Bumper crop forecast

Drought-affected Malawi could produce a bumper maize crop of more than two million mt this year, an official of the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) predicted. Good rain, a successful government-sponsored fertiliser programme and even floods in the southern half of the country have benefited the winter crop, said FEW-NET's Evance Chavasuka. Malawi's annual maize requirement is just under two million mt but last year the country experienced one of its worst droughts in a decade and struggled to produce just 1.3 million mt. Alex Namaona, the chief economist at the ministry of agriculture and irrigation expects the harvest to exceed 2.5 million mt, "if no other disaster strikes". Southern Malawi, which faced the brunt of last year's drought, has been lashed with heavy rain since December 2005, and the subsequent flooding affected some 20,000 households in Chikwawa and Nsanje districts, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Amos Zaindi of the Irish NGO, GOAL, said the floods had damaged crops in the area, which would have an impact on the 2005/06 winter harvest. However, Chavasuka pointed out that in previous years flooding had always resulted in a better harvest. "The soil is wet and rich - besides, some seeds have already been distributed in the affected areas to help the farmers replant." Malawi's food shortages, which has left more than five million people in need, had also been compounded by the late delivery of fertilisers and seed. Around 80 percent of the country's workforce are subsistence farmers who depend on fertilisers to grow crops. The government introduced a coupon system in 2005, giving a limited number of subsistence producers access to 147,000 mt of fertiliser at half the commercial price. The government had managed to import 110,000 mt of fertiliser for maize farmers by the end of 2005. "We have sold more than 70 percent of the fertiliser so far," said Namaona, describing the success of the fertiliser programme as "unexpected." At the moment there is little or no maize in the outlets of the state grain marketer, ADMARC. "Whatever maize that is available in the private markets is very expensive - between 30 to 40 kwacha [about 24 to 32 US cents] per kg," he noted. A clearer picture of the winter harvest and the numbers in need of food aid would emerge after the official estimates were released at the end of this month.