Chakwera spells out 10 year plan to restore soil health

­Malawi President Dr Lazarus Chakwera has expressed his Government commitment to restore soil health and other matters surrounding fertilizer.

Addressing Fertilizer and Soil summit in Nairobi, Kenya, president Chakwera said his Government has therefore taken special interest in addressing soil health issues saying will soon be piloting a program to address the high acidity levels in the soils of certain parts of Malawi, with the aim of quickly scaling up the same to other parts.

“This is the reason why the my Government has proactively developed a 10-year Malawi Action Plan on Fertilizer and Soil Health to domesticate the continental framework which we are adopting at this Summit. Our goal is to improve soil health, improve the usage of organic and inorganic fertilizers, improve soil productivity, and reduce soil degradation and soil erosion,” He said.

The president said it is sad that currently 9 million Malawians are facing food insecurity this year as a result of poor rains occasioned by El Nino weather.

The president said considers any discussion about anything that affects food production to be a matter of national security, and that the Malawi presence at the summit not for the sake of just participation, but a matter of socio-economic survival.

“As a nation, we are very keen to partner with others on the continent and beyond in addressing one of the root causes of low agricultural productivity, hunger, and food insecurity. In fact, by being here, we are tackling one of the chief pillars of the high inflation that drives and deepens poverty in Africa, for much of the inflation we see in our economies is fueled by food inflation,” he said.

Chakwera said the relevant to this discussion is the urgency of investing in the health of our soils to improve productivity saying Malawi has not been spared from the crisis of degraded soils.