The Rains January 2010

Blog 2 The rains

Farmers everywhere depend on the rain to bring their crops to fruition, some lucky places are able to harness the water in lakes and rivers for irrigation but the vast majority of the world is much more dependent on when the rains come and how much and how long. In this part of Africa the rains are seasonal, starting with an occasional sputter in late November and getting more consistent through December. By July some farmers have already started preparing their fields. They want to be ready for the first rain to plant their crops and hope that the vagaries of climate will bring forth a bounty.

Travelling from Blantye in the highlands of the southern region to Kasungu close to the northern limits of the central region reveals the power of the rain and the thin line between success and failure in farming societies. Around Lilongwe, the rains have been fairly regular and the maize is growing well. The leaves are broad and as high as a person’s head and a few plants can be seen to be tasseling, which means they will start bearing cobs very soon. The Blantyre area looks much the same. In Kasungu, my brother, Frazer said they planted 3 times, because after each planting the rain stopped and the crop withered and died. The third planting succeeded at Makupo and the corn is chest high.

As Sautso and I travelled south towards Dedza we could see that there were sections of the land where the crop was shorter. The real shock was descending off the ridge of highlands that straddles the Malawi - Mozambique border and dropping onto the low flat plains that the Shire River flows through. Having dropped approximately 1000 metres the climate is hotter and we finally closed our windows and turned on the air conditioning. For perhaps 100 km the temperature rises considerably and the almost total lack of rain has left the land parched, and dusty. The maize has a few withered green-yellow shoots that are so short they resemble onions growing rather than the tall full broadleaf of a healthy maize plant.

In the Monday newspaper headlines, CONGOMA, the Council for NonGovernmental Organisations in Malawi is telling the government to begin planning now for famine relief, since large areas of the country are going to be hard hit by the poor rains. They want all grain exports halted, storage capacity increased and measures put in place to begin distribution to the stricken areas. Already the majority of the poor have barely enough to eat. Because Malawi is so densely populated and because the arable land area is so subdivided into mini- smallholdings, people are only barely able to raise enough food for about the first six months after the harvest in April and May. Hunger is endemic even in the best of times.

By November, many families are already down to one meal a day and even in Makupo with the relative prosperity we enjoy, not one house had a full bag of maize to live on. Anasimango’s gang has not had any for several weeks and have been eating borrowed flour for their one meal a day. Other houses were close to the end of their stores with nothing available after they finished. I had a donation of $200 that I was able to commit to buying about 12 bags of maize to distribute among our houses. I had intended to use it for development investment of projects, but the need was to immediate to ignore.

We will be okay because there are plenty of mangos freely dropping and dambo maize allows a bit of fresh on the cob eating. That will hold us until the crop ripens and can be harvested. But families in the drought stricken areas have already finished their stores from last season and now they know that their crop withering in the fields will give them nothing. They are the ones that need food aid immediately.

Despite the past few successful years, hunger is a regular annual recurrence and widespread throughout the country in the period before the harvest. People are willing to work at day jobs (called ganyu) for food alone. It is one of the reasons why labour is so cheap in Malawi. Desperate people have no choice. Large estate owners, use this fact to extort the almost free labour from the share-croppers they allow to settle on their land. These poor, landless people are given a small allotment to grow their own food on the estate and in return they prepare the owner’s fields for tobacco production or commercial maize or other crops.

I have not seen a government response to the CONGOMA appeal, but the last few years of bumper crops and exports to neighbouring countries may have made people a bit complacent in the planning department. Even with the best of intentions to remain self-sufficient, international organisations will be needed to pitch in both with infrastructure and extra supplies. The fiasco in the early 2000s when the IFI, the international financial organisations, made Malawi sell off their grain reserves in the middle of a serious drought was a glaring example of bad policy. In addition, they forbid the government from subsidising fertiliser for the poorest smallholders. The then new president Bingu Mutharika over-ruled their dictates and re-instated the fertiliser subsidies and combined with several years of good rains there has been no real issue with food ever since. In fact, Malawi became a net exporter with a surplus to spare.

The private enterprise exporters made good money and expect to continue to do so, but in a time of shortage, the country cannot allow free market forces to drain away the available foodstock. If it doesn’t act soon to curtail exports then there could be some real crisis intervention needed to make up the loss. In class terms, the planners have more in common with the exporters. Most politicians and senior government types run these kinds of businesses, so they are well fed and do not necessarily feel the people’s hunger. They would prefer to continue making money, so any decision to curtail exports hurts the pocketbook of the people making the decision.

In the meantime, I have gone North to Nkhata Bay and the rains have been good. Much of the time as I travelled on Thursday, I was in and out of rain showers. Thursday night the coast got blasted and in a call home to the village they told me that they too had had some rain.

In most countries, we would curse the rain for spoiling our day. Here we welcome its arrival and even the atheists pray for more.