Climate change exposes poor governance in Malawi
By Andrew xxx, Malawi
“As you can see, we don’t have proper houses and in this month of June, we are eating maize bran because we don’t have food. We don’t know how we will put food on the table for our families. Climate change really causes havoc to people in the rural areas.” – xxxx – name of person
Minister Mbiliza says that Malawi’s population relies heavily on agriculture, with more than 79% of the population working as smallholder farmers cultivating less than 1 hectare of land. Agriculture,with more than 79 percent engaged in the sector as primary smallholder farmers cultivating less than one hector of land leading to continuous food insecurity among the public.
Although the minister highlighted that the government has put extra effort to fight back problems created by Climate change in Malawi the challenges are still there among the small and medium farmers.
Individually many Farmers in Malawi are now looking for alternatives to fight back climate change and continued rise in the cost of Agricultural inputs.
In this story, will bring different small and medium Farmers from Rural Areas particulary in sourthen and Central regions of Malawi how they are suffering after heavy rains washed away their crops in the gardens due to climate change that have for the past years come with different cyclones across Malawi.
And also, will bring Tikondane Freedom Gardens in Lilongwe, in the central region of Malawi who is using Human urine to process organic manure for their farms and will elaborate how the climate change has impacted life of poor farmer in rural areas and how those farmers are working together to deal with climate change.
One of the farmer in Chiradzulu district,Martha Phiri whose family was washed away and she is only survivor in the family of seven,says though its almost three years gone since the two Cyclones hit Malawi Farmers are still struggling to get back to their roots as most of them are not adeqautly supported.
‘As you can see I don’t have proper house,and this is month of June we are eating maize bran because we don’t have food this is due to, we don’t have enough land to cultivate,our land which was 4 hectors left bare because of abdnormal heavy rainfall.
Another Farmer from Nankumba Village,in Mangochi distrist, along Lake Malawi in Eastern region of Malawi, Macgrey Chigalu says he is unable to provide required food to feed his Family because at the moment level of water in Lake Malawi continue to rise due to heavy rainfall making his gardens flooded with water making him unable to cultivate crops and now he depend on a half hector garden that is not adequate to provide food for the family.
In the central region of Malawi,we meet with,Mr Daniel Chikhuntha, the farm manager at Tikondane Freedom Gardens who is using Human Urine to process it as organic Manure to use in the Farm.
Mr Chikhuntha says the ideal came in the year 2022 after Cyclone Fredy hit hard Malawi that left many land swept away due to water flooding.
He says the Malawi governmet is failing to come up with ways of helping farmers who are still nursing the problem created by Cyclone Freddy in the year 2022 as most of the land cannot be cultivated for crops . We have been using human urine since 2022 and now the gardens that were eroding during cyclone have gained soil fertility.
We urge other communities to embrace the system and will help their gardens to gained soil fertility that lost due to climate change and other factors,Mr Daniel Chikhuntha said.
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