If we had Malawian price rises a loaf would cost £3.60
Oct 14 2008 Agenda
It is not just the West that is feeling the effects of inflation. Kate Weiler, a student at Birmingham University and Oxfam volunteer, explains how the rise in food prices is affecting Malawi.
Skint students notoriously live on limited diets of pasta and sauce or beans on toast. We’ve all done it to save money, but with the current rise in global food prices, everybody in the UK is being forced to decide between necessities and luxuries. We are now paying an average of 12 per cent more at supermarket checkouts than last year on top of increased fuel and petrol bills.
If people in the UK are changing their eating habits to save money I can’t help wondering about my friends in Malawi and how they are coping. Since August, food prices in Malawi have been three times higher than normal.
If food prices were three times higher in the UK, we would be paying £3.87 for a small pack of Cornflakes, £2.58 for two pints of milk and £3.60 for a loaf of bread. Many more of us would be facing serious food shortages.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world with over four million people facing chronic hunger. While I was there I saw how most of the people live rurally as subsistence farmers growing maize, used to make the household staple nsima. Nsima forms an essential part of the Malawian’s diet and because it is cheap and filling it is eaten in large quantities.
I taught at Domasi Mission Seconday School in southern Malawi where I met Lemelani Thawani, deputy headteacher. Lemelani has a vision for Malawi’s future that would see food production change.
He told me there is a lack of variety when it comes to food production and diet in Malawi. Nsima and beans are cheap; sometimes the lucky ones are able to substitute Nsima for rice but with food prices soaring diets are becoming even more reliant on maize.
While I don’t suppose he meant a re-vamp of school dinners Jamie Oliver style, Lemelani does believe a wealth of new foods could be produced using existing crops and space – fruit juices from the trees outside his front door, potatoes instead of just nsima. He believes Malawians have the capacity but small-scale farmers need support and investment to enable food development to move forward. Over the last few years the Malawian government has made policy decisions to support small-scale farmers, with positive results. By providing a subsidy for fertilizer more than 2 million families have been able to greatly improve their harvest.
Due to this, many Malawians face the food crisis knowing they have food to protect them from price rises, some even have surplus to sell. However, many Malawians still face severe food shortages and will need immediate assistance as food prices continue to rise.
Lemelani told me: “When the Malawian Government implemented the agricultural subsidy programme in 2004, the country moved from a chronic food shortage and famine to huge food surpluses. Today farmers explore newer and better means of agricultural production. What is now needed is to prevent the existence of extreme hunger and malnutrition amidst food surpluses.”
In Domasi Secondary School, Lemelani has been able to put some of his dream into practice. The school has its own ‘Eden’ – a garden complete with vegetables, fruits and an irrigation system in place for when the rains don’t appear. The harvest provides the school with ample meals for students and teachers alike, with no reliance on the expensive importing of goods.
As world food day approaches it is vital that governments, both developing and developed, invest in small scale agricultural polices that protect vulnerable people. Thanks to the fertilizer subsidy, two million more Malawian families look to the future with hope.
