with the growing reality of food shortages throughout the world countries are implementing their best efforts to ensure that people in their countries have enough food.

several initiatives have been established to advocate for good food prices and strategies that will ensure that people world wide have access to enough food. of of such initiatives if the 1 billion Hungry initiative to which i am a huge supporter. i have also contributed to a lot of blogs and articles discussing at leangth at what needs to be done to ensure that people have enough food.

our country malawi, in one of our efforts to ensure food security introduced the fertilizer subsidy to smallholder farmers to ensure increased food production. however, altough the country registered bumper yields in maize production, malawi was still ranked lowest in food security country index. why? what went wrong?

to my understanding there are a few issues that need to be understood and considered seriously in our food security campaigns.

firstly we need to understand what food security entails. because producing more food alone does not ensure food security. for example the fertilizer subsidy only applied to maize. that is only one food crop. what ablout farmers who dont grow maize? what about areas where maize does not work well? what about the protein for the bumper carbohydrates produced.

secondly, food security is hugely influenced by other economic factors. it was noted that farmers who produced more maize, some more than enough food for their families... sold their food to access basic needs like medicines, school fees, relish and clothes. in the end they ended up not having enough food to last them the whole year. therefore increased food production alone where other economic conditions are not favourable dose not necessarilty ensure food security.

thirdly food security is also greatly dependent on farmers skills, access to knowledge, adaptability and access to support structures. sometimes farmers are not food secure because they continue to grow crops that are not conduncive for their environment. sometimes its because they dont have the skill to access good agro markets, negotiate good prices and produce crops that are marketable. and most farmers are also food insecure because they are very prone to natural disasters like climate change, droughts and floods.

therefore, i really believe that food security efforts should be implemented through strategies that are geographically specific, should consider other influencing factors apart from low food production, should be implemented as a holistic aproach and more importanlty should adress root causes of food insecurity which include lack of skills and basic need among food producers.