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Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 4
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Book Description
Malawi is a food-insecure country, and although most households have access to arable land, many rural Malawians cannot reliably obtain enough food to meet their dietary needs. Rainfed, low-input subsistence production, particularly of the staple crop maize, has historically been the primary means of assuring household food security. Today, most of Malawi’s 4 million households continue to grow much of their own food. However, with increasing regularity, several hundred thousand households each year are vulnerable to acute food insecurity. Insufficient crop harvests resulting from poor seasonal growing conditions and limited use of inputs, coupled with reliance on shrinking landholdings as the population continues to grow and in the context of weak markets in which to sell crops and buy food, mean that subsistence farming cannot meet the dietary requirements of all Malawians.
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 4
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Book Description
Malawi is a food-insecure country, and although most households have access to arable land, many rural Malawians cannot reliably obtain enough food to meet their dietary needs. Rainfed, low-input subsistence production, particularly of the staple crop maize, has historically been the primary means of assuring household food security. Today, most of Malawi’s 4 million households continue to grow much of their own food. However, with increasing regularity, several hundred thousand households each year are vulnerable to acute food insecurity. Insufficient crop harvests resulting from poor seasonal growing conditions and limited use of inputs, coupled with reliance on shrinking landholdings as the population continues to grow and in the context of weak markets in which to sell crops and buy food, mean that subsistence farming cannot meet the dietary requirements of all Malawians.
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294056
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Author: Aberman, Noora-Lisa
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 089629286X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 82
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Book Description
Although the Malawian food supply is shaped largely by trends in smallholder food crop production, Malawi’s decades-long focus on improving smallholder productivity has only moderately improved food security and nutrition outcomes. Country statistics indicate an estimated 36.7 percent of rural Malawian households failed to access sufficient calories between 2010 and 2011. During the same period, 47 percent of children under the age of five years were estimated to be stunted in their growth. These indicators imply that some Malawian diets are lacking in terms of quantity (total calories consumed), and most are lacking in terms of quality (sufficient calories derived from nutrient-dense foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, fruits, and vegetables). Good nutrition requires both enough total calories (quantity) and enough vitamins and minerals per calorie (quality). How can Malawi better leverage its smallholder agriculture sector to improve nutrition? This report provides a series of primary and secondary data analyses that examine different aspects of this question.
Author: Margolies, Amy
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Improving social assistance programs is imperative to addressing problems of poverty and vulnerability in Malawi. Emergency aid has played an important role in alleviating hunger during humanitarian crises such as those in 2015-16 and 2016-17. However, the Government of Malawi and development partners recognize that emergency responses are not a sustainable solution to address vulnerability. This qualitative study examines the characteristics of resilient households and perceived effects of programs to improve food security and resilience from the perspectives of the beneficiaries and communities they serve. This beneficiary-centered approach explores socially-defined concepts of resilience, associated coping strategies, norms and political dynamics affecting programs. These findings can provide useful insights to improve the effectiveness of social assistance programs in this context.
Author: Aberman, Noora-Lisa
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 62
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Book Description
Smallholder agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy. Its importance for livelihoods cannot be overstated. 94 percent of rural residents and 38 percent of urban residents engage in agriculture to some extent (Jones, Shrinivas, and Bezner-Kerr 2014), the vast majority as smallholder farmers with landholdings of less than one hectare. Smallholder crops are primarily maize—which accounted for nearly 80 percent of smallholder-cultivated land in 2011 —followed by cassava and other food crops (FAO 2008; IFAD 2011). These foods are grown for household consumption and for sale at local and regional markets. As such, the Malawian food supply, especially in rural areas where markets are thin with few buying or selling options, is shaped largely by trends in smallholder food-crop production
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 27
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Book Description
Malawi has been at the center of the debate on agricultural input subsidies in Africa ever since it significantly expanded its fertilizer subsidy program about two decades ago. When it did so, Malawi was a trailblazer, receiving international attention for seemingly leveraging the subsidy program to move the country from a situation characterized by food deficits and widespread hunger to crop production surpluses. In this paper we trace the history of Malawi’s subsidy program over the past 70 years, describing how the country arrived at that watershed moment earlier this century and how the subsidy program has developed since. We show how donor support for the program has wavered and how external pressure to remove the subsidy has repeatedly been unsuccessful. We also demonstrate how over the years the program’s total fiscal burden has fluctuated significantly. However, we find that since the expansion of the subsidy program in 2004, the fiscal costs of the program have shown little correlation with the maize harvest that same agricultural season. We show that the subsidy program has succeeded in raising awareness about the value of the fertilizer for increased crop productivity. However, despite its continued prominence in the country’s agricultural policy, most Malawian smallholder do not manage to grow sufficient maize to feed their households throughout the year, and every year millions depend on food assistance during the worst months of the lean season.
