Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 63% of the populationestimated to live in poverty.1It is also heavily reliant on its agricultural sector,not only for employment, as is common with most other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but also for income generation. In 1993, agriculture accountedfor 39% of Malawi’s gross domestic product and 94% of its export earnings.Obviously, any program designed to confront the immediate poverty problemmust address agricultural productivity. As Malawi’s history indicates, this isno easy feat in a country that is landlocked and has but a single rainy season.Malawi in fact did invest heavily in an agriculturally led growth strategybetween the 1960s and 1990s. This was aimed primarily at increasing pro-duction in the large estate sector that was purchased from English owners.2The sector increased by land expropriation from traditional chiefs.3Ratherthan using the land to resettle the large population from the south, the gov-ernment leased the land at low fees to large estate holders and prohibitedsmallholder farmers from producing selected commercial crops. This increasedthe demand for estates and effectively created a labor pool for estate owners.While this strategy did generate significant export revenues, mostly fromtobacco production, it did not make a significant dent in alleviating ruralpoverty. One of the reasons is that the government was a monopoly purchaserof maize in the country, so producer prices were set very low, acting as a taxon smallholder maize producers
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