Breaking Out of Food Insecurity

In Chapter 5, we focused on the technical components of low agricultural productivity. Traditional African agriculture was based around robust, but low-productivity (per unit of land) farming systems. Returns to the scarce resources of labour and cash dominate the real choices open to African smallholders. We showed, using the Malawi case, the very real obstacles faced at both the national and the household levels in breaking out of poverty in an agriculturally dominated economy. But we ended on a positive note – there are difficulties aplenty but there are also real options for change. In this chapter, focusing on the real world experience of Malawi, we will demonstrate how opportunity can be created from despair.