4. PUBLIC INTERVENTION FOR FOOD SECURITY


 In a modern democracy, food security is an essential public good. People expect the
government to establish appropriate policies and programs to assure that the population has
adequate food. Because of this expectation, public intervention to help assure food security is a
high priority for all governments. How such intervention takes place varies by country. The
following are observations on public intervention for food security in Malawi.

4.1 Transitory and Chronic Food Insecurity Linkage

 As mentioned earlier, transitory food insecurity and chronic food insecurity have different
causes. Transitory food insecurity is caused by an exogenous shock to the production system,
whereas chronic food insecurity results from lack of assets and income at the household level.
In a more developed exchange-based economy, a drought may cause a temporary drop in food
supply. Such a drop can easily be filled by imports, and it has limited impact on effective demand
for food. In Malawi, a country with a large part of its population engaged in rainfed subsistence
agriculture, a drought causes not only a fall in production and a deficit in food supply in the
economy, bit also a drop in effective demand, as rural income is linked to agricultural production.
Without a chronic food-insecure situation already existing in the country, transitory food
insecurity would be much less a problem.

 Transitory and chronic food insecurity in Malawi are linked. Both require focus on
household income. Supplying food to the poor in a drought, either through a food for work
program or directly, is a de facto income transfer as much as it is an increase in food supply.
Because of the linkage between transitory and chronic food insecurity, it is critically important
that any activity related to a transitory problem not damage or curtail efforts of the longer-term
market-led approach to deal with chronic food insecurity issue. Ideally, efforts to respond to the
transitory problem would enhance efforts to dealing with the chronic problem. Unfortunately,
donor and government responses to the recent droughts may have unintentionally hindered or
interrupted the development of markets in the country. Results just now coming in from an
analysis of the impact of the free inputs provided under the Drought Recovery Program should
indicate the extent to which these disruptions have occurred.

 Donors and government have a selection of options for dealing with both transitory and
 chronic food insecurity. The level and type of interventions undertaken depend on the resources
 available and on the will of both donors and government to deal with a sometimes massive
 problem. Under the best circumstances, response to transitory food insecurity could be done
 through the expansion of resources provided to existing on-the-ground programs that deal with
 aspects of chronic food insecurity. An approach of this type would provide a quicker response
 to the transitory situation with lower overhead costs for project planning, preparation and start-up
 than a new and separate program would require. This approach could also help assure that
 response to the transitory problem also address the longer-term chronic problem. Programs that