The origin and concept of the Starter Pack.

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter shows that the Starter Pack programme in Malawi was a focused programme, intended to be long term, aimed at enabling the poorest to access the improved technologies they needed to break out of the cycle of poverty in which they were trapped in. It provided all smallholders with a cost-effective means of testing improved maize seed and fertilizer technology with a complementary legume rotation under their own conditions, without the risk inherent in purchasing the necessary inputs. It is pointed out that the Starter Pack arose because of a combination of circumstances: (1) the development of the 'Best Bet' technology recommendations for solving Malawi's problem of low and declining maize productivity; (2) widespread and pervasive poverty among smallholders, making them unable to access high-productivity inputs; (3) the country's shift from maize surplus to severe food shortages, and the urgency felt by policy makers and politicians to create a better way of reaching the rural poor with the technologies they needed to break out of poverty; (4) a forecasting model, accepted by key donors, which demonstrated potential food crises resulting from sharp declines in fertilized hybrid maize; and (5) the existence of the Maize Productivity Task Force, which acted as a catalyst for change.