Malawi faces its worst hunger this year due to an El Niño-induced mid-season dry spell—the worst in the last hundred years—the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says.
This is contained in a paper titled ‘Responding’ to Malawi’s Food Crisis issued last Friday, which also outlines possible short to medium-term remedies.
This comes as, in March this year, President Lazarus Chakwera declared a state of disaster, calling for support from the country’s partners to fend for up to 40 percent of the population.
According to the IFPRI paper, of the $447 million required to fund a comprehensive response, thus far only a fifth has been pledged, and few plausible sources of additional funding remain.
Malawi consumes around 3.5 million metric tonnes (mt) of maize every year, but as of the end of the rainy season, the government projects that only 2.9 million mt will be harvested—a 600,000mt shortfall.
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In the interim, IFPRI recommends enhanced investment towards winter cropping and importation of enough food to cater for the deficit.
It says the strategy is, however, dependent on the soil retaining enough residual moisture from the rainy season to enable maize cultivation during the dry season.
“But this is not possible following a drought. Even in a year when enough rain falls in the wet summer season, planting maize that relies on residual moisture cultivation needs to be done before June,” says IFPRI in the report.
The strategy, according to IFPRI, assumes that massive amounts of maize will be grown under irrigation.
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Already, the government plans to supply $25.5 million in seeds and fertilizer to middle scale farmers and institutions like the Malawi Defence Force and Greenbelt Authority Mega Farms to grow 218,000 mt of maize on 48,400 hectares of existing irrigation schemes.
It also wants to contract big commercial farms to use 25,000 hectares of their irrigated land to grow 100,000 mt of maize for purchase by the National Food Reserve Agency at a cost of $48.5 million.
In the paper, IFPR says building a food system that can withstand future droughts is the most important objective.
“Building a food system that can withstand future droughts is the most important objective. We have previously suggested ways to improve the resilience of Malawi’s agricultural sector to droughts and to raise farmers’ awareness of them.
“However, this is a long-term effort that cannot prevent a famine this year,” IFPR says in the papers jointly done by Jan Duchoslav, Mazvita Chiduwa, Simon Denhere, Rodwell Mzonde, George Phiri and Joachim De Weerdt.
