Page 24 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

16 The Society of Malawi Journal

However, the growing of burley tobacco as a cash crop was taken up
only by a minority of peasant smallholders, and only in certain regions of the
Shire Highlands - in the Thondwe and Namadzi districts especially. It is highly
dependent on artificial fertilizer. As such it tends to undermine the humus
content of the soil, and as the smoking of tobacco is highly detrimental to human
health, tobacco, whatever the variety, is definitely not a crop that should be
encouraged.
Throughout much of the Banda era, to bolster the production of maize,
Malawi’s staple crop, the government provided fertilizer price subsidies to
peasant farmers. During the 1980's, however, under pressure from the World
Bank, with its structural adjustment programme, these subsidies were removed,
and along with market reforms this resulted in a food crisis in 1987. In the 1990's
therefore, along with the liberation of burley tobacco, fertilizer subsidies were
re-instated, and subsequently "fertilizer politics" became a prominent feature of
Malawi politics, particularly at the time of presidential elections.
In 1998 the government introduced the universal starter-pack programme,
mainly to avert famine in the country. This consisted of giving to every peasant
smallholder in Malawi a package containing 2.5 kg of hybrid maize seed together
with a recommended quantity and type of fertilizer sufficient for 0.1 ha. of land.
Although such starter-packs were undoubtedly popular among peasant
smallholders, there has been a wealth of literature and debate regarding the
limitations and feasibility of such large-scale agricultural input subsidies
(Conroy et al 2006: 160-184, E. Chirwa and Dorward 2013: 62-83).
The general consensus among agro-economists is that Malawi, in order
to overcome the recurrent food crises, must go beyond the provision of
"starter-packs" (of hybrid maize and fertilizers): it must engender a "green
revolution". This would entail the key strategies of "diversification" and
"sustainability", and involve the following: the planting of high quality hybrid
seeds - varieties that are high-yielding, early maturing and drought resistant; the
efficient use of chemical fertilizer; diversification - specifically with an emphasis
on the growing of cash crops such as tobacco; the emphasis on legume crops that
are also protein-rich such as soya bean and groundnuts; and, finally, "active
private sector partnership" (Carr 2001, Conroy et al 2006:174-75).
There are, of course, plenty of scholars and agro-economists around
who, like Steven Pinker, extol the virtues of industrial agriculture and advocate
a "green revolution" for Africa. They emphasize, for example, that whereas in
the past it took twenty-five men a whole day to harvest and thresh a ton of grain,
this can now be done by a single person with a combine harvester in around six
minutes (Pinker 2018: 75).
Pinker recognizes, of course, that "high-tech" (industrial) agriculture
consumes a lot of fossil-fuel (a primary factor in global warming), freely uses
large amounts of herbicides and pesticides (to the detriment of local wildlife);