# **1. Introduction**

Rural households in developing countries rely on rain-fed farming as a significant source of income. In the African context, the average share of rural household income originating from agriculture could be up to 69 percent (Davis et al., 2017), and as of 2013, only 3.4 percent of cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa was irrigated, with a 0.1 percentage point increase since 1993 (FAO, 2016). Smallholders are, therefore, clearly vulnerable to crop losses due to extreme weather events, whose frequency, intensity and duration has been increasing over the past decades (Ummenhofer and Meehl, 2017). Further, climate scientists are providing new links between the increase in extreme events and climate change (IPCC, 2012; Alexander, 2016). For instance, Cai et al. (2014) provide evidence that the frequency of El Nino events could double, which would in turn lead to increased extreme weather events around the world. Other research suggests that La Nina events can similarly lead to greater frequency of extreme weather events (Ummenhofer et al., 2015). This suggests that farmers are likely to suffer more frequent and severe crop losses in the future.

There is a dearth of evidence of the impact of extreme events on household-level outcomes, precisely because extreme events are rare and because household data collection activities are generally scheduled following other concerns, so that collecting household data after an extreme event has generally happened by chance. There is some evidence of the impacts of extreme events on crop yields, but very limited evidence on impacts on household welfare, such as food consumption and dietary quality. Additionally, there is limited evidence on the mechanisms that farm household members rely on to buffer large losses in crop harvest when they – and many of their neighbors – are hit by an extreme weather shock. This is precisely the type of information needed to better inform disaster risk management strategies, to develop and implement effective climate change adaptation strategies, and to optimally integrate disaster risk management with adaptation efforts.

During the 2014/15 growing season in Malawi, severe flooding affected large numbers of farmers across the country. An assessment undertaken by the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination unit (UNDAC) estimated that over a million people were directly affected by the floods, with over 200,000 displaced and over 100 killed (UNDAC, 2015). A Government of Malawi Post-Disaster Needs Assessment estimated the total costs of the flood damages at USD 335 million (Government of Malawi, 2015). Consistent with the global and regional evidence on the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, evidence from Malawi also suggests that the frequency of both flood and drought events is increasing, and likely to increase further still with climate change <mark>(Venalainen</mark> et al., 2016; Chinsinga, 2012). Farmers are particularly vulnerable to weather shocks in Malawi, where landholdings are very small, generally less than one hectare (Asfaw et al., 2016). Mirroring the continent-wide outlook, 2.3 percent of cropland in Malawi is irrigated, but, according to FAO’s AQUASTAT, nearly all irrigated land is on large estates, meaning that irrigation on smallholder plots is virtually non-existent (Frenken, 2005). Crop revenues per family member are correspondingly small (Asfaw et al., 2016; Ricker-Gilbert, Jumbe and Chamberlain, 2014), and rural poverty rates remain stubbornly high at 57 percent in 2010 based on the latest available official statistics on poverty for the country (World Bank, 2016).

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