Edificios de Frank Lloyd Wright analizados desde el punto de vista

As it is presented in the secondary literature, the history of Malawian agriculture is characterised by significant marginalisation of smallholders. To begin with, between the late 1890s and 1920, a substantial proportion of the land which now constitutes Malawi was appropriated by British settlers for the cultivation of cash crops and particularly tobacco (Milner 2005, p. 46) – first through ad-hoc agreements with tribal chiefs and later the development of privatised land (Sahn and Arulpragasam 1991).

Furthermore, from 1926, the colonial administration began to restrict what and how much of certain crops smallholder farmers were able to grow – particularly with maize, cotton and tobacco (Hazarika and Alwang 2003, p. 100; Kydd and Hewitt 1986, p. 1208) through agricultural marketing boards which also began to set prices (Kandoole et al., 1988).

After independence in 1964, Malawi’s first president, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, continued to pursue an outward orientated strategy that prioritised estate-based agriculture (Ellis et al. 2003, p. 3). While the approach produced impressive macro-economic performance, with strong growth and relative stability (Chilowa 1998, p.

554; Lele 1990, p. 1209), it also maintained and exacerbated existing inequalities between estate and smallholder farming (Booth et al. 2007; Orr 2000, p. 349). This

134 was because as well as continued restriction on cropping patterns, other factors which upheld the dualistic economy were: the continued transfer of customary smallholder land to the estate sector; finance was siphoned from the smallholder sub-sector by the state marketing board, with most of the resulting profits channelled into estates;

estates remained virtually untaxed; and smallholders were relied upon to provide a marketable surplus of the staple food crop to feed estate and urban workers (Kydd and Christiansen 1982; Lele 1990, p. 1208; McClintock 1985; Sahn and Van Frausum 1994). As a result of these processes, although the average growth was 5.5 percent between 1964 and 1977, this was primarily accumulated by the estate sector, which grew by 17 percent, while smallholder agriculture expanded less than 3 percent per annum (Harrigan 2003, p. 848).

However, at the end of the 1970s the marginalisation of smallholder agriculture began to be reversed to some extent. Economic troubles – catalysed by the oil price shock of 1979 and the Mozambican civil war, which cut off ma jor routes to international sea ports (Chilowa 1998, p. 558) – forced Malawi to appeal to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) for financial assistance (Harrigan 2003, p.

849). As typical of such interactions, the international financial institutions insisted on a raft of conditionality, particularly reform of the state’s role in the agricultural sector.

The first element of adjustment concentrated on the “correction of prices” in the agricultural sector and aimed specifically to reduce the bias against smallholder farmers (Lele 1990, p. 1207). Key reforms focused on raising producer prices for smallholders; eliminating consumer and fertiliser subsidies; exchange and interest rate adjustments; cuts in public expenditures; and, within agriculture, a shift away from the National Rural Development Programme (NRDP) toward agricultural research and extension (Lele 1990, p. 1211). A specific target for reform was the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Malawi) (ADMARC), which, in 1987, ceased to be the sole marketing agent for smallholder food crops (Tsutomu 2009, p.

359). By the mid-1990s, licensing was no longer required to trade in smallholder crops and in 1993, the marketing of hybrid seeds was liberalised, with the subsidies removed in 1994 (Tsutomu 2009, p. 359).

135 In terms of tobacco production, the World Bank suggested a deconstruction of regulation as part of the Agricultural Sector Adjustment Programme 1990-1993 (Harrigan 2003, p. 851). After the Bank had established a pilot project in 1990, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) took over the programme in 1991 (Hir schmann 1995, p. 25) and, in so doing, initiated a US$55 million, seven-year Agricultural Sector Assistance Programme (ASAP) intended to:

“Restructure the agricultural sector in such a way that smallholders on customary land and agricultural labourers and tenants have available to them the opportunities, mechanisms, and resources to participate in and help drive sectoral growth and development (Cited in: Tobin and Knausenberger 1998, p.

409).

While smallholders had been unofficially selling into the regulated system for some time (Tobin and Knausenberger 1998, pp. 102-103), this de facto liberalisation was now slowly formalised. For the 1990-1991 growing season the government issued licences for smallholders to produce 3.5 million Kg of burley tobacco and marketing quotas were offered to tobacco growers’ clubs to sell produce at auctions (Hirschmann 1995, p. 25). In 1993 no n-members were also allowed to sell tobacco to registered traders (Hazarika and Alwang 2003, p. 100) and later the government agreed to increased quota allotments for smallholders further still (Tobin and Knausenberger 1998, p. 410).

Unfortunately, over all these liberalisation programmes are not viewed to have greatly benefited the smallholder sector. According to one analyst, “the removal of…[input]

price subsidies… together with the depreciation of the Malawian Kwacha (Mk) in the 1990s resulted in sharp price increases for seeds and fertiliser with severe repercussions on smallholder livelihoods and food security” (Tsutomu 2009, p. 359).

The reason for this is believed to lay in the limited capacity of the private sector to respond to the new opportunities. For example, in 1988 only 387 private traders were licensed, and while the number rose to 948 in 1989, it declined by 43 percent in 1990 (Milner 2005, p. 53). Since then, investigation has suggested a further decline in such commercial activities and Chirwa et al. (2002) report that most rural areas still have difficulties accessing markets for agricultural produce. Although the study did find private trading, most was by unlicensed vendors who move from village to village buying produce at very low prices and tampering with scales (Chirwa et al. 2002).

