may change. Some resource-poor households will need to use markets to seek food security
 through non-farm activities.

 For transitory food insecurity, the issue is not the national food gap but loss of
 income for poor households. The traditional way of looking at food security in Malawi is
 through "food gap" calculations. There are many problems with using a food gap approach to
 defining food security. Production and consumption decisions are made in a market economy
 in relationship to price signals in the market. Food gap analysis does not capture this idea.
 An assumption in food gap analysis is that food goes to those who need it. This assumption is
- not not valid. Food is distributed according to market forces. Food gap analysis also assumes
S---'-Constant consumption patterns, which are also not to be found. Consumption varies,
 Depending on relative prices. The fundamental error in using a food gap model to deal with
 \ food security is to think that if food is available, people can consume it according to need.

 A market-based approach to looking at food security, on the other hand, takes
 production and food availability as only one component of the problem. More important are
 relative prices, income and income distribution, and a series of elasticities reflecting the
 demand, supply, and price responses in the market to changes in the food sector. The focus is
 on price movements, not changes in quantities of food.

 There is a strong link between transitory food insecurity and chronic food
 insecurity. Without a chronic food insecure situation already existing in the country,
 transitory food insecurity would be a much less serious problem. Both transitory and chronic
 food insecurities require a focus on household income. Ideally, efforts to respond to transitory
 problems should enhance efforts to deal with the chronic problem.

 Households that are not chronically food insecure and have resources can save in good
 years and liquidate assets and savings in poor years. The key to poor households' ability to
 survive harvest shortfalls is the diversity of income sources available to them. Better off
 households are diversifying both food and cash crop production and are increasingly moving
 into cash cropping. Effective commodity and labor markets increase and improve coping
 mechanisms and survival systems.

 Malawi's response to drought has been reactive e.g., release of food, rather than
 proactive, e.g., crop diversification, encouragement of small scale irrigation, and effective use
 of early warning systems. Public works projects have a role in providing income (cash or
 kind) in response to transitory food insecurity. To be effective, these projects need to be
 available on-the-shelf for rapid response. Free food distribution programs provide a resource
 transfer to the poor but can be inefficient. If there is an effective safety net program in the
 country, then transitory food insecurity can be addressed by stepping up saftey net coverage in
 response to drought.