While corn is not native to Malawi, it has become the country's staple crop. Photo: Nathan Laurell (flickr)

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life; if you give a family seeds, do you feed them forever?

For decades, the people of Malawi have lived with chronic food shortages, prompting massive food aid interventions. But these unending handouts of foreign-grown food are unsustainable, so how can one of the poorest countries in the world enable its population to produce the food they require? One answer is to give the Malawian people the tools to grow it themselves.

A scorching drought ruined the 2005 Malawi growing season. Compounded with an economy that didn’t allow many to plant in the first place, this left the people hungry, reported the New York Times. Five million Malawians, almost 40 percent of the population, required emergency food aid -- the proverbial fish handout. At the time, World Bank policy was to promote cash crops and exports. This incentivized farmers to grow crops for use outside of the country, that would in turn allow they to buy food. But after more than a decade of implementation the strategy had yet to pay off, the Times notes.

After the food crisis in 2005, something changed. Newly elected President Bingu wa Mutharika defied the decades-old advice from the World Bank. Instead of encouraging cash crops, the government started subsidizing fertilizer and maize seeds for the poorest of the poor. At the time, the national poverty rate was at 53 percent, so this was a huge undertaking. This move defied the conventional wisdom of the West and the World Bank and carried a sizable risk of alienation and failure, reports the Times.

Despite these challenges, the government of Malawi distributed millions of coupons for two 50-kilogram bags of fertilizer -- enough to treat an acre -- and seeds to fill half that space. These coupons allowed the holders to purchase fertilizer and seed at a fraction of the retail cost. With such small allowances the program was targeting subsistence or small-scale farmer, who likely only owned a few acres, this giving the common people of Malawi the tools to support themselves.

The crops and fertilizer, when combined with the abundant rainfall of 2006, completely transformed the barren landscape. Maize production more than doubled that year, from 1.2 million metric tons to 2.7. By 2007, production was up to 3.4 million and instead of importing food aid, Malawi became the largest exporter of corn in Southern Africa to the World Food Program.

However this success has come at a cost. Between 2008 and 2009, the government of Malawi dedicated a full 16 percent of the national budget for seed and fertilizer subsidies. This strain prevented other projects, such as irrigation systems, from getting off the ground. And some question the sustainability of the subsidies. Elizabeth Sibale, a consultant at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Malawi, commented that “[Malawi is] forgetting all the other problems that affect farmers and putting a Band-Aid on them."

It has been a full six years since the initiation of the subsidy program and it's harvest time again in Malawi. But even as the corn is harvested and processed, the Malawian government is debating the future of the subsidies. The program officially ends in June and while the program has been successful at raising corn production and lowering poverty levels, the true cost of the subsidies has been steep.

So the question remains: Are fertilizer subsidies teaching families to fish, or are they just handouts wrapped in a new package? The answer seems to be somewhere in between. Ensuring access to seeds and fertilizer is an important step in reducing poverty, but it is only one step. In 2004, about 60 percent of Malawi's population was impoverished. Today the poverty rate has fallen to 40 percent. These numbers seem to suggest that the idea is working, but the remaining poverty level demonstrates that it’s not enough.

More than 70 percent of the population in the Congo is impoverished, making the country extremely vulnerable to price shocks. Photo: Jenny Vaughan/Mercy Corps

Wildfires in Russia. Revolution in the Middle East. Rising oil prices — these seemingly unconnected events have cumulated in a weak global harvest that will place additional burden on families whose budgets are already stretched thin.

According to a United Nations press conference earlier this month, food prices hit record levels earlier this year. Citing data gathered from the World Bank, the UN reported that rice posted gains of 21 percent, whereas corn and wheat jumped 64 and 68 percent from last year. While this increase has yet to be reflected in markets and grocery stores, a rise is surely on its way.

In the press conference, the UN noted that the world’s poorest people, living on less than $2 a day, are now spending an average of 15 percent more to cover basic nutritional needs. What is more, the World Bank estimates that the spike in food costs has pushed a further 44 million people into extreme poverty.

