In Malawi and many African countries, legumes are widely grown and are key to the livelihoods of many families for both food and incomes. Recognising the importance of these crops, the United Nations during its 68th general assembly held on December 21, 2013 declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses.
The declaration entails exploiting opportunities to promote value chains that will lead to increased grain legumes production, utilisation and mitigation of challenges in grain legumes production and trade.
The importance of legumes to Malawi and many African countries need not be explained as the crops cut across economic, nutritional, health as well as environmental benefits.
In a paper presented at the Pan African Grain Legume and World Cowpea Conference in Livingstone, Zambia on February 28 to March 5, 2016, Natalie Me- Nsope observed that despite the significant participation of women in the production of legumes on the continent, there are still cultural constraints that prevent women from fully benefiting from the farming.
For example, the traditional norm that places men as head of households and makers of important decisions hinders women from key roles in the farming and trade such as farm management, inputs use, investment and even the usage of proceeds realised from sale of the crops.
Furthermore, women’s access to markets is restrained by cultural restrictions on their mobility and their limited access to or ownership of transportation assets.
These, according to Me-Nsope, are some of the issues that need serious policy consideration and the attention of governments.
In his key note at the conference, chief editor and founder of the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, Dr. Ruth Oniang, stressed the need for continued basic research that could generate empirical data on health benefits of legumes and tackling the policy side on environmental, seed, nutrition as well as support to the private sector with incentives, among others.
In Malawi, a Legumes Development Trust (LDT) is already in place and held its fourth Annual Stakeholders Meeting in Lilongwe in March this year.
Speaking during the event, LDT board chairperson Dr. Geoffrey Kananji said Malawi has high potential in the production and marketing of legumes and that the country could easily become a world leader in legumes if efforts are made to explore the many opportunities available to the country.
With tobacco facing many challenges on the international market, legumes provide probably the biggest and most immediate opportunity for Malawi’s agricultural and export diversification.
While other alternatives to tobacco such as mining, tourism and manufacturing may take several years to be developed to a level where they can adequately support Malawi’s economy, the country only needs one farming season to produce enough legumes for processing and export.
The good thing with legumes is that they require less input and are much cheaper and easier to produce than maize and tobacco. For example, one does not need any fertiliser and chemicals to produce pigeon peas, beans, groundnuts and cow peas.
Yet their prices are now much higher and can even compete with tobacco, despite the high and expensive inputs required for the production of the leaf.
And legumes can be produced alongside other crops such as maize. Legumes should therefore be easier to promote among Malawian farmers. And they are food crops, so their usage is unlimited in the household and communities, even where marketing them becomes a problem at any time.
Meanwhile, the establishment of the commodity exchange structure in Malawi means that problems of marketing for grain legumes are now a thing of the past. Local and international buyers are now able to access crops from farmers through structures such as the AHL Commodities Exchange (AHCX). All the farmer needs to do is to aggregate crops on their own or with other farmers to a larger quantity of one tonne and above and take it to a nearest warehouse of the commodity exchange.
Through the commodity exchange, farmers have the opportunity to fetch the highest prices prevailing on the market as buyers compete when buying the crops in an auction-like selling system unlike the local trader system where buyers impose prices on the farmer. With legumes and the commodity exchange market, farmers have no reason to remain marginalised and poor.
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