Maize dominance worsens food crisis

Malawi needs to shift its focus from maize to the abundance of "local" foods - many of them growing wild - if it wants to avert future food shortages and malnutrition, a nutritionist based in the country told IRIN. "It has been ingrained over the last 60 years that maize is food and there is nothing else. People think if they haven't eaten maize, they are 'hungry'," said Stacia Nordin. She hopes to convince Malawians, donors and the government, to re-examine the dominance of this staple food. "They don't look at anything else like beans or nuts - there is just a big focus on energy from maize and it's killing our land and not meeting nutritional requirements. I'm begging them to wean themselves off it," she said. Focusing only on processed maize and the energy component of the diet was especially detrimental to people with HIV/AIDS because it doesn't contain all the nutrients the body needs. "If they want to focus on energy they might as well just eat sugar," Nordin said. Her call comes as President Bakili Muluzi told the opening of Parliament last week that 600,000 mt of maize was needed to avert a food crisis for up to 3.2 million people when food from the current harvest is finished. Organisations like the World Food Programme (WFP) and Save the Children have already started distributing emergency supplies of maize and the government has called for tenders towards replenishing the stocks that it controversially sold last year. Nordin slammed media articles that poignantly described people eating wild food out of desperation as she believes that the reintroduction of these very foods is the answer to solving Malawi's food crisis and preventing malnutrition. She explained that Malawian's ate a variety of "old foods" before the arrival of maize with the Portuguese in the 1790s. Maize was also promoted as a crop by British colonialists and this was perpetuated by previous president Kamuzu Banda, who decided that "maize was the future and everybody had to plant it". "It was ingrained that other foods were bad and that Malawi was moving ahead by leaving the old foods," she said. Nordin said constant crops of maize had destroyed the soil's nutrients and this, combined with poor land preservation like not putting organic matter back into the soil, burning and the use of fertilisers, was damaging the soil. Maize is also not resistant to drought. Nordin wants people to balance their meals by considering the 555 other foods available from local fruits and vegetables and wild food. This would require rediscovering the "old foods" that the "goggos" (grannies) still remember. Instead of maize people could eat indigenous crops like millet, sorghum, a local rice and a variety of yam and potato-like foods. She said local wild beans called "kakumpanda" and "mikuna" grow quickly and are tasty. Malawi has local plums, berries and figs and every part of the baobab fruit is edible - the seeds, fruits, leaves, flowers and roots. Avocadoes, though also not indigenous, provide a rich food source and even the leaves can be boiled as tea to prevent anaemia. Flour can be made by roasting and pounding the seeds of pumpkins and watermelons. To help get the message across, she gives groups of up to 20 people a presentation with pictures of the wild and local vegetables available. Much of her lectures are built on information contained in a book called "Useful Plants of Malawi" by botanist Jesse Williamson. Williamson's study was "very scientific so it sat on a shelf". In Nordin's presentations, she describes the plants and how they contribute to good nutrition. She said the younger generation often don't know the plants "but an older person will then step forward and laugh saying 'I remember that' and take over the presentation and do all the teaching for me". "I explain to people that they don't need to have money to have a good diet ... This has been one of the better education years because of the hunger. People are realising that the system of just focusing on maize doesn't work," she said. In the wake of two successive years of poor maize harvests, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in conjunction with the government, is now encouraging diversification into drought-resistant cassava. Cassava is traditionally grown along the shores of Lake Malawi on the eastern flank of the country. FAO official Des Forpes told IRIN that three agricultural research institutions across the country would be used to propagate cassava cuttings, which would then be distributed to farmers. Cassava is a hardy plant, which although unlikely to replace maize, could be grown as an emergency crop providing a rich source of vitamins, minerals and proteins. He acknowledged that a lot of work would be needed to convince farmers of the benefits of cassava: "They haven't been exposed to it, but with this food crisis they'll be encouraged to grow it."