To help get a better sense of how rising food prices are impacting people in different parts of the world, check out this great graphic developed by a UC Berkley graduate student. The graphic draws on data collected by the Economic Research Service of the USDA.

However, it's important to remember that much is lost in these statistics. Household grown food, or food resulting from bartering is not measured. The data also misses the effect of food or crop subsidies.

There are other critical questions as well, such as who in each country will bear the burden of increasing prices. Traditionally such hardships are placed on those least able to respond and as food prices continue to rise, the poverty rate is likely to follow.

Youth finish work on an embankment to hold back floodwaters in Borini Sharifow, a small farming village in Jamame district, Somalia. Photo: Mohamed Jama/ Mercy Corps

"The African continent is going to be the golden continent of the period," raves a business leader at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos.

This sentiment is shared by economists, investors and world leaders around the globe, who are singing the praises of Africa's economic potential. And at long-last this optimism about Africa's economy may be warranted. Eight of the world's top 20 fastest-growing economies are African Countries. And the financial news and investing website The Street recently declared Africa to be the "hot new continent for trade and investment."

In some ways, the transition is already happening. Genetic research is finally delivering higher-yielding, more resilient so-called African crops, like sorghum and cassava, says to The Economist. And the BBC reported on a recently published book that suggests the continent could "feed itself in a generation" if top politicians genuinely commit to developing infrastructure, modernizing agriculture and implementing the use of genetically modified crops.

But alongside the excited buzz welcoming Africa’s new dawn, there are fears that a land rush could be more exploitative than beneficial. The New York Times article cites concerns that the scramble for African land threatens to become a series of “neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor."

There are clear reasons for the urgency and location of the rush. Arable soil is a limited commodity in many parts of the world. Fears about food security and the cultivation of biofuels are ramping up demand for the earth’s last remaining stretches of fertile land — most of which are in Africa.

The World Bank estimates that up to 115 million acres of farmland are already being leased to foreign investors across the globe, reports the Christian Science Monitor. "As much as 90 percent of Africa is under customary tenure, which means it's held by the state on behalf of the community, who are then given the customary right to the land." In short, land can be seized at the whim of those in power.

The particular circumstances of these types of deals are unique, but the context in which they are negotiated is often similar. The landlord country is poor with a high rate of unemployment and underdeveloped infrastructure. But it has an abundance of productive farmland. Huge zones are leased to a corporation or government of a wealthier nation. The latter pays the former. The investor brings in state-of-the-art technologies and skills to develop infrastructure and ideally employ citizens of the landlord country. But what happens next is key, explains the Christian Science Monitor article. In many of these deals, most or all of the product is exported to the foreign investing country. Land and labor are exploited and neither domestic food security, nor growth are improved.

Africa certainly can’t afford this fate. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, and more than one-fourth is considered undernourished (pdf), according to the most recent U.N. Millennium Development Goals report.

If this is to be the continent’s long-awaited golden era, foreign investment and involvement will be essential. But the motives of the architects of these deals must be clear and the management carefully crafted. The New York Times quotes former U.N. security-general, Kofi Annan, who stresses the need to focus on food security in Africa, but also calls for sensitivity to Africa's colonial legacy.

The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody’s mind ... Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won’t work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don’t think we want to see a second scramble of that kind.

At first glance, Africa’s prospects look good. But it would be a tragic lost opportunity if the continent’s bounty is exported, leaving its breadbasket empty.

Many African countries, like Madagascar pictured here, are increasingly leasing land to foreign firms, but critics argue the deals are exploitative. Photo: goukley (flickr)

A million hectares in Uganda. Some 690,000 hectares in Sudan. And 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. These are just a few of the numbers that have appeared on the bargaining table in the past year as foreign firms scramble for land leases in Africa.

The Independent takes a look at the phenomenon known as "land grabbing," or the recent trend of foreign governments and corporations leasing or purchasing large swaths of land in poorer countries to grow food or other crops for export back to their home country. The phenomenon is most prevalent in Africa, but leases have been sought elsewhere, including the Philippines and Pakistan.

