Malawi farmers pushed into starvation

In Mujiwa village on Malawi’s border with Mozambique, Bigborn Juwawo’s maize field is littered with rocks dropped by Cyclone Freddy last year. Dry patches of sandy soil dominate the rest of the field. The April harvests from his three fields used to be enough to feed his family for a year. Now, they barely get by.

“This year, things are even worse because the dry spells go on and on.”

Such hardship now affects nearly two million farmers, said Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera, who declared a state of disaster for the fourth time in as many years.

The latest devastation is largely because of El Niño, which has caused dry spells over some countries and unusually heavy rains in others.

Chakwera said 749 000 hectares of maize, more than 44% of the national crop area, have been damaged by the effects of El Niño. “This situation is devastating. It would have been catastrophic even if this were the first disaster in recent years.”

The president has appealed for $200 million in food aid for the people in 23 of the country’s 28 districts.

A deadly combination of cyclones made stronger by climate change has driven Malawi to the verge of famine. As much as 40% of Malawi’s population is facing hunger, according to a statement from the World Food Programme released last week to echo the president’s appeal.

Cyclone Freddy in March 2023 was the worst in Malawi’s recorded history. Its heavy rains caused multiple floods and landslides in the south of the country, killing 679 people, and 537 people are missing. At least 2 186 were injured and more than 659 278 were displaced. A post-disaster assessment found that it wiped $36million from Malawi’s economy in production losses. Forty-five percent of that loss was from crops devastated by floods — 60 000 hectares, equivalent to 27% of the planted area that year, were flooded.

But even before that disaster, 20% of Malawians were expected to struggle with food. Freddy came after Storm Ana and Cyclone Gombe in 2022, which destroyed sanitation infrastructure, setting off one of Malawi’s worst cholera outbreaks.

As national maize stocks ran low because farmers were producing much less, the country had to import staples such as maize, rice, soya beans, cowpeas and groundnuts.

But import costs and scarcity have driven maize prices to nearly double in just one year. Today’s prices are triple the five-year average.

Unable to produce food on their farm or afford food from the shops, and bereft of aid, farmers face a future of endless starvation.

This article first appeared in

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