By Charles Mpaka:
When Cyclone Freddy hit the country in March this year, the deluges and mudslides and the devastation it caused in the Southern Region grabbed almost all the attention.
However, away from this eye of the storm and unbeknown to many, the cyclone was silently unleashing another heavy damage on Malawi’s rising cash crop — soybean.
As the cyclone peppered the country over three days, it created fertile conditions for the thriving of a virulent soybean disease —soybean rust.
Over the past few years, soybean has increasingly become some little nuggets of gold for Malawi, fetching surprisingly high prices on the local market and rising in demand for exports.
So alluring has been its money spinning capacity that a growing number of small scale farmers have been charmed out of production of traditional crops like tobacco and maize in favour of the legume.
With 90,000 metric tonnes demanded for the export market for the year and an equally huge demand locally where the crop was to fetch a government-set minimum price of K800 per kg from the K450 of the 2021 season, this was going to be another year of soybean.
But soybean rust struck, leading to a damage as high as 80 percent of the crop in some fields, according to Geoffrey Kananji, Director of Science, Technology and Innovation at the Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) and a renowned soybean expert.
Kananji gives an example of one farmer who planted soya on 40 hectares. Under good management, this would have yielded at least 80 metric tonnes. However, soybean rust corroded that expected harvest such that the farmer harvested 2 metric tonnes only.
Even worse, when soybean rust attacks, it is not just quantities of the harvest that suffer; the disease also affects the quality of the harvested crop. This is because it causes premature fall of the leaves which leads the crop into forced, too early maturity.
“The result is that the seeds are shrunken, small and deformed making them very unattractive on the market. Finally the disease affects the entire soybean seed system,” Kananji says.
This fungus disease is not necessarily new in Malawi but it flourished particularly this year in part because Cyclone Freddy created good conditions for it.
Writing on her official blog, Victoria Balaka Sitima, an agriculture officer, says the cyclone contributed to the wide infection and widespread distribution of soybean rust by providing the pathogens with favourable conditions.
The storm brought prolonged periods of wetness and also low temperatures. These favour the development of the disease which causes severe damage when the crop gets infected at a flowering and pod development stage – which is usually around March in Malawi.
“The infection of soybean rust coincided with the pod-filling phase. A lot of pictures shared on social media showed green healthy plants at the flowering and pod-formation phase,” says Sitima, who just completed her Master’s Degree studies at the University of Galway in Ireland in climate change, agriculture and food security with support from Irish Aid.
Sitima says it is likely that farmers mistook the yellowing of leaves for the maturity of the crops.
“It may also be that farmers noted the infection and decided to ignore it as, commonly, farmers do not treat diseases when the crop has already reproduced and approaching maturity.
“Later, farmers only came to be shocked during the harvesting period when they noticed the emptiness of the pods and reduced yields,” she says.
Caused by a fungus, Phakopsora pachyrhizi, soybean rust is spread through spores that can be travel over a wide area and long distances as they are transported by wind.
When the crop has been infected, blister-like features form on the leaves in the initial stages. A single spore can spawn hundreds of other spores continuously for about three weeks. Later these small blisters become white powdery stuff.
Kananji says the disease is prevalent in all soybean growing areas in the country and its occurrence and severity has been sporadic depending on crop management, environmental factors particularly rainfall distribution and relative humidity.
Noting how heavily the disease affected farmers in the 2022-23 season largely due to lack of knowledge on how to manage it, CAT, in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAES), has launched a two-month campaign to sensitize smallholder farmers on soybean rust management.
The campaign is targeting farmers in Lilongwe, Dowa, Ntchisi, Salima, Kasungu and Mchinji – six districts which are considered predominantly soybean growing districts in the country.
It involves awareness meetings and national and community radio and print media messaging.
Kananji indicates that with the right knowledge and good farming practices, farmers can handle soybean rust and make money from their investment.
Besides the recommended fungicides which should be applied just before flowering and pods formation and help to significantly minimize damage when soybean rust attacks, it also requires farmers to plant early maturing and tolerant varieties and generally good farming practices.
“Soybean rust is soil borne disease. The spores are kept in the soil waiting for conducive environment to affect the crop. If farmers plant soybean on the same piece of land, the probability of re-infection would be very high. Farmers, therefore, need to practice crop rotation and plant known soybean varieties that can mature early so they can escape the disease,” he says.
In addition, use of buffer crops helps to control the spread of soybean rust spores from one field to the other as the intervening crop acts as a hedge which traps the spores.
As tobacco, the country’s major forex earner, flounders on the global market due to anti-smoking lobby and other forces, soya production can be a chimney through which farmers suffocating from tobacco smoke can escape.
Demand for the crop is significant and Malawi is failing to meet the required supplies. For the 2022-23 season, the export market needed 90,000 metric tonnes, according to the Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC). With soybean rust and other factors, the country failed to meet that target.
The crop ranked among the top four of the produce most in demand by the export market alongside pigeon peas at 117,000 metric tonnes, beans at 107,545 metric tonnes and groundnuts at 34,260 metric tonnes.
CAT says soybean is an important value chain in Malawi that has potential to grow in most parts of the country. It is significantly contributing to the booming of the fish and poultry industry as the produce is used to produce feed.
One of CAT’s partners, Teren Investments, is using soybean in production of fish meal. It is working with smallholder farmers to offer them ready market for the crop.
“This will significantly save Malawi from forex as we get most fish meal from Zambia,” Kananji says.
According to CAT, had Malawi met the 90,000 metric tonnes export demand for the year, it would have generated billions of kwacha.
“Unfortunately, as a country we were unable to meet this demand due to soybean rust. In this coming season (2023- 2024), China alone is looking for huge soybean quantities. As a country, we therefore need to prepare ourselves to ensure we satisfy this ready market,” Kananji says.
