ANNEX C: HOUSEHOLD TYPOLOGY OF FOOD SECURITY IN MALAWI


1. A Typology of Household Food Security in Malawi

 Chronic food insecurity in Malawi is primarily a problem of poverty. Households are food
insecure because they do not have access to enough food to meet their requirements. Their
income is insufficient. In a country like Malawi, where 85 percent of the population lives in the
rural sector and depends on agriculture either directly, through production, or indirectly, through
providing labour, goods or services to farmers, for their income, the link between access to food
and agricultural production is very strong. This is because agricultural production is the basis
of most households' source of income.

 To assess household food security, the starting point is the assessment of household income
and resources. Households are vulnerable to food insecurity primarily because their income
sources are inadequate (chronic food insecurity) and/or because their incomes are vulnerable to
exogenous shocks (transitory food insecurity). In Malawi, income distribution is very unequal,
largely as a result of bad policy in the past thirty years. This, combined with the low level of
average income or GDP per capital, means that many households in Malawi are food insecure.

 It is difficult to estimate precisely the number of food insecure households in Malawi. The
generally accepted definition of food security is "access to enough food at all times for a healthy
active life". This covers three elements: physical access, production and availability on the
market; economic access, enough resources to grow or purchase food; and stability, a combination
of market stability and sufficient income, whether in cash or kind, that savings in good years can
cover shortfalls in poor years. Household food production is only one indicator of food security
and has to be interpreted in conjunction with household cash income, the prices faced by
households and the size of the household.

 Nutrition indicators are often used in food security assessments. These have to be
interpreted with caution. Nutritional status is the outcome of the interaction of household food
security, intra-household food distribution, maternal and childcare practices and health status.
Childcare practices and health status are linked to household income, but they are also strongly
influenced by public or collective provision of health and education services. The high incidence
of malnutrition (48 percent of children under five were moderately or severely stunted and 7
percent were moderately or severely wasted in 1995) indicates the depth of the problem, but not
all of this will be directly food -related. While acknowledging the importance of the childcare
and health factors, the focus of this report will be on factors affecting household food security.

 Broadly speaking, the food insecure can be divided into three categories: smallholders,
estate workers/ tenants and the urban poor. There has been a significant amount of work
undertaken on the characteristics of food insecure farmers (Peters 1992,1994, 1995, UNDP,
1993, World Bank, 1995, SCF, 1996) but much less analysis of the other two categories. Almost