Woods Hole Research Center

Postdoctoral Fellow Gillian Galford is in Malawi as a representative of the Center’s work in the pantropical region. There, she is attending a conference on “MRVs for Woodland Nations.” WHRC’s first map of aboveground biomass of Malawi will be presented at the conference. In addition to the conference, she is working with partners from the Forestry Resource Institute of Malawi (FRIM), Ministry of Agricultural and Environment, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Land Resources Department, and the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM).

Malawi’s economy is largely based on agriculture, supported by ~80% of its population, the rural smallholder farmers who produce nearly 90% of the food supply. Supporting ~15 million people in a country less than 120,000 km2 is a great challenge, along with societal challenges due to low life expectancy. In 2006, Malawi started a farm inputs subsidy program, unprecedented on the African continent for its scale (national), reach (1.4-1.6 million farm families) and supply (improved maize seed, legume seed and fertilizer, all in quantities appropriate for farming less than 1 ha). The amounts given out may be small but the outcomes are not, having doubled crop yields compared to the years before the subsidy program. While there, Gillian is also bringing together agronomists working on improved fallows, perennial nitrogen fixing legume-trees, and conservation agriculture with their counterparts in forestry and conservation.