Starter Packs and hunger crises: a briefing for policymakers on food security in Malawi

This briefing presents some key findings of the Malawi Starter Pack/Targeted Inputs Programme (TIP). This programme provides provided free packs containing fertiliser, improved maize seed and legume seed for rural households. At present, rural Malawi is caught in a trap. Poverty is so extreme and widespread and food security so precarious that any shock is enough to cause a crisis. The government and donors spend resources on social welfare and development programmes, which are then undermined by food crises. Farmers may build up assets and try to invest in a better future, but then they are hit by another food crisis which absorbs all their resources and puts them back where they started. In order to break out of this trap, a two-pronged strategy is required:Malawi needs to produce enough food. SP/ETIP has proven to be an efficient way of doing this. The programme needs to be of sufficiently large scale (universal or near-universal) to achieve the impact on maize markets that is required to keep prices in check and ensure food securitythere is a need to develop smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. This means increasing opportunities for ganyu and other off-farm activities, promoting cash crops that smallholders can grow without displacing food crops (e.g. by inter-cropping), and boosting livestock ownership.The evaluations show that SP/ETIP has a strong, positive impact on food security. It is relatively low-cost; it promotes food crop diversification; it does not distort inputs markets; and it is ‘poverty neutral’. An alternative intervention need to be judged on a basis of:Is it of sufficient scale to have a strong, positive impact on food security via the maize markets and prices? To achieve this, it needs to reach a large number of beneficiaries each year throughout Malawi – with the possible exception of the far north, parts of the lakeshore and the Nsanje Valley. Providing inputs in larger packs to a smaller number of beneficiaries than SP/ETIP would not have the same impact on national food security. It would merely increase household food self-sufficiency for those who receive the inputs.Is it efficient and low-cost? None of the alternatives that have been proposed, from ‘inputs for work’ to subsidies for fertiliser, credit and consumer prices cost as little as SP/ETIP if implemented on a similar scale.Does it promote diversification of food and cash crops? This implies providing other seeds in addition to maize and/or promotion of local nurseries for roots and tubers. The legumes provided by SP, TIP and ETIP have made an important contribution to food crop diversification in Malawi, and this role should be enhanced in future.Does it avoid distorting the inputs markets or ‘crowding out’ the private sector? The evaluation data from 2000-01, 2001-02 and 2002-03 show that free packs with 10 kg of fertiliser are too small to affect farmers’ fertiliser purchases.Is it poverty-targeted, or at least ‘poverty-neutral’ within the target group of poor farmers? The SP/TIP evaluations show that attempts to target the poorest households with agricultural inputs are unlikely to succeed except in small-scale programmes. But at least SP/ETIP spreads the benefits beyond the village elite to poor households. The small size of the pack even allows the ‘landless poor’ (those with tiny plots of land around their houses) to benefit.In the absence of any alternative with proven capacity to perform better, the report recommends that SP/ETIP continue to play a role in Malawi’s medium term food security strategy. ‘Exit’ from food security interventions will only be advisable when there is an improvement in rural livelihoods, markets and food sources, and indicators should be designed to track progress towards these goals [author]