Exclusive: Former Vice President Khumbo Kachali scrutinizes Malawi’s agriculture sector
Former Vice President of the Republic of Malawi, Right Honourable Khumbo Kachali, much known as a politician, talks in this interview with Denis Mzembe about his passion as a farmer. He also provides an insight on how the industry, Malawi’s economic mainstay, can thrive.
Mzembe: Your Right Honourable, you are best known as a politician but you are now also known as an ardent farmer. What is the nature of your faming activities?
Rt. Hon. Kachali: Thank you very much. I am indeed a politician, a businessman and a farmer. Before I joined politics I was already a businessman and a farmer. Currently it is farming that keeps me busy.
I, in fact, have about two hundred hectares of farm land in Mzimba District in a place called Mapanjira in Traditional Authority Mzikuwola.
I grow crops like tobacco, as a cash crop, maize as our staple food crop, soya beans and also ground nuts because of the conducive soil texture where my farm is located.
Apart from that, I also rear cattle, sheep, goats, poultry including chicken and pigeons. So all this is what keeps me busy when I am in Mzimba.
Of all of those activities what is your priority?
I have personally grown in love with the growing of maize and the rearing of cattle. By nature I cannot do without the two farming activities and I cannot do without the breeding of cattle. A year cannot pass without growing maize including tobacco of course.
So, how, in your view, does farming help you and your community?
Farming is personally a habit. Profit or no profit, I cannot do without it. But commercially, I would say tobacco may not be as viable as it used to be in the early or late 80s but still viable but costly to produce. Maize is coming into the equation now and can be turned into a viable cash crop suffice to say the inputs have become rapidly expensive.
What is your ambition as a farmer and how mechanized is your farming?
I actually have two farm tractors which I use at my farm and they do help a lot. Secondly, I am looking forward to a day when we are going to do irrigation type of farming rather than depend on our traditional rain-fed type of farming or the Shaduf type of irrigation in olden Egypt. I mean the modern type of irrigation where you use sprinklers. My ambition is to see myself grow crops not annually but twice or three times a year, God permitting.
A large part of our farming is done traditionally. How can this change to modernized or mechanized farming?
This is a big challenge. I think we are doing our farming just to keep our body and soul together and not as a business entity. We need to undertake farming as a business entity. Almost everyone is into subsistence farming. We are not supposed to take farming as a by the way.
Where do you market your agriculture commodities?
As for tobacco we have the auction floors through the contract farming system. These tobacco buyers do help a lot because they provide the technical knowhow and they will also ensure the selling is not so difficult. So I would encourage people to go for contract farming regardless of the challenges. Maize is on high demand. Mot institutions like schools and hospitals would come and buy some few bags of the commodity but most of it is sold to Admarc.
What is your opinion of Admarc?
We need to know that Admarc requires major reforms if it has to be sustained. We need the institution. But the current and prevailing liberalized market economy does not favour Admarc which has to pull up its socks if it has to survive. The corporation has to match the prevailing market trends because you cannot, for example, buy maize only when it reaches a certain moisture content. At that moment all the other traders and vendors will have already bought the commodity. And you just have to find a way to make the maize completely dry and get the moisture content you need at the right time. So Admarc has to do a lot of things and pull up its socks. The liberalization of the economy needs one to be thinking ahead, thinking outside the box.
What are your thoughts regarding Mega Farms and the Green Belt Initiative?
The Green Belt initiative has been there for some time. I am not sure if it is rolling out as what we, as a country, expected. I, however, do believe it is a very good concept but how it is handled in my view leaves a lot to be desired. I fully support the Mega Farms concept. The only slight problem is that I am not sure of how it is being operated. Is it targeting well established farmers or what is the intended goal? Is it food self-sufficiency or marketing? Because, in my opinion, there are quite a number of well-established farmers that I believe that if they can be given a push, with the way the Mega Farm concept is fashioned, this country would be well self-sufficient in food.
So, I am not sure of the concept but I like the idea and we can do better. You go, for example, into a district and look at individuals who are doing serious farming and ask them what they need in order to progress? Then you say we want to give you a tractor that is more modern than the one that you have. Then you agree on the targets. You can produce 5,000 bags of maize on your own like I am able to do. Then you say we will give you this modern tractor and the way we have assessed your farm, with this tractor you are able to produce 20,000 bags, are you willing? Then you move on. That is progress enough.
Do we have enough farming land in Malawi?
We have adequate cultivatable land in this country that is lying idle. If you recall, in Kasungu and Mchinji, there were estates that belonged to the former president, Kamuzu Banda, like Press Agriculture and Chamwabvi Group of Farms. You go to Mzimba in the Mbalachanda area, there is a lot of land that is just lying idle. And then you go to Mzimba and Rumphi around Kamwe area, there are large estates that are being underutilized. You go to Machinga and you go to Namwera. You just have to target these areas where there are even readily available and potential resources.
