In recent years a literature has grown up around the issue of how people, the chronically
food insecure and those who are vulnerable to food insecurity, respond to stress in the food
system. The strategies employed are generally referred to as coping mechanisms. There are a
number of sources of information about coping mechanisms in Malawi. Peters has examined the
responses of households in Zomba to drought, and how this has affected decision-making over
time (Peters 1994, 1995). Save the Children Fund UK has recently undertaken an in depth study
of response to the 1993/94 drought in Salima and Mchinji (SCF 1996) and the Famine Early
Warning System reports on information collected by the new M4E system on income generating
activities and coping mechanisms.

 The SCF study has most detail about the relative importance of different coping
mechanisms. The two areas in which the study was undertaken, Salima and Mchinji, have
somewhat different characteristics, largely for agroclimatic reasons. Mchinji is usually self-
sufficient in maize, whereas Salima normally imports maize. Salima produces maize, cotton, rice,
groundnuts and cassava. Tobacco has been produced there only very recently. The main crops
in Mchinji are maize, tobacco and groundnuts. In Salima, almost 50 percent of households in the
survey areas were identified as poor (the division of households in to poor, intermediate and
better-off was done in conjunction with the community, on the basis of those households generally
considered to be poor ) whereas in Mchinji the incidence of poverty was only 30 percent.

 Nonetheless, the poor in the two districts had much in common, both in normal years and
in the immediate post-drought year of 1993/94. Even in normal years many of the poorest
households did not farm all the land they had available, either because of an absolute labour
shortage or because they had to divert labour to ganyu. Better-off households failed to farm all
their land because they had insufficient cash to hire labour. In normal years, households with a
grain shortage fill the gap by going for ganyu. They also eat green maize. Better-off households
support poorer households by providing employment opportunities and sometimes making gifts
of maize. In normal years income from crop sales goes almost entirely for non-food purchases

 In 1993/94, a drought year, the poorest households got, on average, 6 8 weeks of grain
from ganyu and 3 weeks each from government hand-outs and relatives. The coping mechanisms
that poor households employ in normal years, ganyu and food transfers, were eroded to the extent
that better-off households were also affected by drought. The key to poor households' ability to
survive significant harvest shortfalls is the degree of diversity in income sources the more
diversity, the more effective the household's coping mechanisms. Most poor households
employed between six and eight different coping mechanisms. In both districts there was an
increase in ganyu and other income generating activities. Unlike normal years, crop sales were
used mainly to buy maize in Salima and even in Mchinji a third of poor households used their
crop income for maize purchases. In both districts poor households stretched maize stocks by
reducing consumption and diluting the maizemeal with maize bran. More meals were eaten
without nsima. More green maize was eaten in the pre-harvest period. There was an increase in
theft and prostitution, and in Mchinji, which is near the border, smuggling.


C8