Author: Leigh Brownhill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317596579
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Through the integration of gender analysis into resilience thinking, this book shares field-based research insights from a collaborative, integrated project aimed at improving food security in subsistence and smallholder agricultural systems. The scope of the book is both local and multi-scalar. The gendered resilience framework, illustrated here with detailed case studies from semi-arid Kenya, is shown to be suitable for use in analysis in other geographic regions and across disciplines. The book examines the importance of gender equity to the strengthening of socio-ecological resilience. Case studies reflect multidisciplinary perspectives and focus on a range of issues, from microfinance to informal seed systems. The book’s gender perspective also incorporates consideration of age or generational relations and cultural dimensions in order to embrace the complexity of existing socio-economic realities in rural farming communities. The issue of succession of farmland has become a general concern, both to farmers and to researchers focused on building resilient farming systems. Building resilience here is shown to involve strengthening households’ and communities’ overall livelihood capabilities in the face of ongoing climate change, global market volatility and political instability.
Author: Davis, Kristin
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 78
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Book Description
Primary agricultural cooperatives in Malawi, in contrast to other farmer-level organizations, have legal status and can own assets, borrow money for their operations, and sign contracts, making it easier for them to do business for the profit of their members. Conceptually, such cooperatives enable their member-farmers to achieve economies of scale for their commercial activities. By joining together in a cooperative, members can obtain commercial inputs at lower prices closer to wholesale prices than if they purchased the inputs as individuals. In selling their output, by aggregating their crops and other products into larger lots that the cooperative then negotiates to sell on their behalf, buyers can achieve greater efficiency in buying from them and can be expected to offer a premium over the prices that they would offer farmers selling those products individually. Cooperatives can also serve farmers in providing an important channel for obtaining information and advice to increase their productivity and the profitability of their farming. Moreover, by joining together to achieve common objectives in primary agricultural cooperatives, member-farmers can exercise greater influence on local and national policy issues of concern to them, while also building social cohesion, solidarity, and trust within their communities.
Author: Fan, Shenggen
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896295583
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 30
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Book Description
This food policy report presents a typology of the diverse livelihood strategies and development pathways for smallholder farmers in developing countries, and offers policy recommendations to help potentially profitable smallholders meet emerging risks and challenges. Main Findings Smallholder farmers in developing countries play a key role in meeting the future food demands of a growing and increasingly rich and urbanized population. However, smallholders are not a homogeneous group that should be supported at all costs. Whereas some smallholder farmers have the potential to undertake profitable commercial activities in the agricultural sector, others should be supported in exiting agriculture and seeking nonfarm employment opportunities. For smallholder farmers with profit potential, their ability to be successful is hampered by such challenges as climate change, price shocks, limited financing options, and inadequate access to healthy and nutritious food. By overcoming these challenges, smallholders can move from subsistence to commercially oriented agricultural systems, increase their profits, and operate at an efficient scalethereby helping to do their part in feeding the worlds hungry.
Author: Daidone, S.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251377944
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 105
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Book Description
The project “Promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi)” aims to support poor and vulnerable households to strengthen their resilience to climate change and climate variability through social protection (SP) and the adoption of proven climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices blended with disaster risk reduction (DRR). FAO Malawi leads the implementation of the project in two targeted districts of Mwanza and Neno, targeting 2 400 farmers, some of them being beneficiaries of existing SP programmes. At community level, the project is implemented through the farmer field school (FFS) approach and delivered through 80 FFS groups located in 74 villages. To evaluate impacts of the project, we use a crossover design to compare the relative merits of its different components and combine various evaluation methods. This is a baseline report on the “Promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi)” project.
