Malawi is once again grappling with deepening food insecurity, a crisis triggered and intensified by the unrelenting impacts of climate change.
What was once spoken of as a distant and almost abstract threat has now settled firmly in our midst.
Climate change is no longer a matter for future generations; it is our lived reality.
Every sector of life, from health to education to infrastructure and livelihoods, is being reshaped by its force.
Yet none has felt this blow more acutely than our agriculture sector, the lifeblood of Malawi’s economy and society.
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Food insecurity, once a seasonal concern, has now become a topic of everyday survival.
At moments when harvests fail and households run out of food months before the next rainy season, our national vulnerability is laid bare.
It is in such times of strain that President Peter Mutharika has found himself compelled to declare a state of disaster in all the country’s 27 districts.
These declarations are not merely symbolic; they are crucial for mobilising emergency support from local actors, development partners and international humanitarian agencies.
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They open the door for the kind of rapid assistance that saves lives.
However, beyond galvanising support, such declarations should also serve as a loud national warning, an invitation to rethink the strategies that repeatedly fail us.
While emergency relief is necessary, it is not a sustainable answer.
For decades, billions of kwacha have been poured into food production programmes and input distribution.
Yet year after year, Malawi continues to find itself unable to feed its population. The cycle has become painfully predictable; that of erratic rainfall, low yields, rising food prices and then declarations of emergency.
Central to this repeated failure is the long-running subsidy programme which, in theory, is designed to equip poor farmers with affordable inputs so they can become self-reliant.
In reality, it has struggled to deliver on that promise.
The very same households who benefit from subsidised fertiliser and seed often find themselves on the lists of food-aid beneficiaries a few months later.
The programme rarely produces graduates, farmers who are able to stand on their own and sustainably feed their families.
Instead, it entrenches reliance on the same system and, more importantly, dependence on rain-fed agriculture, a model increasingly incompatible with the climate realities we face.
Research has consistently shown that the money invested in Malawi’s agriculture sector is in fact sufficient to transform our food landscape.
In some scenarios the country could not only meet its own food needs but even produce a surplus.
Yet this potential remains unrealised because we insist on doing the same things and expecting different outcomes.
Our farming methods have barely changed even as the climate has.
The rains no longer follow predictable patterns, dry spells and flash floods have become more common and pests flourish in new conditions. Still, we plan as though every season will behave like the last.
It is embarrassing and deeply frustrating that every year, without fail, we raise the same alarm: we do not have enough food because of erratic rainfall.
Meanwhile, we are blessed with vast and reliable water bodies, including Lake Malawi, Rukuru rivers, the giant Shire, Ruo River and other smaller lakes.
Together, these could revolutionise irrigation farming and free us from the tyranny of rainfall.
Yet the irrigation potential remains largely untapped. Where irrigation exists, it is often small-scale, poorly funded or entangled in bureaucratic or political interests.
Imagine what Malawi could achieve if irrigation were pursued with the seriousness it deserves, if communities were empowered with modern irrigation technologies and if smallholder farmers could count on reliable water access throughout the year.
It is entirely possible to harvest enough food for every household in this country.
However, this will require us to stop politicising agriculture, to stop using farming programmes as campaign tools or avenues for patronage.
The money pumped into agriculture must do its real job of producing food and enabling resilience.
There is no option but to adapt. We must shift from dependency on increasingly unreliable rains to climate-smart agriculture.
We must embrace irrigation, conservation agriculture, crop diversification and technologies that help farmers predict and respond to changing weather conditions.
The knowledge exists. The resources, although limited, are not negligible. What is missing is the collective will to break free from old habits.
