1. 1
Reflections on a National
Agricultural Policy for Malawi
In the context of an evolving Farm Input
Subsidy Programme
Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP)
National Symposium
14-15 July 2014
Lilongwe, Malawi
Todd Benson
IFPRI

2. Overview
 Context
 Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development
now developing a draft National Agriculture Policy (NAP)
 In coming months, content of policy will be subjected to broad
consultations for review and comment
 Provides an opportunity to consider more closely:
 Vision of development for Malawi – both agricultural and
broader human and economic development
 In particular, the place of smallholder farming in that vision
 Scope of duties of the Ministry
 A more narrowly defined set of duties potentially allows for more
strategic and transformational public sector action for agricultural
development
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3. I. Vision for Malawi’s development
 Dr. Dorward uses a framework for conceptualizing
development and our aspirations
 We all want for ourselves, for our children, and for the
nation two things. These are to:
 Maintain and protect our current wealth and welfare, and
 Advance our wealth and welfare
 Three strategies to accomplish these aims:
1. Hanging-in – maintain and protect current welfare
2. Stepping-up – expand scale and productivity of current
livelihood strategies
– agricultural growth and, ideally, transformation
3. Stepping-out – engage in new livelihood strategies
– structural transformation of the economy
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4. Vision for Malawi’s development (cont.)
 How do we characterize in these terms the broad
development ambitions of Malawian?
 What about smallholder farming in those ambitions?
 Is it desired that smallholder farming continue to employ a
majority of Malawian workers in 2050?
 FISP has been a Hanging-in strategy
 But, will it leave the next generation of Malawians with the basis
for enjoying long, healthy, productive, and creative lives?
 If not, Ministry must act strategically to enable Malawian
smallholders to Step-up and transform agriculture
 And, coordinating with other Ministries, make public
investments to enable many Malawians to Step-out into
livelihoods in other economic sectors
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5. Vision for Malawi’s development (cont.)
 For Stepping-up and agricultural transformation:
 NAP should provide guidance for action to increase:
 agricultural specialization at the farm household level,
 agricultural diversification at the sectoral level, and
 improved domestic output market functions to increasingly allow
Malawian households to rely more on markets for the
consumption of a broader diversity of foods
 For Stepping-out and economic structural change:
 Coordinate NAP and its implementation explicitly with:
 broader human & economic development visions for Malawi, and
 actions and investments being made in other sectors for which
developments in the agricultural sector are critical to success
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6. II. What are the Ministry’s duties to the
citizens of Malawi?
 Decisions must be made on what aspects of agricultural
livelihoods need prioritization in the NAP
 This involves considerations of the duties to the citizens of
Malawi that the Ministry bears
 Is it responsible for safeguarding welfare of farming
households?
 And the food security of all Malawian households
 Or are its responsibilities more limited?
 Focused on ensuring farming households are as productive as
possible in pursuing their agricultural livelihoods
 If more limited, this has ramification for strategic priorities in
agriculture that should feature in the NAP and for design of FISP
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7. Implications of more limited duties
 If rural household welfare is not principal concern and duty
of Ministry of Agriculture, several implications:
 Stronger commitment to public investments for agricultural
transformation and structural change in the economy
 Engage farmers in more specialized, market-driven production, but within
context of more diverse farming systems overall
 Strengthened markets a necessary corollary
 Direct poverty reduction no longer as salient a goal for Ministry in its
operations in the longer term
 Strategies to achieve food security would necessarily be broadened
 Particularly through an increased reliance by households on income,
rather than subsistence production, to obtain the food they require
 Income from commercial agriculture and, increasingly, non-farm sources
 With social protection programs to assure access to food for the most
vulnerable
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8. Implications for design of FISP
 Focus on farmers best positioned to make use of fertilizer
effectively
 Those with labor, assets, and management skills to attain higher
nitrogen use efficiencies, but who remain constrained in their access
to fertilizer
 Such farmers likely will require lower subsidy benefit
 Increased private-sector role in FISP input supply
 If beneficiaries are commercially oriented & creditworthy
 Aim would be for input subsidy to contribute to agricultural
and economic transformation
 Food security would be a secondary objective of FISP
 Expand rural social protection programmes
 As FISP increasingly is directed away from the most vulnerable
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9. Summary
 Here proposed several strategic, but difficult, choices for
consideration in developing the National Agricultural Policy
 Motivated by a concern that pursuing Hanging-in
agricultural development strategies will prove insufficient
 Development aspirations of Malawians will require that the
government support them to both Step-up and Step-out
 Allocating most public resources in agriculture to FISP
alone has important opportunity costs
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