Page 19 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

Deforestation, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture 11

Although this may be a valid portrait, given the widespread "food
insecurity" among rural peasants in Malawi, it must not be overdrawn. For there
are vast disparities of wealth in Malawi and there are growing inequalities of
wealth (specifically in the size of land holdings) and cash income - and thus
access to food - even among peasant smallholders.
But agricultural economists, as economists, emphasize that
"transforming agriculture must be at least a significant part of the solution to
African poverty". This transformation, we are informed, will entail a "green
revolution" (Conroy et al 2006: 5). Apparently, this will involve scientists,
farming communities and development agencies: the latter, of course, like the
World Bank and FAO, supporting and promoting some version of high-tech
industrial agriculture. It echoes the agrarian vision - the "agricultural revolution"
- of the Colonial Director of Agriculture, Richard Kettlewell in the1950's (Morris
2016: 271-73).
Whether a "green revolution" - the promotion of industrial
capitalist farming at the complete expense of subsistence farming is what
Africa needs at the present time is a debatable issue (see below).
So-called "traditional" African agriculture is not based simply on
"custom" or "tradition" nor is it a "stagnant" form of agriculture (as portrayed by
advocates of free market capitalism); it is rather based on extensive agro-
ecological knowledge. But it has its limitations and, as many scholars have
suggested, what is required is the development of a more "enlightened" form
of agriculture; not a "green revolution" and the promotion of high-tech
industrial agriculture; which in fact has been “wrecking" the natural world and
causing untold "human misery" throughout the world. (Tudge 2007:61).
During the past two or three decades several organizations have
emerged in the Shire Highlands which have advocated and sought to promote
some form of "organic" or "enlightened" agriculture as a response to a perceived
food crisis. Seeking to enhance, or develop, or go beyond "traditional" African
agriculture, they view themselves as promoting an "alternative" form of
agriculture. Alternative, that is, to the industrial agriculture promoted by
economists, the Malawi government, and the various agencies of global
capitalism. Kamuzu Banda, we may recall, extolled the virtues of estate
agriculture (using cheap labour) and "modern" methods of farming.
Out of a plethora of non-government organizations devoted to
agriculture, I focus here on just three: those that are devoted, respectively, to
organic agriculture, permaculture and agro-forestry.
In 1995, largely through the initiative of Arthur Schwarz, the
Shire Highland Organic Growers Association (SHOGA) was formed. It
aimed to promote "organic agriculture" in Malawi. Schwarz, rather
ironically, was the general manager of the Naming'omba Tea Estate and a
leading figure in the Tea Association, an organization devoted to promoting