Enough food despite food shortages

Despite some remaining pockets of food insecurity and fears that a prolonged dry spell would set back Malawi's maize production in 2010, the country looks set to realize another surplus year. Alick Nkhoma, assistant representative in Malawi of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said all indications were that for the fifth consecutive year the country would produce enough maize, the staple food, even to support those in need in Southern Malawi, which experienced a dry spell.
A vendor selling maize in Kawale township in the capital, Lilongwe, located in the centre of the country, said most farmers had managed a bumper maize harvest and were already selling the surplus to commercial traders.
"In the rural areas of Lilongwe [district] most households managed to get coupons, with which they bought the subsidized fertilizers; the rains too were good in most areas - this is the reason there is enough maize here," vendor Thomson Mwale told IRIN.
The outlook in southern Malawi is not as good. A Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) report noted that as many as half a million people in the Lower Shire Valley in southern Malawi had not harvested any maize and needed immediate humanitarian support, but "the government has enough stocks to meet these needs".




I think that despite the problems with bad harvest it's good that there is enough food to get by. Although there are many people who are starving to death, the food shortage is not an absolute disaster.



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