Female-headed households face particular problems. They have limited labor available
 for off-farm employment, in part due to their higher dependency ratios, but also because of the
 considerable time required for domestic activities such as collecting water and wood and pounding
 maize. Off-farm income is an even smaller share of total income for these households than for
 poor households.

 In drought years, the number of food insecure rises, depending on the incidence and
 severity of the production shortfall. In a major drought, the number of the food insecure could
 rise by up to an additional 30 percent of the smallholder population.

 A recent study (SF 1996 shows that the poorest households employ a variety of coping
 mechanisms in response to drought. The degree of diversity in income sources is important the
 more diversity, the more effective the household's coping ability. The survey appears to show
 that oe main effects of drought is to increase the scale of market activities, particularly for the
 purchase of food. Households which would normally not purchase maize, certainly not from
 crop sales, have to usewhat income they can generate to supplement their own production. The
 main source for this income is eanvu, but there is usually less ganyu available in drought years,
 as better-off farmers are also affected. Household food security for the poorest is very much )
 dependent on the functioning of the rural labor market. For the poorest households, there is also
 a rise in the amount of barter and the percentage of ganyu paid in food rather than cash increases.

 The main problem for poor smallholders is their lack of resources. They have (ew assets,
 and it is very risky for them to borrow for agricultural production, even if they have access to
 credit. The outlook for these households is bleak unless their resource base is increased. To do
 so, they must produce a surplus, through switching to higher value crops, or finding more
lucrative off-farm employment opportunities. This is particularly true for poor female-headed
households, about 10 percent of the rural population, who are caught in a particularly vicious
poverty trap. Their labor is barely sufficient to fulfill domestic demands and to cultivate their
inadequate landholdings, but they are forced into ganyu to find food in the peak cultivation period,
thereby reducing still further their ability to grow food for their family. To break out of this trap,
these households have to be given the means to diversify away from the agricultural sector. Jte.

2.1.2 The Estate Sector

 There are fewer sources of information on the estate sector, which has been excluded in
 the past from most of the major surveys carried out in Malawi. Most of the information comes
 from a few surveys undertaken in the late 1980s and updated from field observations (Mkandwire
 et al., 1989, GoM 1993).

 In 1989, the number of tenant farm households was estimated at 105,000. At that time,
 the total number of people dependent on the estates as tenants, permanent workers and their
 families was around a million. There has been rapid expansion of the estate sector in recent years,
 with aroportionate increase of people dependent on estates.