[The sudden increase in "land grabbing"] has its roots in the food crisis of 2007/8, when prices of rice, wheat and other cereals skyrocketed across the world, triggering riots from Haiti to Senegal. The price spike also led food-growing countries to slap export tariffs on staple crops to minimize the amounts that left their countries. That tightened the supply still further, meaning food prices were driven up more by a situation of policy-created scarcity than by supply and demand.

This situation also made many rich countries that are reliant on massive food imports question one of the fundamentals of the global economy: the idea that every country should concentrate on its best products and then trade. Suddenly having unimaginable quantities of cash from oil was not enough to guarantee you all the food you needed. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf states found that food imports had doubled in cost over less than five years. In the future it might get even worse. You could no longer rely on regional and global markets, they concluded. The rush to grab land began.

Investors say they will bring needed infrastructure, technology and employment, but in some cases, these investments have been met with resistance. Riots erupted earlier this year in Madagascar, where almost half the children under age five don't get enough to eat. The riots were driven in part by the news that the government had given South Korean firm Daewoo a 99 year lease over 1.3 million hectares of land. On an area amounting to half the island's arable land, Daewoo planned to grow maize and palm oil solely for export to South Korea. The deal fell through when the riots forced the president, Marc Ravalomanana, out of office, BBC News reports.

Nevertheless, land grabbing is poised to continue at a rapid pace, according to The Independent:

The government of President Ravalomanana became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as "land grabbing." The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in just the past six months.

Critics question the truthfulness of the investors' promises. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, warned that land grabbing is simply neo-colonialism, and Africa will again be exploited for its resources while seeing little direct revenue.

The Independent offers an analogy from international development policy consultant Mark Weston for understanding the current nature of the leases and what makes them magnets for controversy:

Imagine if China, following a brief negotiation with a British government desperate for foreign cash after the collapse of the economy, bought up the whole of Wales, replaced most of its inhabitants with Chinese workers, turned the entire country into an enormous rice field, and sent all the rice produced there for the next 99 years back to China.

Imagine that neither the evicted Welsh nor the rest of the British public knew what they were getting in return for this, having to content themselves with vague promises that the new landlords would upgrade a few ports and roads and create jobs for local people.

Land grabbing is just one aspect of the current discussion about agricultural development in Africa. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Kenya earlier this month she voiced interest in Africa's agricultural potential: "More and more, the world will look to Africa to be its breadbasket, and I hope that when the world looks ... it is Africans and African farmers who will profit from becoming the world's breadbasket."

Keeping with a UN target of committing 0.7 percent of national income to alleviating poverty and hunger, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero the prime minister of Spain has pledged 1 billion euros to strengthen food security around the world.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the global food crisis has increased the number of hungry people to "an intolerable 1 billion."

Spain is giving a billion for a billion. Check out how other countries measure up at the Millennium Development Goals Monitor.

The information from the soil map could help this Tanzanian woman farm with better fertilzers and increase her harvest. Photo: vredeseilanden (flickr)

We have elevation maps, weather maps, and population maps. So why not soil maps? It may be the key to the food security of an entire continent.

Africa has the most depleted soils on earth. A major problem is a lack of information on how to care and maintain land. What type of fertilizer should be used? How much? With which soil type? When should I rotate my crops? How long should I rest my land? Without the answers to these and other questions, the soil is degrading over time, losing nutrients with every harvest, with every harvest getting smaller and smaller. A soil map can answer these questions and, hopefully, help to reverse the trend.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) is mapping the soil of all 42 countries of sub-Sahara Africa as the first step to building a global map online. The soil map will be created using soil samples and satellite imagery, which will allow for detailed and precise prescriptions for small farmers and their lands. Outreach workers and farmers associations will be trained on how to use the map and translate the information to farmers on their land.

It’s a four-year, $18-million program paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

This program has the power to revolutionize agriculture in Africa. Nteranya Sanginga, director of CIAT's Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute has said that "[w]ith accurate soil maps, we find farmers can increase their yields by around 60 percent, and sometimes double." Sounds like a plan for success worth mapping.