Food crisis could worsen

Malawi's food shortages could worsen as it is likely that the winter harvest will fall short of expectations, humanitarian agencies have warned. In its latest report, the United States' Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) warned that "since agricultural inputs were distributed late in the planting season, the winter harvest will not yield the expected 140,000 mt". The World Food Programme (WFP) says about 3.2 million people will require food aid to survive until March next year. A shortfall in the winter harvest of smallholder or subsistence farmers, would mean more people in need, WFP's spokeswoman, Chigomezgo Mtegha, told IRIN. "What would have been harvested would have carried many households until April next year. A poor harvest, or [for some] no harvest at all means households will have no food," Mtegha said. The WFP had yet to see definitive figures on what the winter harvest shortfall would be. "[The government] was giving out a major starter pack to about three million people, under the targeted inputs programme [TIP]. This included a packet of seeds, of maize and legumes, and fertiliser given to needy smallholder farmers. "What is very evident is that the [cereal production] target has not been met, this has serious implications on how people are going to cope over the coming months," Mtegha noted. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Representative in Malawi Louise Setshwaelo, said the main reason the winter crop was likely to fall short was the lack of residual moisture in the soil. "In the first place there was very little rainfall [during the rainy season which ended in April] and the moisture that was available was not as much as you would have had during a normal cropping season. I was in the field last week and some of the crops were actually wilting. There are farmers who are irrigating using watering cans, buckets and treadle pumps, and their crops are doing very well because they are being irrigated," Setshwaelo said. The winter TIP was an emergency intervention in the face of the current crisis. "Normally the inputs are not distributed for winter cropping, it's only because of the current crisis that government decided to have a winter TIP which was supported by the EU, DFID [UK Department For International Development] and FAO," she noted. FAO distributed to 50,000 households. "Our distribution started in July and we estimate that 60 percent of our beneficiaries did plant crops. Of the remaining 40 percent, we know that some of the farmers have actually retained the seed to use it during the main cropping season which is October, November, December. So it has not been a waste," Setshwaelo said.