Women wait to sell their cotton bales at a collection point in this file photo
Sifelani Tsiko
Some two decades ago, cotton farming was a well-paying job for Ms Jennifer Banda, a farmer from Salima District on the shores of Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa.
Cotton farming was a business she knew so well from childhood. Farmers from around Salima District, about 100km east of the capital Lilongwe would afford to pay fees for their children and earn livelihoods from cotton growing.
Things have however changed for Ms Banda, just like it has changed for many other cotton growers in her country.
She claims that cotton growers are now the poorest of the poor in the society owing to poor yields, falling cotton prices and rampant exploitation by private buyers and dealers.
“I’ve been growing cotton for years now and I haven’t benefited anything from the crop for the past decade or so,” she says in a cotton field near Chitala Research Station.
“We’re dying of hunger and our children can’t go to school. We’re getting nothing and it’s bad for our livelihoods.”
Ms Banda says cotton growers in her area are getting 100 Malawian Kwacha per kg and yet the price is slightly over 300 Kwacha (around $0.40 per kg) at the final market in the capital.
“This year, I only managed to harvest two bales of cotton from my plot which is close to a hectare. The bulk of my crop was destroyed by bollworms,” the Salima cotton grower says.
Agricultural economists in Malawi say vested interests by local and international brokers sprinkled with a liberal dose of politics and opaque operations have all conspired to frustrate thousands of cotton growers in the country.
Most cotton growers in Malawi have given up on cotton farming after suffering heavy losses from the cotton bollworm and low prices.
The height of suffering and poverty among cotton growers in Malawi is shown by the anger and protest shown by the farmers when they were interviewed recently by a group of journalists drawn from across southern Africa who visited Chitala Research Station where Bt Cotton trials are being conducted.
“I’ve nothing to show for growing cotton,” says Mr Jerry Henox, a farmer from Kothe Village in Salima District.
“As a farmer, I’ve my own aspirations. I want to earn more from cotton growing, I want to build my house, send children to school and buy pigs and goats for rearing.
“But here I am, stuck in poverty. The cotton yields are poor and we’re being ripped off by the Chinese buyers. I’ve nothing to show for my efforts.”
Most farmers are abandoning cotton growing, while others have switched to growing maize and drug crops in search of cash.
Others have trekked to towns and cities in search of jobs. Numbers of desperate rural job seekers are swelling the peripheries of the towns and cities in Malawi.
The continuing slump in the price of cotton, one of southern Africa’s main cash crops, is spreading misery across the region. This situation plays out in Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Zambia and other countries in the Sadc region.
In Malawi alone, cotton output has plummeted from 100 000 metric tonnes in the 2012/13 season to 49 000 metric tonnes in 2015. In the 2016 season farmers only offered 13 000 metric tonnes against a demand of 250 000 metric tonnes.
In Swaziland too, cotton production fell from a high of 171 000 metric tonnes to less than 44 000 metric tonnes after 2009.
Cotton production in Zimbabwe has declined sharply over the years due to uncompetitive prices, high input costs for farmers and other constraints.
Output fell from 283 000 tonnes in 2012 to less than 200 000 tonnes by 2013 before it plunged to less than 200 000 tonnes in the three years that followed.
At its peak, Zimbabwe produced more than 353 000 tonnes, earning the country over $200 million.
Cotton creates employment for some 200 000 people.
A glut of cotton products from China and India has weakened the cotton industrial sector in most of the countries in the region.
Since the late 1990s, the sliding of cotton prices has caused hardship for growers on a scale unseen for three decades.
Poor yields and returns have forced the Malawi government to explore new ways of how it could utilise emerging agricultural biotechnologies to address the problem.
Malawi has moved from conducting confined biotechnology cotton field trials to doing multi-location trials in preparation for release approvals.
Biotechnology experts say genetically modified cotton is developed using bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects such as the bollworm.
The Bt toxin is inserted into cotton, causing cotton called Bt cotton, to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues.
