The Right to Food: A Field Visit

The Right to Food: A Field Visit

July, 2013; Malawi

 

Following the field visit around was not how I had originally planned to spend one of my weekends in Malawi. But based on the itinerary, it promised to be exciting and it would allow me to see much more of the country that I had been exposed to at that point. I firmly believe that only seeing the capital city is a way to lull oneself into a false feeling of what the country holds, even one with problems that don’t feel to be as recondite as Malawi’s, as I would discover in those three days.

 

 

 


 

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was in Malawi looking into issues of food security. There was a time when Malawi was considered to be food secure and was even producing a surplus. But suddenly there was a recrudescence of hunger and starvation. His job was to look into how the situation was doing now as well as to make recommendations to the government on how to improve food security. To be clear, food security does not simply mean access to sufficient caloric intake but also access to nutrients and equity.

 

The Special Rapporteur and his team impressed me immensely. They were well researched going in,

they spoke with confidence but without arrogance and they listened attentively. They sought to meet to as many different groups of people as possible and to understand from different angles the problem of food security in Malawi. They were not expecting to be cosseted on their trip and braved bad roads and local foods. And I learned immense amounts from accompanying them.

 

From the many things I picked up from the many places we visited, a few things struck me as particularly noteworthy. The first was the constant threat of encroachment felt by many Malawians against the land on which they lived. This threat, the threat of land grabs, is becoming a problem across Africa and elsewhere. The second was the penumbra of worse times ahead once the Fertilizer Input Subsidy Program, FISP, is phased out. FISP, a program marred by rampant corruption and failures, was nonetheless pivotal in bringing the under-five mortality rate in Malawi down. The inevitable end to the program is essentially a threat to the success that Malawi has made in reducing malnutrition and starvation. What will happen to the people who depend on the program for precious fertilizer to use to grow maize, the staple in Malawi, is an alarming dilemma. The third was the mistreatment of tenant and casual workers on estates in Malawi. I was aware of mistreatment on tea and sugar estates, which are found throughout the country, but blissfully unaware of the similar and worse treatment of tobacco farmers in Malawi. The consumption of tobacco is not only harmful to my own health but also to the wellbeing of others whose day to day lives and struggles I was introduced to. Fair Trade certification for tobacco will never happen but how can a socially conscientious tobacco consumer now enjoy her cigarette? Finally, I become acutely aware of exactly how young the population of Malawi is. I knew that the figures indicate that about 50% is under the age of 18 but to actually drive along the roads and through towns and villages and see the abundance of youth and children brings meaning to that statistic. I often find that most statistics are useless at best and rebarbative at worst because they don’t induce real understanding. They create a overly simplified picture of a country that makes it easy to overlook the real world implications of these numbers.

 

 

 

Each of these four topics will be featured in their own entries because I think they all are worth expanding on. Only taken individually and at greater length can you begin to grasp my field visit. Taken together with other vignettes, you might garner an understanding of my outlook on Malawi.