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In 2002, there was a famine in Malawi with death estimates ranging from 300 to 3,000 Rising levels of poverty, food shortages, and political and economic issues all contributed to the resulting famine. The harvest in the latter half of 2002 alleviated the worst of the famine, but Malawi has since entered a food crisis that has persisted to this day.

85 percent of Malawians’ primary source of income comes from agriculture, and maize is the primary crop grown and consumed. Unusual rainfall and flooding in 2001 sparked a food crisis in 2001 that worsened until 2006. The 2000/2001 maize harvest fell from 2.5 million to 1.7 million metric tons, creating a national deficit of 273,000 metric tons. In February 2002, the Malawi government announced that there was a food emergency and that the country was in a State of Disaster. President Bingu wa Mutharika declared a national disaster on October 15, 2005 and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that there are 46,000 severely malnourished children.

Background and factors involved
Scholars trace back Malawi’s food crisis to 1991 and 1992, when a drought in southern Africa severely reduced Malawi’s maize production. The price of maize shot up: the cost of maize, which is 54% of the average caloric intake for Malawians, almost doubled between 1992 and 1993. Although there was a maize surplus in 1993 due to improved rainfall and government-subsidized hybrid maize seed and fertilizer, food consumption did not increase.

Since then, periodic droughts and floods continued to affect Malawi. Between 1990 and 2006, there were 33 weather-related disasters, a rise from the 7 that occurred between 1970 and 1989. Malawi’s economy is heavily agricultural; most people survive on their own harvest and sell the excess to make a small income. The high number and increasing severity of droughts and floods since 1990 has impacted much of the country’s population—farmers had little ability to adapt to or recover from disasters, making them more vulnerable to future events, and the cycle of poverty and hunger worsened.

From the early 1970s to 1994, the government subsidized hybrid maize growth. When the government stopped this program because it was becoming too expensive support, maize production fell and price increased.

Political factors
The National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) was created in 1999 to manage the strategic grain reserve in disaster relief. However, it quickly incurred a debt of 1 billion MK due to the high interest rate of 56% at which it bought 165,000 metric tons of maize. In 2001, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended the government to sell the grain reserve because harvest had been ample in 2000 and there seemed to be little use for such a large reserve and because the grain itself was rotting. NFRA followed the IMF’s advice and sold a majority of its reserve to Kenya and Mozambique. While some partially blame the IMF for the food crisis, others recognize that the grain was old and expensive to store and at the time, it made sense to advise NFRA to sell.

By 2002, when the worst of the famine hit, this reserve was depleted, and the government did not have any additional resources. The situation was exacerbated by the government’s poor preparation in replenishing the reserve sources as they were used. Furthermore, private traders bought out much of the grain reserve, and resold it at excessive prices when food was scarce in 2001. The government began importing maize from neighboring countries and abroad, but the maize was slow to arrive. From congested roads to inefficiently rerouted trucks and overcrowded ports, there were a variety of transportation bottlenecks that delayed the arrival of food aid. Additionally, poor relationships with some donor countries made them slow to respond; many were suspicious of the IMF’s involvement in depleting the strategic grain reserve, and others were wary of government corruption.

Furthermore, many farmers in Malawi were unequipped to handle the frequent weather disasters. The existing policies for disaster management, the National Adaptation Programme of Action, do not take into consideration gender and health, only agriculture and environment. Most disaster and climate change management occurs on a national level, and not all policies and practices trickle down to local communities; district leaders in Nsanje and Salima did not know that the NAPA existed when asked in 2006.

Economic factors
Most of Malawi’s population is rural and agricultural; there are few industry- or service-related jobs. Some are able to work on large tobacco plantations, find jobs in cities, or migrate to neighboring countries for low-wage jobs, but there are few openings.

Malawi’s current economic policy toes the line between liberalization, a laissez-faire market, and regulation, a state-determined market. a government-owned corporation and one of the primary suppliers of maize, controls some of the market and makes food available in poorer and more vulnerable areas. The liberal part of the economy allowed maize prices to rocket from 4MK/kg in June 2001 to 40+MK/kg in January 2002. The daily wage for workers, however, remained the same at 20MK/day.

