Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN

File photo of refugees at Dzaleka camp in Malawi waiting in line to collect their monthly food rations which were cut by half in March 2012 due to a funding shortfall

Lilongwe A nutrition act and new crops are at the centre of the Malawi government's latest attempts to overcome the effects of annual food shortages that affect more than 10% of the population.

From October, President Joyce Banda's government says it will give away 60,000 goats to needy families on condition that they pass on the goats' kids to designated neighbours. The landlocked south-east African country is also drafting a nutrition act that will ban the sale of non-fortified basic foodstuffs.

Senior civil servants claim the moves mark a departure from farming policies that simply aimed to fill people up with staple maize in lean times. Food shortages affect 1.6 million people every year, and an estimated 47% of children have stunted growth because of undernutrition, making them more vulnerable to illness and learning difficulties.

Mary Shawa, the principal secretary for gender, said the nutrition act will send a signal that Banda, in power since April, considers food security a high priority. "Childhood stunting has a direct impact on the economy. It is clear that nutrition needs to be tackled across several sectors, including agriculture, education, local government and academia, and that is what we are doing," she said.

Jeffrey Luhanga, principal secretary for agriculture and food security, said stabilising food supply was his priority. Subsidies will increasingly focus on encouraging farmers to grow protein-rich crops and crops that can be exported or processed in the country, he said. "In maize, you have starch but you also need lots of protein." Malawi, whose economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, has become something of a laboratory for food policy since 2004, when former president Bingu wa Mutharika defied resistance from donors and introduced a generous seed and fertiliser subsidy programme. After years of relying on food aid, in 2005 Malawi produced a grain surplus of more than 500,000 tonnes. The country repeated the feat in 2007 and increased its surplus in 2008.

At the UN general assembly in 2008, Mutharika proclaimed that his "green revolution" was a recipe for "Africa to feed the world". To prove his point, he sent 150 tonnes of rice to Haiti after the earthquake there in January 2010.

But Mutharika died halfway through a second term during which the country was almost bankrupted by nepotism, corruption and his highly personalised "green revolution". He was replaced by his deputy, Banda.

"The subsidy programme was producing too much maize," said Luhanga.

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Malawi: Focus Shifts to Nutrition, New Crops to Tackle Food Crisis