By Ed Stoddard

Namadzi, Malawi - The freshly harvested maize Milosi Jonas is selling on the roadside is a jarring sight in Malawi, where almost half the population needs food aid because drought devastated last spring's crop.

But Jonas says his maize cobs were sown just a couple of months ago during the southern hemisphere winter, and they were aided by a key ingredient in scant supply elsewhere in this fertile land - water.

"This maize is irrigated by water that is pumped by hand from a stream," he said as he stood by a long row of green maize stalks bulging with thick cobs.

A raging Aids pandemic has compounded problems

This winter crop - grown during the dry season - shows the difference irrigation can make in Malawi, where much of the maize planted last November withered and died because of poor summer rains.

As a result around five million Malawians need food aid to see them through to the next main harvest in April.

A raging Aids pandemic has compounded problems, striking down peasant workers in the prime of life.

But a little irrigation appears to go a long way.

Jonas may be lucky as he lives in Namadzi, about 60km north of the commercial capital, Blantyre, which is set in a hilly area criss-crossed by cool mountain streams, some of which are home to trout.

Many of the areas worst affected by drought lie to the south of Blantyre, though some are not far from well-irrigated sugar cane plantations that are still doing well.

"The peasant farmers in those areas get no support from the government and no irrigation, which the commercial plantations can afford to put in place," said one aid worker who declined to be named.

Jonas himself is hardly well off - few are in Malawi, which is one of the world's poorest countries - but he is far from starving and gets by without handouts.

Other people in this area, where the main crop is coffee, sell carrots, berries and other produce at the roadside.

With the money he makes from hawking fresh cobs he will buy processed maize meal - the staple starch that feeds much of southern Africa.

He bought the cobs from someone else and is selling them at a markup for 15 kwacha (about 78 cents) apiece as he waits for his own winter crop to ripen in December.

"Mine is not ready yet - I don't have fertiliser," he said as he pointed to his own plot just off the road, covered with 48 centimetre stalks.

But at least he, his wife and their infant son have something.

Published on the Web by IOL on 2005-10-10 05:55:49