136 This situation is widespread in discourses explaining the need for fair trade (Brown 1993; Nicholls and Opal 2005) and during interviews with farmers in Malawi, many expressed a perception that vendors were exploitative (as discussed below).

In terms of tobacco production, while reforms increased smallholder participation (Jaffee 2003, p. 15) and some have benefited (Takane 2008), the extent of improvement is questioned. According to Tobin and Knausenberger (1998, p. 410), less than five percent of Malawi’s smallholders were the direct beneficiaries of increases in tobacco sales, and those that did gain were likely to have been the more capable. This situation has had serious effects on the food secur ity of the rural population as, with little benefit from reforms, the intention that cash crops would deliver the ability to purchase food have not been realised. Indeed, with a substitution effect from growing food crops to export production, coupled with the removal of fertiliser subsidies, endogenous production of food has been seriously reduced (Harrigan 2003, p. 849). By 1987 Malawi faced a food crisis resulting from both the decline in maize production per capita – particularly of improved maize (Sahn et al., 1990, Table 24) – and a collapse in ADMARC's ability to purchase the crop. Overall, Malawi was hit by a series of famines in 1991/1992, in 2001/2002 (when, between January and April, some 500-1,000 people died of hunger or hunger-related diseases in the southern and central regions of the country) and again in 2004/2005 (when more than 4.7 million out of a population of 12 million experienced food shortages) (Chinsinga 2008; Menon 2007).

Fortunately, in recent times Malawi has been much more food secure. This is largely attributed to favourable weather conditions and also the interventions of the most recent president Dr Bingu wa Mutharika (elected in 2004 and then re-elected in 2009).

At the time of fieldwork in 2009 the president was largely considered as a positive replacement for his predecessor. Bingu has guided Malawi into new relationships of financial support with a range of donor institutions (OECD 2008, p. 404; World Bank 2007) although tensions over some policies are increasingly evident. In 2010 the OECD (p. 180) noted that Malawi’s

“macroeconomic policy performance has been generally consistent and strong…[although] an escalation in domestic debt which increased domestic interest payments and expansion of the fertiliser subsidy well beyond initial

137 budget plans offset the benefits of the strong revenue performance, widening the fiscal deficit to 5.4 percent of GDP in 2009”.

Indeed, numerous policies of President Bingu have drawn considerable criticism (Khanje, p. 5). The first is a continued reliance on a pegged exchange rate, which is widely recognised to overvalue the Malawian Kwacha (MK) (Jomo 2011; Nyasa Times 2009). While the policy maintains Malawi’s ability to afford basic imports such as oil based fuel and fertilisers, it also results in reducing the competitiveness of exports in international markets. A related policy has been the reintroduction of fertiliser subsidy which, according to the OECD (2008, p. 402), allowed “all rural households to buy 50 kg of chemical fertiliser for MK 900.00…approximately a quarter of the retail price” in 2006/2007. In subsequent years the subsidy has risen, and in the 2008/2009 growing year, 1.7 million beneficiaries obtained fertiliser at a cost of 800MK — at a total cost to the government of MK 29 billion (NASFAM No Date, p. 11). The 2008/2009 growing season coincided with a global spike in fertiliser prices and, as a result, the cost of the subsidy as a percentage of GDP rose from three and a half to 16 percent (Dorward and Chirwa 2011, p. 8) – although it later returned to the previous level.

The current government has also introduced minimum prices based on the cost of production for certain agricultural goods, including tobacco, maize, cotton and also rice (Khanje 2009, p. 5). While food supplies have been good in recent years, the cotton price of MK75 per Kg was rejected by international buyers, and in 2009 much of the crop was left standing in the fields (Langa 2010)¹⁸². This withdrawal of cotton buyers is likely to have contributed to a serious shortage of foreign exchange currency (FOREX). The most obvious symptom of this was a shortage of oil-based fuel types, including petrol, diesel and paraffin (The Daily Times 2009), which was subsequently estimated to have cost the economy some 727 million US dollars according to the Economic Association of Malawi (All Africa 2010). Overall, this shortage comes as a result of high spending, and although many see subsidies on fertiliser as a significant factor in achieving food security (OECD 2008; Riungu 2009, p. 401), the policy

182 Despite the minimum set prices, there still remains a considerable level of trading below the official level, for example in tobacco and cotton (Jomo 2010).

138 naturally strains government finances and depletes FOREX supplies (Govenor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi quoted in Malawi News 2009, p. 8).

Thinking beyond fuel imports, Malawi holds trade deficits with most of regional and international trading partners and it is considered that the President has failed to achieve his promise to improve the country’s trade balance (Chiyembekeza 2010).

Indeed, there is still widespread need for Malawi to reduce reliance on external resources and to increase foreign exchange earnings through exports. According to a government official interviewed during fieldwork¹⁸³, the country needs to “switch from being reliant on exports to generating export led economic growth… [which is acknowledged to] require diversification into non-traditional exports and also the building of endogenous capacity of Malawian producers”. The Malawi Export Production Council (MPEC) stated in February 2011 that a quick “diversification drive” into other agricultural goods was essential to reduce reliance on tobacco exports (Chiyembekeza 2011). Against this background, the chapter now returns to the history of NASFAM and its involvement in fair trade and the marketing of Kilombero rice to Scotland.

History of the National Smallholder Farmers Association of