Malawi’s agricultural policies are also problematic: the country’s economy is heavily reliant on maize, and efforts to diversify crops have been unsuccessful. Therefore, a majority of its population suffered when the crop production, especially maize production, failed in 2001, because people could no longer grow food for themselves and did not have an income to purchase food.

Tobacco, the main export product in Malawi, has declined in sales. Since the 1980s, its revenue has decreased by 50%, and thus the income and purchasing power of small farmers has decreased. In 2000/2001, many small farmers failed to repay their loans. Therefore, in 2001/2002, many were unable to receive credit with which to buy seeds and fertilizer for their crops. FAO 2002

Social factors
Poverty is widespread in Malawi, with 50% of its population living under the poverty line of $2/day according to the World Bank. Most of its impoverished population is rural and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, which generates little income. Thus, the rural poor were especially vulnerable to the food crisis because they could not afford to buy food when their harvests failed.

Some have speculated that since 1994, when democracy was established in Malawi, there has been a social shift away from community solidarity. During the 1991/1992 drought, communities banded together and supported one another, giving food and employment to those that needed it. During the 2001/2002 food crisis, however, peoples’ philosophies changed to an “anarchic mob justice,” an “everyone for himself” attitude.

HIV/AIDS affects about 15% of Malawians. Households with adults affected by HIV/AIDS and households without adults due to HIV/AIDS have significantly lower agricultural productivity. Not only are those with HIV/AIDS prevented from working the fields, but other people must take care of them and a portion of the household income must go to medication and funerals. Thus, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS has made many Malawians vulnerable during the food crisis.

Ecological factors
The soil in Malawi is in poor condition, due to many farmers’ historical inability to afford fertilizer. There are few easy solutions to maintaining soil fertility; Malawi is too poor to import organic materials to restore soil nutrients, and land is too scarce to allocate large plots of land to soil restoration4. Individual farmers cannot afford fertilizer for their land. Therefore, food production levels are also largely affected by the declining soil fertility and land shortages.

Poor land use and deforestation has also been suggested to play a role in the increasing droughts and floods. Large tobacco farms have replaced forests, and commercial farmers have cut down reeds along rivers that control flooding.

Climate factors
Some have suggested that global warming is affecting climate and thus food shortages. As rainfall patterns change and temperatures increase, the length of the productive growing season decreases and farmers must purchase more costly hybrid crops in order to obtain an adequate harvest. Some farmers shifted their maize season from November to December, while others shifted it earlier, in order to handle the changing weather. As aforementioned, the increasing frequency of droughts and floods has made farmers especially vulnerable to food shortages.

The rainfall in 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 was sporadic, with recurrent dry spells and floods that prevented sufficient harvests. Many farmers, in order to cope with the unpredictable weather, harvested their crops prematurely, which further decreased the crop production in 2001/2002. Furthermore, the changing weather patterns made the methods of predicting crop prediction unreliable; the existing warning systems that predicted crop production based on weather forecasts and regular crop assessments only predicted that a decrease in maize production in the 2001/2002 season would be compensated for by an increase in other crops such as roots and tubers production. However, all crops took a hit in the 2001/2002 season. Thus, government was unprepared for a food crisis in 2002.

Response & relief efforts
The government implemented a fertilizer subsidy program called the Farm Input Subside Program (FISP) in 2005, under which the government subsidized fertilizer and seed to vulnerable farmers. Fertilizer was priced at $7 per 50 kg bag, a marked discount from the market price of $27 per 50 kg bag. Although the erratic rainfalls curbed the program’s effectiveness in 2005/2006, improved weather in 2007 allowed the program to flourish and Malawi had a record maize harvest of 3.4 million tons, a surplus of 1.4 million. As a result, in 2007, Zimbabwe imported 40,000 metric tons of maize from Malawi, and Lesotho and Swaziland both received 5,000 metric tons of maize donated from Malawi.

International and local NGOS, including the World Food Programme (WFP), the EU, the UK, and USAID, donated food to Malawi after it was declared a state of disaster in 2002. In 2005, the WFP estimated that its food aid was feeding 11% of Malawi’s population.

Health
The food crisis has made children especially vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. In 2006, UNICEF estimated that 46% of children under five were chronically malnourished, 19% were underweight, and 3% are wasted. Since 1992, when the roots of the food crisis began, children’s nutritional status has not changed.

In 2001/2002 and 2005/2006, during seasons of severe food shortage, there were large cholera outbreaks throughout the country. UNICEF recognized that the outbreaks were prompted by poor hygiene and unsafe water sources compounded with the food crisis that made people susceptible to disease.

The food shortage has resulted in several thousand hunger-related deaths. Many of these deaths have further exacerbated the problem of HIV/AIDS, leaving those afflicted by the disease especially vulnerable and also producing a large orphan population. UNICEF estimates that 17% of children do not have living parents due to HIV/AIDS.

A study conducted by Save The Children UK in February 2002 found that the food crisis affected peoples health by causing swelling in the hands in feet of both adults and children. People began to eat unsafe roots, maize cobs, sawdust, and boiled fruits and contracted food poisoning and other stomach illnesses. Those that became ill or were already ill with diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS struggled to recover due to hunger.

Policy
The government’s food security policy, the FISP, has raised agricultural productivity. As aforementioned, maize production surpassed domestic demand after the implementation of FISP. Between 2005 and 2011, Malawi’s GDP grew at an average of 11.7% per year, and many experts contributed the agricultural GDP growth to FISP. However, recent studies have suggested that FISP is not a sustainable program: as the number of needy households increase, the amount of fertilizer and seed provided has decreased from 85 kg per farmer in 2005/2006 to 60 kg per farmer in 2012/2013.

New food security policies were developed in 2002 and 2003. The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy was a framework policy document intended to direct and inform budget decisions for the central government. At the heart of the policy was economic growth, human capital, safety nets, and governance; by making budget decisions that encourage agricultural economic growth and create effective safety nets, the government can promote food security and food availability. The Ministry of Agriculture collaborated with civil society organizations, other ministries, private companies, and donors to create a Food and Nutrition Security Policy. The policy aimed to: 1) increase food availability by extending irrigation systems and access to fertilizer and land, 2) strengthen the rural market, 3) create a number of health and dietary guidelines and services, and 4) establish and strengthen disaster management plans, the strategic grain reserve, and food production monitoring/predicting systems. Finally, the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development developed a growth strategy policy that would increase access to food by increasing income and employment opportunities by promoting trade and investment in rural Malawi.

Culture and society
As crop harvests struggled, people have begun to change their lifestyles to obtain food. Some have begun taking casual jobs in exchange for food. Many have sold household items and livestock at low prices to purchase food. Some have migrated to Zambia and other neighboring countries to work for low wages or food.

The food crisis has also had an impact on education. In some areas, the dropout rate has increased to 25% due to hunger. Many skip school in order to work or search for food. Some teachers have complained that schools have lost their control over students because they cannot force students to stay, study, or do their homework if they are hungry and sick.

The overall social order has also worsened, as people have begun stealing from their neighbors, abandoning children, fighting for food, and exchanging sex for food.

There is a personal account of the famine by William Kamkwamba in his book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. According to the novel, the government estimate of famine deaths appears to be severely understated.

Food shortage in 2013
The maize harvest in 2012 decreased by 7% from 2011, and harsh flooding at the beginning of 2013 in southern Malawi destroyed 10,000 homes. The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee estimated in 2012-2013 that 2 million people were suffering from food shortages. The World Bank estimated that Malawi would require at least 57,000 metric tons of maize in the 2013/2014 season in order to address the food scarcity. The price of maize increased by 162% in 2013. In July of 2013, the UK announced that it would donate $20 million to Malawi for the “looming food crisis.”

Admarc has rationed maize sales to 10 kg per person. The Ministry of Agriculture claimed that this policy was created to prevent vendors from buying all the maize and reselling it to the poor at higher prices. However, news reporters from The Daily Times have found that Admarc itself may also be suffering from a grain shortage because people have reported not being able to receive even their allotted 10 kg of grain.