Saturday, December 08, 2007

Ending Famine in Malawi

Anyone catch this article in the New York Times this week? (12/2/07)

Malawi is making a comeback. We sent fertilizer, and what do you know? The people of Malawi are no longer starving, they are actually exporting food! After the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Malawi's newly-elected president led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain.


Here're some more pictures to tell the story:

Women in the Dezda district of Malawi pounding corn to make nsima, the thick cornmeal porridge that is the national staple. Malawi's government ignored experts and supplied heavy fertilizer subsidies to farmers, contributing to record-breaking corn harvests.


The Malawian countryside, with lands plowed and read for planting to begin. Farmers explained Malawi's extraordinary turnaround - one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa - with one word: fertilizer.

Community leaders attended a workshop to learn how to use fertilizer on their maize crops. This year, Malawi is selling more corn to the United Nations World Food Program than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.


A woman planting maize seeds in her field in Zomba. Malawi's successful use of fertilizer subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa.


Chief Zaudeni Mapila addressed villagers during a fertilizer coupon meeting. Last year, roughly half the country's farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land.
Workers loaded fertilizer bags onto trucks for distribution. Malawi, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world, is instead feeding its hungry neighbors.

A grain storage building was constructed in Malawi. The country's successful use of fertilizer subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.
Lontiya Samuel removing corn kernels from the cob in her maize storeroom. As a recipient of the government fertilizer subsidies, she managed to increase her crop yield.

I'd like to end by saying one thing. While the consequences of poverty are enormous....the source of wars and terrorism, the solution is so simple if we lend our fellow man a hand up. Not to is ignorant. I used to be ignorant. I'm less so now.

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