Farming trees, banishing hunger: how an agroforestry programme is helping smallholders in Malawi to grow more food and improve their livelihoods

Lack of food security in rural Malawi is directly linked to declining soil fertility, with nitrogen being the main limiting factor. However, protein and vitamin deficiencies due to low milk and fruit production and consumption, and a lack of fuelwood to cook maize and other foods are factors which also present significant problems. <br /><br />This publication describes Malawi&rsquo;s Agroforestry Food Security Programme which aims to tackle these problems by promoting not just the use of fertiliser trees, but trees which provide fruit, fodder and fuelwood. Funded by Irish Aid and coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in partnership with a consortium of national institutions, the four-year programme aims to enable at least 200,000 families &ndash; or around 1.3 million of the poorest people in Malawi &ndash; to increase their food production and enhance their nutrition. At the same time, it is argued that the programme will do much to improve soil fertility and restore degraded farmland. <br /><br />The author asserts that this will be done by encouraging farmers to use the agroforestry technologies developed by the World Agroforestry Centre over a period of four years: during the first year (2007), the programme supported almost 90,000 smallholder farmers by providing seeds, seedlings, nursery materials and training during the second year of the food security programme, it is asserted that an additional 50,000 farmers will be reached by the end of the fourth year the programme aims to have provided training and assistance to the 200,000 farmers originally targeted and it is hoped that farmers will have planted at least 50 million trees, assuming that each farmer plants 10 fruit trees, 200 fertiliser trees, 30 woodlot trees and five other trees, such as fodder trees. It is argued that as the world grapples with a sharp increase in grain and fertiliser prices, the long term research that the World Agroforestry Centre has conducted in Malawi, Zambia and Kenya on &lsquo;fertiliser trees&rsquo; can offer affordable soil management solutions to poor African farmers. <br />Extending the lessons to other countries will require strong partnerships with donors, national research and extension systems, civil society organisations and the private sector.