Page 16 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

8 The Society of Malawi Journal

Deforestation, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture.

Brian Morris
For more than thirty years I have been gathering newspaper cuttings
and culling various items of interest from local Malawi newspapers. These
relate mainly to the Shire Highlands, and specifically to the social life of its
people and to its wildlife as well as to national politics. Leaving aside issues
relating to the AIDs crisis and the troubling resurgence of witchcraft accusations
in recent decades, that have led to several deaths (see Wilson 2011), the
newspaper cuttings tend to focus on two public concerns, both impacting upon
the life and the well-being of peasant-smallholders in the Shire Highlands.
These are namely: i) The widespread deforestation and degradation of
the natural environment and ii) what is rather euphemistically described as the
problem of "food security": the fact that many poor peasant smallholders are
living on the "edge of survival” (Conroy et al 2006: 98).
Many studies have been made of both of these issues, and Malawi is
simply awash with World Bank consultants and various non-government agencies
(NGOs); many supported by such agencies as the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the European Union (EU) and the German Agency for
Teclmical Co-operation (GT2) that are specifically focused on environmental
issues or on "food security and sustainable livelihood". It is quite ironic that the
World Bank is so concerned about "food security" when in the 1980s its strident
advocacy of free market capitalism, under the "structural adjustment"
programme, undermined farm subsidies, raised food prices and led to the
cutting-back of welfare provision thus leading to widespread hardship
among many peasant smallholders (Chidlow 1990).
Throughout the 1930's the deforestation of the Shire Highlands
landscape, due mainly to the opening up of agricultural land by Lomwe migrants
in the Thyolo, Mulanje and Chiradzulu districts, was of specific concern to the
colonial government. Although, as I have discussed elsewhere, this
transformation of the landscape did not in fact lead to the "destruction" or the
complete "degradation" of the environment (Morris 2016: 240). It is of interest
to note, therefore, that in a paper presented to the Malawi Congress Party
Convention held at Mzuzu in 1985, entitled "Protect the Malawi Environment",
no specific mention was made of deforestation. It noted only that forests
(woodlands) provided people with fuelwood, poles and other products.
However, from around 1990 growing concern was being expressed by
government foresters and by local people at the increasing "deforestation" - the
depletion of the Brachystegia woodlands - that was taking place throughout
many parts of Malawi - particularly in the Shire Highlands. This was largely due
to the fact that there was a high concentration of population in the Highlands,