Future climate impacts on maize farming and food security in Malawi.

Tilele Stevens,Kaveh Madani

doi:10.1038/srep36241

Abstract

Agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy and maize is the most important crop for food security. As a Least Developed Country (LDC), adverse effects of climate change (CC) on agriculture in Malawi are expected to be significant. We examined the impacts of CC on maize production and food security in Malawi’s dominant cereal producing region, Lilongwe District. We used five Global Circulation Models (GCMs) to make future (2011 to 2100) rainfall and temperature projections and simulated maize yields under these projections. Our future rainfall projections did not reveal a strong increasing or decreasing trend, but temperatures are expected to increase. Our crop modelling results, for the short-term future, suggest that maize farming might benefit from CC. However, faster crop growth could worsen Malawi’s soil fertility problem. Increasing temperature could drive lower maize yields in the medium to long-term future. Consequently, up to 12% of the population in Lilongwe District might be vulnerable to food insecurity by the end of the century. Measures to increase soil fertility and moisture must be developed to build resilience into Malawi’s agriculture sector.

Highlights

Agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy and maize is the most important crop for food security
Temperature is expected to increase in the future, with higher temperature projected for RCP8.5 compared to RCP4.5 (Fig. 5)
We evaluated the vulnerability of Lilongwe District to food security using national per capita maize requirement, as defined by Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) and Lilongwe District population growth estimates based on the national United Nations (UN) population growth variants

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy and maize is the most important crop for food security. The agriculture sector in SSA is highly vulnerable to CC because of the high dependence on rainfed agriculture, which makes the region susceptible to adverse weather events such as flooding and drought[12,13] This is exacerbated by the region’s immense reliance on natural resources, high population growth rates, acute poverty levels, and poor infrastructure[3,8,9,10]. The agriculture sector plays a pivotal role in Malawi’s socioeconomic wellbeing and poverty alleviation It contributes to as much as 27% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP)[15] and employs 85% of the population[16]. There is some evidence to suggest that Malawi’s fluctuating historical trend in GDP growth is a consequence of changes in seasonal rainfall (Supplementary Fig. S1); this emphasises the vulnerability of the country to CC. Malawi’s domestic maize prices are more volatile than international prices[18,19] which can have devastating social outcomes during food shortages when prices rise sharply[24]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion