AGRICULTURE, FOOD SECURITY, AND NUTRITION IN MALAWI AGRICULTURE, FOOD SECURITY, AND NUTRITION IN MALAWI

WiTh MAlAWiAn dieTS heAvily doMinATed By STAple foodS—MAize fiRST and foremost, but also rice and cassava in some areas—food security in Malawi is often equated with having access to enough maize. What is missing in this traditional measure of food security in Malawi is the importance of the quality, in addition to the quantity, of dietary intake. This household-level scenario is reflected in, and exacerbated by, national development priorities; food security is a top-line agenda item for agriculture in Malawi, whereas nutrition is still considered primarily a health issue. To guide analysis and action in this complex environment, we present a conceptual framework to illuminate the multiple and complex linkages from agriculture to food security and nutrition. This framework reveals a number of ways in which the agriculture sector can help strengthen diet quality. These include: (1) promoting production of nutrient-dense foods via subsidies and other incentives; (2) promoting food processing, marketing, and consumption in ways that conserve nutrients, create demand, and decrease prices; and (3) supporting women farmers through, for example, targeted efforts to increase their productivity and bargaining power. Smallholder agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy. Its importance for livelihoods cannot be overstated. Ninety-four 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. Maize accounted for nearly half of smallholder-cultivated land between 2010/11 and 2014/15, followed by groundnut, bean, cassava, sweet potato, and other food crops (Benson and Edelman 2016). These foods are grown for household consumption and for sale at local and regional markets. 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. In the last decade, Malawi has experienced rapid smallholder-led growth in the agricultural sector, largely attributed to the Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP), a major government program that annually provides about half of all smallholder farming households with heavily subsidized fertilizer and seed (Arndt, Pauw, and Thurlow 2016). Despite this progress, the country still faces significant challenges in terms of food security and nutrition outcomes (Figure 1). Analysis of data from the Third Integrated Household Survey (IHS3) of 2010–2011 suggests that 36.7 percent of rural Malawian households fail to access sufficient calories (NSO 2012). Estimates from the 2010 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) indicate that 47 percent of children under the age of five in Malawi are stunted (height-for-age index scores below minus two standard deviations from the median of an international reference population) (NSO and ICF Macro 2011). 1 Thus Malawian diets are lacking in terms of the quantity of food—total calories consumed—and more so in terms of the quantities of nutrient-rich foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, fruits, and vegetables.