Malawi's green revolution

Africa's elusive green revolution may be several steps nearer after a pioneering experiment in seed and fertilizer subsidies to smallholders in Malawi. On his way home from a session explaining how the programme works to the UN development agency recently, the agricultural economist Idrissa Mwale came into the Guardian's offices to talk through the Farm Input Subsidy Programme that he coordinates.

Four years ago, Malawi was in the grip of a terrible, drought-induced famine that left nearly 40% of the population in need of food aid. Yet within two years, it had become a net maize exporter. Having enough rain has helped, but twice as important, according to independent assessment, has been government subsidy for seed and fertilizer.

Malawi, like other sub-Saharan African countries, has tried government intervention before, sometimes with considerable success. But the 1980s drive for structural reform, which led to a sharp withdrawal of government from the agricultural sector, ended most of the support programmes. Where they were tried in the late 1990s, they tended to be too small in scale and too short-lived to make a difference.

"The policy has always been to increase productivity," Idrissa Mwale explained, "but it has failed in the past because of inadequate commitment and a shortage of leadership."

Now there is renewed interest in increased agricultural productivity as an engine of wider growth. Food security for the 80% of Malawians who farm smallholdings was the first, but not the only objective, and the scheme has adapted to the difficulties encountered along the way.

The programme has always involved the use of vouchers rather than the actual provision of low cost inputs that might be traded rather than used by the targeted recipients. The vouchers reduce the cost of fertilizer and hybrid seed by two-thirds. To encourage the production of cash crops, the smallholder has the choice of tobacco or maize fertilizer, and after the first year nitrogen-fixing legume seeds were added to the choice as participants were encouraged to consider the fertility of their soil.

The way the group of recipients is selected has evolved. At first it was left to local village leaders, but there were allegations of favouritism and even corruption. This year a team approach has been tried successfully, where officials from the Ministry of Agriculture work with local government, village chiefs, police and religious leaders.

They convene a village meeting at which the poorest households are identified by the villagers themselves. As well as being Malawi citizens, recipients are unlikely to have cattle or even a bicycle and certainly no income from off the farm, which will usually be only about 0.4 hectares (1 acre) in size.

And unlike earlier schemes where a package of seed and fertilizer was given away, the farmers have to contribute a certain amount of the cost themselves. Government intervention evened out the sharp spike in fertilizer prices over the past two years, which sent the cost of the programme in 2007-08 to US$120,000, and the government element of it has risen sharply. But the results have been astonishing.

In the drought year, maize yields were down to 0.8 tonnes per hectare from a previous average of around 1.2 tonnes. (In Iowa in the US, the average rain-fed maize yield is 10 tonnes per hectare). Now yields are up to 4 tonnes per hectare and average around 2.2 tonnes.

Farmers have been instructed in new sowing techniques, and local radio broadcasts are used to remind them of when to sow and when to apply fertilizer. The government has also started to distribute vouchers for pesticides to improve the quality of stored maize, as well as building communal silos and regional storage depots.

Each year, about a third of those who have received support "graduate" from the programme to make room for others. Last year, the best year yet for the programme, maize production was almost a third more than national consumption.

So far, about half of Malawi's farmers have benefited. The scheme, initially viewed with scepticism by external donors, now has widespread support from the EU and the World Bank. The UK's Department for International Development gives logistical help.

"No farmers depend on food aid now," Mwale said. "The rate of technology adoption has gone up. The government is looking at the possibilities of a tractor rental scheme. And foreign earnings have risen." Last year, Malawi's growth rate was the second highest in southern Africa.

But it has not been an easy process, and hard lessons have been learned.

"Leadership and commitment," Mwale said, "they are the two most important differences from earlier attempts. But we have also committed the resources, we have planned very carefully and the implementation – the timing of distribution, for example – has been closely monitored.

"It is very important," he concludes, "to do what you say you are going to do."