Agriculture

This paper is based on a study undertaken to critically understand the dynamics of policy-making and processes under the auspices of the Future Agricultures Consortium‟s (FAC) sub-theme on politics and policy processes hosted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the United Kingdom. FAC‟s operative philosophy is that contrary to the traditional and highly stylized perspective, policy-making does not happen in neat distinct stages except perhaps in the minimal sense that policies are proposed, legislated and implemented.

The Government of the Republic of Malawi is still increasingly concerned about the deterioration of the country's natural resources and the environment. The biggest environmental and developmental challenge is how to narrow the gap between the degradation of the natural resources and the environment on one hand and sustainable production and economic growth on the other. The Government of Malawi adopted a National Environmental Policy in 1996 to provide guidance and set standards for development of sector policies in environment and natural resources.

Nutrition disorders continue to be a silent crisis in Malawi despite efforts by government and partners to improve the situation. This poses a serious challenge to the attainment of the national growth and development goals as set in the MGDS.

The development process in Malawi is empowering individual citizens and communities to take active interest in their own affairs. Land policy serves as a powerful symbol and focus for that local development effort. It provides a mechanism for recociling widely differing attitudes towards Malawi's development challenges.

The goal of the Malawi National Land Policy is to ensure tenure security and equitable access to land, and the attainment of social harmony and broad-based economic development through optimum and ecologically balanced use of land and land-based resources.

The Constitution of Malawi recognises that access to and utilisation of nutritionally adequate and safe food in the right quantities is a right of each individual. This will enable them to lead an active and healthy life.

The Malawi Government has several policies and strategies aimed at stimulating economic growth and development as articulated in vision 2020, Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (MPRSP) and Malawi Economic Growth Strategy (MEGS). This will be done through reducing poverty, ensuring food security, wealth creation and sustainable utilization of the natural resource base.

Agriculture is the single most important sector in the Malawi’s economy, contributing about36% of value added GDP, employing 85% of the workforce and contributing 90% of foreignexchange earnings in 2003 (MPRSP, 2003). However, over the past five years agricultural GDP grew at an average of 2.27 % with large swings ranging from -6 % in 2001 to 5.9 % in 2003. Therefore Government’s overarching development issue is improvement in the productivity and profitability of agriculture, especially among smallholder farmers.

The importance of forests and trees in improving human welfare is increasingly recognized worldwide. Both natural and man-made forests play an important role in providing basic human needs (fuel, food fodder fibre and pharmaceuticals), employment, income and foreign exchange, hence contributing to socio-economic development.

Malawi’s development policy expresses the need for reduction of poverty, ignorance and disease by the achievement of rapid and sustained economic growth, an improvement in income distribution and a reduction in the instability of welfare for both the individual and the nation. The policy recognises that if the welfare of Malawi is to be further increased economic growth will have to exceed population growth. The performance of agriculture will be critical, and other natural resources, will where viable, need to be exploited.