Just drive from Kasungu to Mzimba. You see all this land to your right and left that is also just lying idle. So you do not have to go and get started on virgin land. Land is already available even where mega farms are concerned. Bwanje Valley is another large area with a lot of water resources too.
What is your opinion regarding Affordable Inputs Programmed (AIP)?
To me the programme, just like other programmes targets vulnerable groups so that they have enough food and shelter to live in. The only thing that the AIP document has not addressed since creation in 2005 and 2006 is that it does not create a graduation system that If you are given two bags of fertilizer this year, how about next year, what would you do? If that graduation system was created there should be a way out to progress further, but, otherwise, year in year out, I am not sure if we are to see it being sustained or anything happening.
What is your opinion regarding the availability and affordability of farm inputs, especially fertilizer?
The fertilizer market requires a regulatory authority to take charge. I personally know I cannot go and buy fertilizer from any other vendor. There was a year when I bought fertilizer, went into my farm and applied it. It never worked. So that means I have a company that I know this one is selling genuine fertilizer. So there is need for a regulatory mechanism. Every Jim and Jack can bring in fertilizer, any fertilizer. I like the issue of manure but that is for subsistence farmers. We should regulate the fertilizer market? Is the fertilizer that is on the market the real fertilizer that is compatible with the Malawi soils? We need that regulatory authority because every Jim and Jack is supplying fertilizer from left right and centre.
And what may have happened to the proposed Kanengo fertilizer company?
I have not seen the document relating to that company, but having our own fertilizer company would be a very good idea. But what are the modalities of getting such a facility? I am yet to study. I think it may reduce the price of fertilizer but as I was told last time, may be ten to fifteen years ago, the prefeasibility study showed that it may not be viable. They did not do a full feasibility study. It was just a prefeasibility study that the company was not going to be viable. I think that is where they stopped and I am not very sure if there are countries in southern Africa that have their own fertilizer factories. But it would have been a good idea anyway.
Would you appreciate the idea of reviving the Malawi Young Pioneers agriculture wing?
I personally may not be happy to have another paramilitary wing in the country. No. I am aware of the National Youth Service. That yes. We should continue training the youth in all the artisanships minus military activities. Let the military activities be given to the authorities that are supposed to be running military services. By the way, I was one of those who were the architects of the youth service initiative because, when I was youth minister, we said let us borrow a leaf from what Benin is doing. Benin is doing that and the UNDP was at one time was ready to help. That is how the National Youth Service started. But you know that when you are in cabinet and when you move to another ministry, whoever comes in may not have any interest in your initiatives. But we wanted to do it like our colleagues based on the Benin model initiated by a certain professor there where the youth are trained and afterwards when they graduate they are given tools and startup capital. Then they are monitored for may be five years and then left to manage on their own. So we look forward to that. I understand government has revived the programme which is commendable.
What are your thoughts regarding the Vipya plantation?
I am against people who are harvesting trees and not replanting them. They must harvest fully grown trees and then they should replant. I am also against the system that is happening now that the trees which are even below ten years government is able to allow people to harvest them like what is happening in Luwawa. I have personally met the Minister, the Principal Secretary and the Director of Forestry to ask them to make sure that harvesting should be done but only those trees that are mature enough not small trees.
I come from Mzimba. I am interested in getting a concession. The local populace should also be involved. So the current system has to be reconsidered.
What is your advice to Malawians and the leadership?
I like and support the idea of Mega Farms and how serious this leadership is regarding the initiative. But may be the concept should be shared widely for us to understand what we intend to achieve. The effort is quite commendable. And secondly, as a nation, let us embrace the theme of hard work. Everyone must be proud that he or she has done something at the end of the day. Asking oneself what you have done and achieved each day. Otherwise, the spirit that is growing in our country is an unfortunate one. It is unfortunate with us politicians. We believe in handouts and not encouraging the basic principles of hard work. When it comes to campaigning people are interested to see who is giving what rather than to hear what ideas someone is projecting.
So, as a nation, I would ask that we should now please change our mindset. We should be able to say I want to do this and vigorously work to achieve that. As for government we should also look at our education curriculum. It should encompass mindset change and also teach people, especially the youth, not just to go to school for the sake of passing in class but preparing pupils and students for their own future. If someone is good at physical exercises let him or her be encouraged to continue with that. If others are interested in sciences, encourage them accordingly in that field. If others are interested in farming and agricultural activities encourage them too. So our curriculum should be tailored that way. In my time when I was starting to do business people were saying business is for people who have not been to school. If you have been to school why should you do business? Just go and get employed. So it is that mindset that we should remove and change so that we know that one can decide from school what to do in life.
Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :
