The report said that the food shortage is because of poor harvests this past growing season.

However the humanitarian response committee comprising of the country’s ministry of Agriculture, Department of Disaster preparedness, UN agencies such as World food programme [WFP] and UNICEF is expected to meet this week to plan its response.

In its report it is estimated that one million people in the country would not be able to access food which around 550,000 are from the lower shire districts of Chikhwawa and Nsanje because of the prolonged dry spells experienced between last December and February this year.

However the report states that Malawi will still realize maize surplus this year with the second round of crop estimates putting maize harvest at 3.7 million metric tonnes, a surplus of 533,000 tonnes against a national requirement of 2.4 million tonnes.

Over all, Fewsnet estimates that there will be about 1.5 million food insecure people from the country and has since called on government to start mobilizing and coordinating a larger human tarian assistance programme to meet the needs of people that will be going hungry from April 2010 to March 2011 in the country.

Agriculture officials have admitted that they are aware of food scare in the country.
Shire Valley ADD programme manager Manfred Mlotha said the report would be used for planning.

Meanwhile the Department of Disaster management affairs has extended the current food distribution in the country throughout May.

Deputy coordinator for the department James Chiusiwa said the figures in the report would be important for its response to the problem.

“The assessment conducted in April and this month will help us to know how many people need urgent food attention. And these figures also help us to know the effects of dry spells experienced early this year” Chiusiwa said.

In outlining the effects of insufficient food shortage, the report has predicted that casual labour wages will go down and that more people than normal will travel to Mozambique in search for work.

It also predicted that the first round of crop estimates would decrease in the shire valley by 60 percent in the 2010/11 due to prolonged dry spells.

Malawi has had back to back food surplus since 2006 when government launched multimillion input subsidy programme to poor farmers.