ABSTRACT
Malawi has experienced high levels of food insecurity over the past 30 years, prompting the government to actively explore new policy approaches to address hunger in a predominantly rural economy. A small landlocked country in southern Africa, Malawi has a current estimated population of 16 million people, approximately 85 per cent of whom rely on agriculture for their livelihood (World Bank, 2013a ). Most people live in rural areas in smallholder farming households, planting on average one hectare (ha) of crops – a mixture of maize, legumes, tubers and cash crops such as tobacco, sugar and cotton (Jayne et al ., 2006 ; Fisher and Lewin, 2013 ). Landholdings are higher on average in the north, where 59 per cent of people cultivate more than 1 ha, and lowest in the southern region of the country, where only 32 per cent of households have more than 1 ha of land to cultivate (Fisher and Lewin, 2013 ). The level of population density is 164 for the country as a whole, with a higher number in the south (185 people per km 2 ), followed by the central (154) and northern (56) regions (Fisher and Lewin, 2013 ; World Bank, 2013a ).
