Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Lilongwe (Agenzia Fides)- Malawi has worked two miracles: it has managed to become a food exporter, although until 2005 its people were starving, and it has convinced an important international media to question the validity of the dogmas of absolute liberalism, which insist on the abolition of all forms of state subsidy.
In an article significantly titled “Ending famine, simply by ignoring the experts” New York Times, journalist Celia W. Dugger, describes the enormous progress made by the small country of south east Africa since the government decided to subsidise the distribution of fertiliser and seed to local farmers. The enabled Malawi to rapidly change from a country in need of humanitarian aid to a supplier of cereals to the UN World Food.
The article (published also in the International Herald Tribune del 1 December) reads “in the last 20 years the World Bank and certain rich nations from which Malawi depends for aid, exercised pressure periodically to force this small country with no access to the sea, to join free market policies and reduce or eliminate subsidies for fertilisers even though the United States and the European Union give their farmers abundant subsidies. But after the harvest in 2005, to worst in 10 years the President of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, decided to do what the west does instead of what it preaches”.
The new farming policies based on subsidies, education for farmers, credit to farmers and agricultural research, led Malawi to overcome its dramatic food crisis (see Fides 23/9/2005) and become an example for other African countries.
Thanks also to abundant rains, the country's cereal production increased from 1.2 billion tons in 2005 to 2,7 billion tons in 2006 and 3.4 billion in 2007.
A result which made the World Bank, champion of free trade, to reflect on its economic “remedies”. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 4/12/2007 righe 25 parole 329)
