Maize in Zambia, Part 2 - A nation wedded to maize (Post editorial)

Today is Zambia's 48th birthday. I've been around since #40; time flies, but not fast enough.

Celebrated by watering and weeding my garden and resting. We've got three days left of inputs distribution in Kaoma and we are leaving to return there at 4:30am tomorrow morning, so not engaging in any real festivities.

Here's an editorial from the Zambian national newspaper The Post (Tuesday, September 25, 2012):

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A nation wedded to maize

TODAY, we seem to be more dependent on maize for food security than ever before.

Maize is looked at as being the only 'food' and if we don't grow it, we fear we will not have food. Yet we are forgetting that maize is a new food to us. It is not something that has always been there in this territory. It is a crops that was brought to us by the Portuguese - just like cassava and other crops.

This country used to have a variety of crops, of foodstuffs in all its regions. People had a variety of food to eat throughout the day. And they were not dependent on one or two meals of maize nshima every day. There was yam in many parts of the country. We still have sweet potatoes, pumpkins, millet, sorghum and many other crops of foodstuffs. But all these are not considered 'food'; food seems to be only maize nshima. We have all sorts of varieties of rice that can be cooked and consumed in so many different ways. But this, too, is not 'food'.

And there seems to be an entrenched view that maize is the best means of achieving food security. Maize seems to be so important that many politicians fear to touch it because it is politically very sensitive.

As a result, while constantly making reference to the ideals of crop diversification, our main preoccupation seems to be achieving food security using highly subsidised maize production.

There is little effort to creat market for other crops like rice, sorghum, millet and so on and so forth. Diversification away from maize is held back by limited productivity and a lack of lucrative markets for alternatives to maize.

And when it comes to food security, we don't think there is any dispute about the potential of crop diversification about potential of crop diversification as an adaptation strategy. Crop diversification is a sure way of guaranteeing food security and of boosting soil health and improving the nutritional status of our people. Crop diversification is a crucial means of improving the nutritional status of a society wedded to maize nshima.

The earnings for farmers from maize production are declining. And without heavy subsidies, most of our maize farmers would be recording heavy losses and consequently, they would be out of maize production.

As things stand today, maize production is not a profitable undertaking for most of our farmers. People should be provided with alternative agricultural production opportunities that can generate new employment and enhance incomes. Agriculture diversification can contribute to this.

Out over-emphasis on maize production has resulted in low output prices and profitability for maize and has dampened agricultural growth. To reverse this trend, agricultural diversification is needed.

Agricultural diversification is not only important for profitability; it is also a way of promoting dietary diversity. It can enhance the nutritional balance of diet, which improves earning capacity of labour. All these attributes of diversification induce sustainable productivity growth in agriculture, without being exclusively related to the parameter of development.

Agriculture will need bold measures if we are to see a reversal of fortunes. More attention need to be paid to other crops. Spending over US$300 million on subsidising one crop, maize, doesn't make sense. We are not saying people shouldn't grow maize. What we are saying is that maize should be grown alongside other crops. And that maize nshima should be eaten alongside other foodstuffs. It doesn't make sense to eat maize nshima two or three times a day - maize nshima for lunch and maize nshima for supper or dinner. Other things can be eaten for breakfast that we ourselves are producing. We can also eat something else, other than maize nshima, at lunch or supper. Even the Irish don't eat Irish potatoes for breakfast, lunch, supper every day. They eat other things as well. If one travels to East Africa, one will find that the Africans who live there, although they also eat maize nshima, it is not maize nshima they eat all the time. They eat a lot of other things. It is the same for West Africa. But there seems to be a problem in this region. But even our neighbours in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia are not so dependent of maize nshima the way we are. Maize nshima may be an important staple food for them but it's not everything, it is not the only 'food'.

There is need for us to recognise the fact that we have a serious problem in the agricultural sector whose solution lies in recognising the need for crop diversification. There is need to build some consensus towards a shared vision about the nature of this problem, what needs to be done to deal with it, and the likely consequence of taking no action.

Email:              editorial@post.co.zm
Web page:        http://www.postzambia.com

More nshima please

I went to Phiri's Guesthouse down the road hoping to score some nshima (easy) and t-bone (not so easy). The waiter, after the usual gawping over my limited siLozi, told me that _ma-tbone akuna, kapa kuhu iteni (no t-bone, but chicken is there).

_Kuhu man'gi? (Which chicken?)

_Blyoilah ni kuhu kwa hae (Broiler and Village chicken).

For a minute I considered village chicken, which is Zambian for ultra-super-crazy-Joel-Saladin-eat-my-shorts-free-range. Village chickens never get any food put in front of them, sleep in trees, eat bugs, ticks, crumbs, pieces of tobacco, and spent a great deal of time avoiding the village dog, which shares the same sort of diet. Hence, they are what we might call "brown meat". Taste great, but they have the texture of vulcanized rubber.

