Keeping Busy

The workshop that I helped facilitate was a great success. We held it on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week and we received tonnes of input from the participants. The goal of the meeting was to create a strategic direction for the Lobbying and Advocacy department that I am helping to create for the Farmers Union of Malawi. We invited agricultural stakeholders from across Malawi covering a broad spectrum including farmer organisations, financial institutions, farming input suppliers, government ministries and civil society groups (nongovernmental organisations or NGOs). I was pleasantly amazed that there was no lack of knowledge on what the issues in agriculture are or what possible strategies and actions may help alleviate them. The next step though is the big one, implementation. Once we have collated all the issues we will turn to our members (the actual farmers dealing with these issues) to determine what are the priorities as the list of issues is huge.
Last Friday I spent the day at a workshop dedicated to the interaction between agriculture, biodiversity and trade with the focus on how to make all three workable while respecting biodiversity, farmers rights and food security (making sure people have enough to eat). One of the big issues is the population density. For perspective Canada is 83 times larger than Malawi with a population of about 32 million, while by contrast Malawi has a population of about 12 million. Another way to look at it is that Malawi is only about 1.5 times or 50% bigger than Lake Superior. The land parcels available for agriculture are getting smaller and smaller and the forests are being cut down at an increasing rate. In Malawi forests are one of the only sources of fuel for the rural population. As well, Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and eleventh largest in the world, is being rapidly overfished. The stories of the declining fish stocks sound much like our east coast fishery stories. I have to admit I came out of the workshop wondering how these problems can be solved. There are some ideas but it is hard to get action until it is too late, look how we handled the collapse of our cod fishery.
This week I will be meeting a Canadian regarding fair trade coffee markets for Malawian coffee in Canada. Fair trade is a concept where the buyer works out a fair price with the farmer rather than dictating the price to them regardless of their cost of production. That buyer can then sell their coffee at a higher price as they can market it as fair trade coffee, demanding a premium from those coffee purchasers who care about the farmers getting enough money to cover their costs.
As well I am starting to work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) on their "Harvest for the Future: Agriculture without Child Labour" program. This is exciting for me as I work for the Ministry of Labour back in Canada. I took part in an international conference with the ILO last year in Toronto so I am looking forward to working with them.
On a happy note, Regan has a clean bill of health. Her kidney is perfectly fine, there is no sign that there will be any reoccurence and it seems that it was just a bladder infection that spread due to the first two doctors we went to giving her an antibiotic that is now known (but I guess not known to the doctors) to be ineffective against bladder infections. Regan starts school again today after 2 weeks off of school. I can't remember if I stated it in another blog, but Regan did very well in school even though we arrived late in the term, receiving second place standing in her class. It is funny, they are really big on ranking here and actually announce your rank in front of the whole class. I really feel sorry for the ones at the bottom of the class as they have to stand as they are called out in front of everyone else. Janna is doing great, but continues to be busy with many trips for days at a time to all parts of Malawi as well as large amounts of office work on top of that. She has a lot of challenges with regard to resources that I don't have but thanks to WUSC (the ones who have sent us to Malawi) she has been given a laptop so that she can have a computer that works both in the office and for her multiple field trips.