agricultural commodities? Do we have agricultural information centres? We lag behind because we do not have information that can make us progress. We lag bed=hind because we underrate the value of agricultural information. As market trends in the world are changing so too should the Malawi farmer be updated on the changes in order to make appropriate information that can further revolutinise our agriculture.
The hoe has the power to pay back the master. It is only that the hoe can only pay back depending on the way the master uses it. China’s economic transformation which is called an economic miracle was mainly as a result of effective use of the hoe. The rapid growth made in several sectors in china was led by agricultural reforms. We are on a good footing in agricultural dimension. The thing that matters at present is to move beyond the current level of farming. We need to intensify intensive farming and diversify the range of products we farm. It is intensive farming that makes China one of the world’s largest producers and consumers of agricultural products. Intensive farming has seen China becoming the world’s largest producer of rice and a principal source of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soya beans, peanuts, cotton, potatoes, sorghum, tea, millet, barley, oilseed, pork and fish. Actually, China’s cropland area is only 75 percent of the United States total but produces about 30 percent more crops and livestock than the United States. In accordance with the United Nations World Food Program, in 2003 China fed 20 percent of the world’s population with only 7 percent of the world’s arable land.
It is worth noting that all the progress China has been making in agriculture has not largely been due to improvements in agricultural technology. China has still a relatively lack of agricultural machinery, particularly advanced machinery. For the most part, the Chinese peasant or farmer depends on simple, non-mechanized farming implements just as Malawi farmers do. Our advancement in agricultural revolution in the fight against poverty should model on the China success story. We cannot achieve a lot if we keep on heavily depending on 1 hectare fields. What we need are large farms that can produce hundreds of metric tonnes of products for consumption and exports.
It is high time that our agriculture goes beyond maize and tobacco. How about investing in communal forests? As the demand for energy intensifies and our hills are going bare, the forestry sector becomes of one of the lucrative business initiatives to undertake. There will always be increasing demand for timber as the construction industry keeps on booming. Forests can be an agricultural dimension worthy exploring. Until when shall we keep on relying on Chikangawa forest for timber? Actually, the timber industry is an economic lifeline for some economies. For instance, it is expected that the timber industry would be accounting for 25 percent of the GDP of Liberia. The timber and wood market is worth exploring in the agricultural sector.
Another agricultural sector that the country needs to diversify into is the flowers industry. The flower industry is the economic miracle of East Africa’s giant economy, Kenya. Kenya is the number one supply of ornamental flowers to the European Union, with a market share of more than 35 percent. In 2008, the Kenya flower industry exported 91,000 tonnes of flowers which earned the country US$ 504.4 million, that is 40 billion Kenyan shillings. Malawi has vast quantities of land and favorable climate that can see an economic miracle arising out of the flower industry. It is an industry that should not be underrated. In Kenya, the flowers industry employs more than 100,000 people, that’s making a positive impact in mitigating rising unemployment rates and the adverse impact of poverty.
Amazing so it is that despite having vast quantities of water in Lake Malawi, the water flows all the way to Zambezi through Shire River unutilized in agricultural sector. Lake Malawi is the best source for agricultural revolution. Lake Malawi has the capacity to sustain irrigation all year long thus making it possible for our agricultural season to be three dimensional. Planting of crops could no longer be once a year. Planting could be all year rounder. A resource being underutilized. Probably the Greenbelt initiative will offer a learning opportunity for us to realize the wealth that we had had but unable to utilize. Israel irrigates almost its entire cotton crop of 28, 570 hectares. The water encyclopedia reports that 40 percent of all crops grown in the world today are grown using irrigation. This is the best time to examine what percentage of our agricultural productivity is as a result of irrigation.
To really maximize our earnings from our agricultural productivity and contribute effectively in the fight against poverty, we really have to add value to our agricultural products. As long as we remain perennial exporters of raw materials, we will ever end up at the receiving end of peanuts. Our sweat would never be adequately compensated. Instead of exporting pepper to Arabic countries, why can’t we be processing the pepper, package it nicely and sell it at high value. Isn’t it amazing that we import tomato sauce when farmers in Ntcheu and Dedza produce vast quantities of tomato that can be added value to and exported?
Our agriculture has many missed opportunities. Probably it is high time that the financial services sector consider funding agricultural initiatives that have a seemingly profitable outlook. By and large, our inability to utilize our land could end up pushing us on the cross of jealousy when large scale Chinese investors in agriculture take up vast quantities of land for agricultural produce. But they will be planting the very crops that we the indigenous usually plant. It only takes the transformation of ideas into practice.
While as a nation we embark on diversifying our crops range, the need for updated information on agricultural markets throughout the world need to be made available. Probably we are unable to diversify into other crops as a result of inavailability of information pertaining to viable markets for the products we could diversity in. Do our agricultural offices in all the districts in the country have appropriate information on markets for agricultural commodities? Do we have agricultural information centres? We lag behind because we do not have information that can make us progress. We lag bed=hind because we underrate the value of agricultural information. As market trends in the world are changing so too should the Malawi farmer be updated on the changes in order to make appropriate information that can further revolutinise our agriculture.