_Amutisa bloylah (Bring broiler). Han'gufe ... nishiwile tala. (Step on it ... I'm dying of hunger).

Exit one really happily confused waiter. Visually, there was quite a bit going on the walls; a very bright plastic facsimile of the last supper that had all the Disciples and the Big JC depicted with dimpled apple-cheeks. Must have been some good wine with the fish. Underneath were two prayers; one for before eating, the other for afterwards. The first was somewhat familiar given my limited knowledge of Catholicism ("Bless this food we are about to receive ...") but the other I'd never seen.

Guess people are less thankful when their bellies are full.

The other poster was titled "GOD'S BLESSINGS" ... It depicted stacks of coins, a staggering array of food that no Zambian will likely either eat or see, spreads of dollar bills, and what looked like prayer wheels decorated in mysterious Chinese script.

I don't have the post-gestation means to delve into the mixed messages much; one is a idealized Saviour telling the boys that he was on his way out, in a cataclysm of pain that he wouldn't actively avoid, the model of sacrifice. Some reward for a couple months tramping around the Holy Land, sleeping on the ground, calming the seas, etc. It doesn't seem to jibe with the other poster, which suggests that Christianity is the act of becoming a bucket to gather up the gold raining from Heaven.

We used to laugh at the gaudiness of these messages, without realizing that someone might have put those up to reflect a deep-rooted set of beliefs into which people are truly invested. That's the worst thing about "getting old" in Zambia. You can't really laugh at anything anymore ...

The upload / download statistics look like Dracula's pulse. So much for uploading this thing ...

Maize in Zambia - Maize is a national scandal (Reginald Ntomba)

I want to get some contemporary thoughts regarding the maize situation in Zambia that are not my own.

The following is an article published on October 21st by my friend Reginald Ntomba, a political science major who writes a weekly article for the national newspaper, The Post. 

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Maize is a national scandal

By Reginald Ntomba

The fact that maize occupies the positions of 'staple food' and is widely understood to man 'food security' does not justify the colossal amounts of money being spent on it.

According to the Nations Agriculture Policy (2004-2015), food security "means access by all Zambians at all time to enough of the right food for an active and healthy life on a sustainable basis." Nice definition. But in  practice food security means excess maize production.

We grow and store maize much more than we need. Take note that 'store' is an overstatement given the amount of maize that has gone to waste. Our national annual consumption of maize (human consumption, reserves, stockfeed and the brewing industry) is around 2.5 million tonnes. In the 2010/2011 farming season, Zambian produced 3.1 million tonnes of maize. The subsequent season record a six percent drop to 2.8 million tonnes, according to production figure from the Ministry of Agriculture. The carryover from the 2010 / 2011 and the surplus in 2011/2012 left Zambia with an excess of over one million tonnes of maize. We produce so much maize at great expense and then somehow 'discover' we have no storage facilities. The we decide to export some at a loss, while the other rots. Not too long ago, one seniour government official made solemn promise that is not about to be kept: "Not one grain will go to waste this year."

In the 2012 national budget, the government allocated K300 billion to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) for "strategic food reserve", a synonym for maize purchases. Now according to agriculture deputy minister, Luxon Kazabu, FRA owes farmers in excess of K2 trillion, hence the recent directive to FRA to go and borrow from banks, which loan the government stands ready to guarantee.

In the 2013 national budget, the amount allocated to FRA has not changed. It's still K300 billion. From what is currently obtaining, it's all too clear that going by the amount of maize grown in Zambia, FRA will be in a similar, if not worse, position next year. If FRA can't pay all the farmers who supplied maize from the K300 billion this year when there was a drop in maize production, will the do so next year especially if the beloved 'bumper harvest' occurs?

Isn't it also strange that this year K2 trillion is required just to buy maize yet the total agriculture budget for 2013 is K1.9 trillion? Even more, other sector of the economy are deprived of adequate funding, while colossal amounts are spent of maize the just foes to waste. If the attention and money given to maize is a translation of 'putting our money where our mouth is', then we have spoiled our mouth and is in serious need of discipline.

FRA may not be a perfect institution. But all the makes it look like the bad guy it's not supposed to be. Going by the daily calls for farmers to be paid, FRA is under pressure to buy all the maize we in fact do not need, but which has nonetheless been produced. As things stand, FRA is paying for the iniquities of its forefathers; it's bearing the consequences of bad production decisions. In recent weeks farmers in Kitwe and Solwezi demanded their maize back from FRA due to delayed payments. Some of them even turned militant, compelling FRA chairperson Guy Robinson to warn against harassing FRA workers.

