Feeding the Poor in Malawi

We've debated the role of the government in addressing various social ills.  There is good reason to be skeptical of government handouts that merely reinforce the cycle of poverty by allowing people to remain reliant on further handouts.  However, not all government aid is created equal.

The New York Times today contains a front-page story on what has been described as an "extraordinary turnaround" in Malawi, which has experienced a sharp reduction in actue child hunger and is actually exporting food to other nations rather than begging others for food.  What did its government do to help effectuate this turnaround?  Ignoring the advice of the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government of Malawi made a decision to subsidize fertilizer and seed to its population.

The government of Malawi had long favored subsidies for fertilizer, recognizing that its "impoverished farmers could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilize it," with the result that  "their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper into poverty."  Nonetheless, Malawi failed to provide such subsidies in the recent past, "acceed[ing] to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention."  The AID has been a strong promoter of the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed and has been concerned that subsidies would undermine that effect.  The government finally decided it could no longer give in to donor wishes.

Clearly leaving things to market forces didn't work.  Equally clearly, the subsidized fertilizer is having a dramatic positive effect - not only can do people now have enough food to feed themselves, but they have food to sell to other countries.  Are government subsidies perfect?  Probably not, and doubtless there is some displacement of commercial fertilizer sales.  But government programs aimed at helping people become self-sufficient are a different matter than those that simply hand someone a bowl of food.

As a side note, what does it say that the U.S. has shipped $147 million of American food to Malawi since 2002, but has only contributed $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food?