The European Union's (EU) Farm Income Diversification Programme (FIDP) is transforming lives of small scale farmers in Thyolo, Malawi through new agri-business initiatives. The programme has financed the farmers with farm inputs such as fertilizer, chemicals and technical assistance to boost conservation farming in the area.
FIDP project coordinator for Thyolo, George Botha, said the project is benefiting households in 83 villages since it started last year. "The farmers are required to form farm clubs to benefit from the programme because it is easier to work in groups. FIDP's main focus is to increase food security and income levels of rural households while ensuring sustainable use of soil and water resources by encouraging agri-business development and improved marketing of agricultural products in selected communities," he said.
Sanderson Juwawo, a land resource conservation officer from the Blantyre Agriculture Development Division, said the new agri-business initiative has proved instrumental in improving the livelihood of small scale farmers. "This programme helps the farmer in the village to reduce the costs on his farm inputs as he only uses chemicals and fertiliser as major inputs. Labour cost is not high as the chemicals are used to kill weeds in the garden," he said.
Thyolo is one of the 11 districts where this programme is being implemented. The programme is expected to run for five years.
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Some advocates of sustainable farming for small-scale farmers argue that programmes such as this create more problems than they solve, despite initially appearing to be a quick fix for the farmers' low productivity issues.
When the programme of free inputs runs out the farmers can rarely afford to buy them. Particularly if they have not also been following a soil fertility improvement regime, their yields may then fall to even lower than they were before the provision of inputs. After the ease of applying freely provided fertilizers and chemical weed killers, when they are no longer available it can seem a big step back for the farmers to go back to the harder worker and discipline of using compost and manure.
For all these reasons, the experience of similar programmes elsewhere in Africa and the world suggest that they do not assist small scale farmers in an long-term way, and may actually end up disadvantaging them by encouraging them to neglect more natural and sustainable farming techniques they have much greater control of.
African Agriculture
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