If farmers grew other crops that are bought by the private sector without so much hassle, the would not be waiting for the FRA to come to the rescue. In turn, FRA would not be under so much pressure. Although the government has restated intentions of expanding the Farmer Input Support Programme to include other crops, the focus has largely remained on maize. Our obsession with maize is costly. On paper, agriculture diversification is very active. The goal in the Sixth National Development Plan [SNDP] (2011-2015) is "to increase and diversify agriculture production and productivity so as to raise the share of its contribution to 20 percent of GDP". Further, one of the sectoral strategies of the National Agricultural Policy is "diversification of agricultural production and utilization."

From my layman's view, agriculture diversification can be at two levels. Across subsectors, i.e. crops, livestock and fisheries, for instance. It can also be within subsectors, for instance, diversifying crop production beyond maize (or whichever crop is grown in excess). The government partly attributed the reduction in maize this year to diversification. That may indicate that something is happening albeit at a slow pace. However, there is a gulf between policy intentions and practices. Policies and development plans are preaching diversification; the practice is that of encouraging mass maize production. If K2 trillion can go to maize alone, what diversification are we talking about?

Incidentally, both the SNDP and the Nation Agricultural Policy lapse in 2015. If we are still preoccupied with mas maize production, then when will the targeted diversification be achieved? What progress will be reported on the diversification objective two years from now?

tkambilane@yahoo.com

In Kaoma, 130 miles east of Mongu, for the last week of inputs distribution for the CA project. This is our biggest district; rather than 900 farmers as is the case in Mongu and Senanga Districts, here we have 1,400 farmers. They are scattered all hell-to-breakfast … unlike the previously mentioned districts, Kaoma farmers settlement patterns are less dictated by limited access to decent land, so they are shotgunned randomly about the place.

Let me back up a bit.

Mongu and Senanga Districts are dominated by either a massive drifts of Kalahari sand (matema) interlaced as it were with the floodplains of the Zambezi or its tributaries (litapa). Interspersed in the plains are rises that don’t usually flood (masuzu); along the edges of the plains is the interface (shishanjo) between the mostly infertile sands and the silt-laden, relatively far more fertile floodplains. The shishanjo and masuzu areas are coveted for their fertility and typical safety from the annual floods; hence the combination of good soil, seasonal grass for grazing fodder, and access to water (imagine digging a well in beach sand and you’ll realize why they favor the margins) causes people to cluster along the plain margins.

The western side of Kaoma district is somewhat like this, but as you approach Kaoma, you start to see termite mounds, which are conspicuously absent from most of Western due to the sand. Parts along and north of the road, plus on the eastern side of the district, have a much shallower sand layer. Consequently, people tend to “hunt” for soil. This is not a new thing for me … my two years of Peace Corps service were in a village about 150 km northeast of here the next district, Kasempa, and up there people did the same thing.

Brief aside: part of the reason I started in farming was that everyone in my village / catchment area would wander off into the hills to their fields from October to February; with nothing else to do, I did as the Kaondes did and farmed … albeit closer to the homestead.

Anyway, Kaoma is part of the reason I often wonder if Zambia doesn’t have too much land. Farmers go all over creation, find a plot, clear the trees, till it for a couple years to grow maize (usually without fertilizer), exhaust it, and repeat. Because the ownership is based on usufruct rights (you own it until it’s obvious you’ve abandoned it), because fertilizer is so difficult to come by, and because it’s what’s been the norm forever, it’s really not conducive for people settling down on a piece of land and improve it.

There’s more to it than that, but topical treatments all you get for now.

So … Kaoma Boma (remember, British Overseas Military Administration makes for a very Africa-friendly name for each town) is something of a boom-town. Since I’ve been in Western, three medium size sawmills have opened; two are owned by Chinese nationals (referred to as the Chinese, as if they were all one), the other by a Zimbabwean (I think). Commercial logging is not new to Western Province ... back in the 1920’s, the British South Africa Company (BSAC) built the only private railroad line in Africa between Livingstone and Mulobezi, 85 km north, to mine out the Zambezi Teak (Baikiaea plurijuga, mulambwe). I say mining because in these sands, trees don’t grow back very fast … especially when no one replants them. Anyway, the Z. teak was or is in the top five of wood in terms of price per board foot; most of the parquet floors in the colonial-era houses in the urban centres of central and Southern Africa are make from teak, as is a bunch of the furniture. As far as I know, it’s almost a permanent thing.

