Starter packs to be scaled down

Malawi’s ministry of agriculture plans to continue supplying free maize seeds and fertiliser to about two million farming families under its three-year-old Starter Pack scheme despite objections from some international donors, officials told IRIN. Alex Namauna of the ministry’s food security department said this year’s scheme will benefit only two million farming families as opposed to last year’s 2.86 million. “We have sourced enough inputs from Libya and the European Union (EU) for this year’s Starter Pack scheme, albeit for fewer recipients,” said Namauna. According to Namauna, 4,000 mt of the 20,000 mt fertiliser pledged by Libya has arrived at the port of Beira in Mozambique and that the EU has pledged US $2 million to fund the purchase of all seeds needed for the scheme. “We now have enough materials to distribute to the families before the planting season in October,” said Namauna. He added that a pack for each farming family contains 25 kg of fertiliser and 2 kg of maize seeds Namauna said the scheme is being scaled down because of lack of sufficient funding. “Some donors, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), argued at the May Consultative Group meeting that the scheme creates dependency and have not pledged funds towards it.” He said, however, that the scheme - started in 1998 - has benefited up to 60 percent of poor Malawians whose food security situation is precarious. Namauna added that nearly 80 percent of Malawi’s 10 million people live in rural areas and rely on subsistence farming. “We want to help the poorest of the poor so that they become self-sufficient in food. This will avoid a more costly situation where government has to import food,” he said. The ministry’s deputy minister, Joe Manduwa, said earlier this week the government plans to gradually phase out the Starter Pack scheme and replace it with other productive agricultural programmes such as the Sasakawa Global 2000 project and the Agricultural Productivity Investment Programme (APIP), which he said are based on plant population increase and access to input loans. Manduwa said the Sasakawa scheme is aimed at increasing agricultural yields by over four times, while the APIP project will encourage food self-sufficiency among farmers by increasing their access to input loans from the government. He added that these two projects will serve as exit strategies for the Starter Pack scheme.