Historical Origins of the State’s Exploitative System of Peasant Farmers in Malawi from 1926 to 2000

Abstract

This paper traces the historical origins of the state’s exploitative agricultural market system in Malawi with a case of Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (admarc), a post-colonial agriculture marketing board established in 1971. The study analyses how its initial intention of facilitating the transformation of agriculture got thwarted by political interest and structural adjustment and recently globalization processes. The study goes further to explain the changes that had taken place from early colonial era agricultural marketing institutions to the present days of admarc, covering a period from 1926 to 2000. This period has been chosen as present day admarc directly traces its origin to the Native Tobacco Board that was established in 1926. The paper explores how these marketing boards, which were initially created in the colonial era to facilitate the participation of the peasant farmers in organized markets, turned to be instruments of exploitation and vehicles of marginalization of the peasantry. Furthermore, as this paper notes, after the country gained independence, admarc continued to be a post-colonial era instrument for peasant farmers’ systematic oppression through intrinsic taxation that further compromised the development of the peasant farmers. The institution was further used to strengthen agricultural sector dualism in Malawi as the surplus extracted from the peasant smallholder farmers was used to develop the capitalist estates sector.