Experts say that cotton farmers in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland, Mozambique and most other southern African countries, can effectively reduce input costs and control damage from bollworms and other insects that frequently damage cotton by adopting Bt cotton.
They say cotton farmers in Africa suffer huge losses due to pest problems. The most destructive of pests is the African bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), which biotech experts say in severe cases can cause a 100 percent loss while in unprotected fields pest damage can be as high as 90 percent.
“At present, the control of bollworms in this region is done through application of pesticides, which is a costly exercise in terms of cost of pesticides, spray equipment, and labour,” says Mr Doctor Gondwe, a researcher at Chitala Research Station which is testing nine cotton varieties.
“Bt cotton provides us with a more effective and less costly way to control damage from bollworms and other insects that damage cotton. So far, the results we’re getting from our trials are promising. Farmers from around Salima are impressed with the crop and will adopt it.”
Mr Gondwe says bollworms are the most destructive of pests and are bringing untold misery and poverty to cotton farmers.
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) AfriCentre director Ms Margaret Karembu told this writer that the adoption of agricultural biotechnology has lagged behind in Africa compared to the rapid rates seen in the medical and health sectors.
“Where are we as Africans? This is the question, we need to think seriously about the good work (on agricultural biotechnology) going on in our labs,” she says.
“What is our place in the global biotechnology space? We need to reclaim it and improve the livelihoods of our farmers across the continent.
“We think of ourselves as victims of the technology. The fact is that our public institutions and universities have been doing research on biotech crops for years and this has not moved to the commercialisation stage,” she says.
Ms Karembu says Africa needs to diffuse myths and misconceptions around genetically modified crops.
“The media has a big role to play in clearing some of the misconceptions about biotechnology and GMOs,” the ISAAA director says.
“When media demonises the science, it becomes difficult to correct the mistakes. There’s a lot of unfamiliarity with the technology and having fixed mind sets will not help our struggling farmers.
“The farmers you saw in Salima are poor and they’re struggling. Why should we block them from accessing the Bt cotton varieties that can significantly boost their yields and income? Farming shouldn’t be for leisure, it’s a business and it should be there to improve the quality of livelihoods of the farmers,” says Ms Karembu.
“Biotechnology is one of the tools we can use to first of all improve crop yields and secondly to support Africa’s industrialisation goals for value addition and beneficiation.”
Zimbabwe farmer representatives too, say the Government must seriously consider the adoption of Bt cotton by farmers to revamp production and revive the textile and clothing industry.
“Our farmers are experiencing huge losses due to the bollworm problem. Despite the fears that we have for biotechnology, I think Zimbabwe as a country needs to seriously consider Bt cotton to help farmers reduce crop yield losses and enhance their earnings,” says Mr Berean Mukwende of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU).
“Malawi is showing us the way to go and we need to learn from them.”
Some Zimbabwean cotton farmers who visited Bt cotton trial fields in Malawi called on the Government to adopt GM cotton to improve yields and earnings for farmers.
Cotton production has hit an all-time low in most Sadc countries with farmers producing two bales per hectare compared to 10 or more per hectare in the past.
“Farmers have been seriously discouraged to grow cotton in the country because of losses incurred through boll worm infestations and excessive spraying costs,” says Mr Daniel Khumalo, head of the Cotton Board of Swaziland.
He says there is a need for Swaziland to consider growing Bt cotton to boost production and revive its textile industry.
World leading cotton producing countries such as India, China, USA, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Burkina Faso have adopted Bt cotton.
More than 70 percent of cotton traded globally is GM cotton.
But, most Sadc countries have adopted a precautionary approach to GM crops due to health and environmental risk concerns.
South Africa is one of the top 10 countries planting more than one million hectares in 2016 and continued to lead the adoption of biotech crops on the African continent.
Kenya, Malawi and Nigeria have transitioned from research to granting environmental release approvals while six other countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Swaziland and Uganda made significant progress towards completion of multi-location trials in readiness for considering commercial approval, ISAAA reported.
But the road to the adoption of Bt cotton technologies in southern Africa still faces stiff resistance despite the potential it holds to a cotton sector in continuous decline.