Next best, and favorite among the locals is mukwa (African teak, Pterocarpus angolensis) … it’s preference stemmed partly from its absolutely lovely color in the heartwood (deep purple) in contrast to the nearly off-white sapwood. It was also easy to shape with hand tools, so for carpenters throughout the country, mukwa was tops. It has also suffered quite a beating, though not as bad as the Zambezi teak. In truth, I have yet to see a teak board, though a German associate of mine has a concession on the far side of the Lui River; when he goes to cut, I might take a day off and photograph them, hopefully find some seeds.

Anyway, the sawmills take mukwa, but what they are hitting hard is the Zambezi Redwood (muzauli, Guibourtia Coleosperma). It was never much liked in the past … too hard for the local tools, and too far away for the Brits. However, it’s a fine, bright red, hard wood that responds well to power tools; plus, it’s in far greater abundance. For now ... some of the Chinese outfits have brought in chainsaws to help the locals bring them down faster, plus if they have petrol leftover, it helps with squaring the logs (you get $8 a log if it’s squared rather than $5). Anyway, it’s a bit worrying to see the stacks of lumber all bound for the export market.

 

It’s the usual, from what little I’ve read, for Africa. It’s pretty much a hole in the ground that you dig out copper, coltan (PS3 and cell phone users take note), rare earth, gold, timber, oil, etc. for as cheap as you can, and replace it with shit. When people are this poor and the government (at least the local side) is so broke, you have the perfect situation to exploit man and nature (by pitting the former against the latter). I keep scratching my head and wonder where we’re headed as a race if we keep pounding our environment like we do … the scary thing is, I doubt we’ll ever win that match.

 

The logging’s given Kaoma something of the flavor of a boom-town. Sawmills running the whole day; drunken truckers; bars roaring out a mix of Congolese rhumba, Celine Dion, and Shakira (and oddly enough, Don Williams). There are some great handles to the beer joints … “Power Boozing” (which also sells auto spares next to the Chibuku), “Chocolate City (1 and 2)”, “Cassava Lima Pleasure Resort”, and the somewhat lyrical “West Point Joint, where friends make sense”. People are a bit more raw here as well; none of the feigned aristocracy of Mongu or the sleepy riverside aspect of Senanga. Here, it is in your face, CHINDELE-MUZUNGU-MUKUWA ringing out constantly, nshima dinners with hefty price tags, Primus beer (how they get beer from Bukavu to here is way beyond me).

 

As is always the case … can’t wait to break out into the field tomorrow.

The First Rain

It rained hard on Saturday night ... I can't say for how long, because I kept flitting in and out of sleep.
In my bouts of waking, I would listen to the pups mewl (they can't really bark or howl yet, thank God) in response to the lashing rain. That sounds really hard, leaving the four of them out in the elements, but I will be giving them away to people who have even less sympathies for canines. The dogs will, as they say here, get used.

The rain, though too early for planting, was opportunely timed for me. In July, I dug 20-some lines of planting basins in my largish backyard in an attempt to show empathy with the beneficiary farmers to whom I'm responsible. Unfortunately, as our soil has a sand (large grain) composition of 90-95%, meaning it's like digging hole in a beach ... they tend to not retain any shape for long due to wind, the looseness of the soil, the  packs of dogs that transit through my backyard, etc. So, all my holes had somehow slumped, and I haven't had time to put anything in them (in terms of organic inputs).

The hard rain was opportune because it hardened up the soil enough for me to dig out the basins early Sunday morning and backfill half of them with the charcoal (bio-char) I've been making in a piecemeal fashion since June. I say half, as I want to do some side-to-side comparisons of the growth of two or three purchased maize varieties:

• A hybrid [Pannar 53]
• An open-pollinated variety OPV [ZamSeed 521]\
• A mixed bag of traditional varieties [mbonyi a sizo])

I'm not sure if my charcoal will last, but I may extend the experiment to the other half of my plot, where I intend to grow four or five varieties of beans:

• Haricot beans
• Sugar beans (Pan 148)
• Pinto beans
• Velvet beans
• Jack beans

And groundnuts:

• Natal common (more common in Southern Zambia)
• Chishango (what we promote with our farmers)
• An unnamed white variety
• MGV4 (a red variety)

Though it's not a scientific experiment, it will be something to look at down the line. 

siKuwa vs. siLozi

Senanga.

Hot.

White Zambians refer to October as Suicide month. They're only half-joking.

It hit 39C yesterday, 102F ... thank our lucky stars we're over 1,000m elevation and have no humidity, or it would be really brutal.

Three days down out of seventeen for inputs distribution. Going alright so far ... some headaches redeeming the e-vouchers, but we're getting there.

Not much for right now, but wanted to share one of the letters we hand out to our farmers as we distribute the inputs for the CA project.

Here's the broadsheet in English (siKuwa):

And here it is in siLozi: