President Lazarus Chakwera has said that he will consult the Attorney General (AG) Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda on whether Malawi should declare maize as a protected crop.
Chakwera’s remarks came after Member of Parliament for Kasungu North Constituency, Mike Bango suggested that by doing so, government will help the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc), which will be a sole buyer of the crop from farmers, to have enough maize stocks.
“Government invests billions through Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP), and buys the Harvest of the same investment from Vendors at a higher Price. The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) falls short of some important realities in as far as harvest against those who really need food support is concerned.
“The reality being that with the booming of the animal industry in Malawi, like poultry and others, you will find that the whole owner does not grow their own like crops for feed, like it is in other countries. Almost half of the harvest goes to animal feed production, which MVAC report overlooks, making government respond to inaccurate figures.
“With this in mind, can government consider declaring maize as a protected crop like it is in other countries, so that anyone can do any business with any crop apart from Maize? All maize should be bought by Admarc?
“Like it’s in other countries, all animal feed producers should sign off taker agreements with specific mega farmers to grow maize specifically for animal feed production under Irrigation so that we protect our citizens, as the weather reports are indicating that this pattern that has caused havoc this year will stay on for next three years,” said Bango, who stood on a supplementary question during the
Chakwera said the AG’s opinion will give direction on the issue.
“I will inquire from the Attorney General, so he gives me an opinion on it. And then we can take the necessary steps, should that be the case. Second of all, I’d love to encourage companies to do exactly what the honorable member has suggested, they should go into that kind of arrangement.
“This is actually the reason for agricultural commercialization, that is the velocity behind all that we are doing, and all of that people have what it takes to take seriously agricultural as a business,” he said
In November last year, The Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (Card) forecasted potentially damaging social-economic El Niño impact with Malawi expected to suffer around K337 billion maize yield loss, electricity load-shedding and water rationing.
The potential overall consequences are that around 2.8 million people will suffer food insecurity, malnutrition will torture the citizenry and there will be increased deforestation amidst load-shedding.
The assessment followed a Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services (MET) forecast which indicated that for the agricultural season which started in October 2023 to April 2024, Malawi will experience normal to below normal rainfall with dry spells expected in most parts of the country.
Card, whose director is Innocent Pangapanga, said to come up with the finding it used the Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average, a statistical analysis model that uses time series data to either better understand the data set or to predict future trends.
Card said that El Nino will reduce total production of maize, the country’s staple food, by 561 574 metric tonnes.
