With more than half the population living below the poverty line, Malawi is one of the world\u2019s poorest countries\u2014and the majority of its people operate small farms. So, for more than a decade, non-profits and governments have focused on reducing poverty and hunger in the country by helping farmers there increase productivity in their fields, using the same monocropping techniques embraced by commodity corn and soy growers in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between 2007 and 2018, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa<\/a> (AGRA) invested $22.5 million in projects that included training agro-dealers<\/a> to sell commercial seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Meanwhile, Malawi\u2019s government provided around $50 million per year in subsidies for synthetic fertilizer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result? Yields for dietary staple crops, especially corn, have increased by 50 percent<\/a>. But the poverty rate is still over 50 percent<\/a>, and the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has increased slightly<\/a>, to 82 percent of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese are the failed policies of the past, with no real acknowledgment that science and history have moved forward,\u201d says Timothy A. Wise, who conducted years of research on agriculture in Africa\u00a0for his book\u00a0Eating Tomorrow<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWe should have learned from this and at least be funding a wider range of practices.\u201d Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With more than half the population living below the poverty line, Malawi is one of the world\u2019s poorest countries\u2014and the majority of its people operate small farms. So, for more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}