By Wanangwa Tembo:
John Chibisa, a subsistence maize farmer in Sub-Traditional Authority (STA) Mdunga, Kasungu East, cannot believe what he has been seeing.
“Crop yield has been dwindling in the past few years despite that I practice good husbandry practices,” he says of his two-acre garden.
“Every year, the harvest goes down and, yet, the land size has not changed and the quantity of fertiliser being used remains unchanged. I used to harvest over 40 bags of maize from my plot, which is no longer the case. For instance, I harvested 37 bags in 2017, 33 in 2020 and 28 in 2023. I’m worried that then yield may dwindle further this year,” he says.
Chibisa’s experience is shared by a horde of farmers in the area, one of whom is Isaac Chimtumbuka, who fears that the trend may plunge bewildered community members into untold poverty and food insecurity in the coming years.
Luckily, Chimtumbuka is aware of the reasons behind the plummeting harvest.
“Agriculture extension workers have made us aware that this is, to a large extent, a result of land degradation. That is why the soils are no longer as fertile as before.
“As you can see, the topography here is steep. We have cleared all the trees and, as such, the water that runs down slopes carries with it all the fertility, leaving our gardens impotent,” he explains.
Land conservationist at Kasungu District Council Patricia Kanyika concedes that Kasungu is one of the most degraded districts in the country.
She says, to reverse the situation, there is a need to introduce speedy interventions.
Kanyika singles out Chamama, Mkanakhoti and Chulu extension planning areas (EPAs) as the most affected.
The country has lost over half of its forests in the past 40 years, rendering nearly 80 percent of total land area vulnerable to degradation
“Land degradation is actually an effect of deforestation. The other effects could be flooding, contaminated water and erosion. These could translate into serious food shortages because Malawi is an agrarian country.
“The most outstanding effect has been that most of our land is no longer suitable for farming. We have lost our arable land and this poses a serious threat to food security, nutrition and growth of the agriculture sector in general,” Kanyika says.
Her view is shared by Kasungu District Environmental Officer Herbert Bolokonya.
“Specifically, an analysis of soil erosion in selected EPAs in the district indicates soil erosion rates ranging from 1.07 to 10.0 tonnes per hectare per year.
“Forests are also experiencing high deforestation rate, estimated at 2.8 percent, representing an annual average loss of 250,000 hectares of forest cover. As the statistics say, land degradation and soil erosion have become a problem in Kasungu,” Bolokonya points out.
At least 80 percent of the country’s 20 million-plus people live in rural areas, engaging in farming as their most dependable source of income and food.
In that regard, land degradation could be a significant hindrance to the country’s overall economic development, further threatening the attainment of 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The World Bank Group 2019 Malawi Country Environmental Analysis attributes the massive clearing of forests and the resultant land degradation to population growth.
“Population growth places huge demand on natural systems, with more land being converted to agriculture and more forests being harvested for the wood fuel supply. Climate change magnifies these impacts by putting greater strain on land and forests due to increased incidents of natural disasters and extreme weather events,” it says.
Among other factors, the bank cites weak land tenure security, unsustainable land management practices, shortage of funding for environmental management and weak institutions at lower levels of governance as proximate drivers of environmental degradation.
Globally, studies show that at least 20 to 40 percent of the world’s total land experienced degradation, thus affecting nearly half of the global population.
In Kasungu, forests have been cleared largely due to agriculture expansion and tobacco farming activities.
The district has the largest number of estates in the country and is one of the leading tobacco producers.
The hope for the district now lies in the Climate Smart Public Works Programme (CSPWP), a component of the Social Support and Livelihood Programme which the government is implementing with support from the World Bank.
“The interventions under the CSPWP are centred on land and soil conservation following the catchment approach. In the catchment areas, a number of interventions are being implemented.
“These include swales, stone bands, ridge alignment, marker ridging and vertiver grass planting, planting of fast-growing species through nursery establishment, and natural regeneration. All these aim at reducing land degradation and deforestation,” he says.
According to Bolokonya, the project interventions are really beneficial looking at the assets that are created.
He, however, says there must be mindset change towards implementation of the land resource conservation technologies by the grassroots.
On his part, STA Mdunga, who drums up support for CSPWP activities in Kapululu catchment area, says the sure way of restoring forests and tackling land degradation is seeing to it that community members are planting more trees and taking care of them.
He says while most tobacco companies provide tree seedlings to farmers, many farmers do not plant them.
“This is the reason we have not won the war against deforestation. Farmers receive the seedlings but fall short of planting them. In my area, it is now a must that every household must plant trees.
“The process will start with us, leaders, whereby every chief will plant not less than 50 trees and it must cascade down to households,” he says.
Mdunga says his efforts are meant to supplement the ongoing second cycle of the CSPWP activities taking place in the district’s 20 catchments areas.
Malawi has committed to achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030, rehabilitating 4.5 million hectares of degraded land for crop production and restoring 820 00 hectares of native forests by 2030, and communities in Kasungu are making a steady contribution towards this vision.— Mana
