By Kingsley Jassi
Malawi’s maize is struggling to compete with cheaper supplies from Zambia, where the official minimum price is K32,000 per 50kg bag compared with K45,000 in Malawi.
Zambia produced more than 5.1 million tonnes (MT) of maize this year, creating room for exports and putting pressure on Malawi, whose production remains below national demand.
Latest figures show Malawi has not recovered its record maize harvest of 4.6 million MT recorded in 2021, with production reaching only 3.3 million MT this year.
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Official statistics show maize production has remained about 20 percent below the five-year average in recent seasons, ranging between 2.7 million and 2.9 million MT. This is below the country’s annual consumption requirement of about 3.1 million MT.
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Agriculture policy expert Tamani Nkhono-Mvula said rising production costs and extreme weather were making it difficult for smallholder farmers to increase productivity.
Nkhono-Mvula said Malawi needed to adopt smart agriculture that uses technology, data and innovation while conserving natural resources.
“This means that increasing agriculture output should not depend much on extending the area of land where agriculture production is taking place but increasing the productivity of the available land and labour,” he said.
He said Malawi would need to produce at least 10 million MT of food by 2030 to meet the needs of its growing population, industry and livestock sector.
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Economist Marvin Banda said government and the private sector needed to rethink food production and marketing strategies in response to changing weather patterns.
“There should also be a serious push to diversify the concept of food beyond maize into cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, millet, legumes and other resilient crops. But farmers will diversify only if there are markets, storage, processing and reliable prices,” Banda said.
He also called for increased investment in irrigation, water harvesting and drought-resilient agriculture.
“We cannot continue building an economy around the assumption that rainfall will always cooperate,” Banda said.
