Issues of Climate Change and Agriculture in Malawi

Climate Change involves many things. The shifts in temperature, rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events such as drought, floods, and storms.

These have an effect on agriculture. Reviews show that in recent years in the southern region of Malawi, farmers have faced climate change issues. These issues or disasters start from Cyclones or storms and then drought.

This has exacerbated urban and rural poverty. To begin with, in January last year, an estimated 900,000 people were affected by Cyclone Ana, followed two months later by Cyclone Gombe which also caused more damage to the agricultural sector. The current Cyclone known as Cyclone Freddy was an exceptionally long-lived, powerful, and deadly storm that transverse the Southern Indian Ocean for more than five weeks in February and March 2023. It was the fourth named storm of the 2022-2023 Australian region cyclone season, and the second very intense tropical cyclone of the 2022-2023 southwest Indian Ocean cyclone season.

According to the weather forecasts alert by the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services (DCCMS) which suggested that Cyclone Freddy, had a high probability that it could continue moving to Southern Malawi within the two days which were stated as Saturday, then Sunday. The forecasted path of the cyclone in Malawi included: Mulanje, Phalombe, Chiradzulu, Thyolo, Zomba, Blantyre, Neno, Mwanza, Nsanje, and Chikwawa. The Southern region has 13 Districts out of which 10 were affected.

Furthermore, Malawi is a densely populated and agriculture-dependent country. So due to the recent years of climate change, in the year 2021/2022 farming season, it was estimated that the maize output dropped almost 19% to 3.7 million metric tonnes compared with the previous farming season which was about 4.6 million metric tonnes. In addition to that this year it will drop more because almost the whole southern region is affected, and many large-scale and small-scale farmers are affected.

Consequences of the recently faced Cyclone on agriculture.

Firstly food insecurity in the coming months. This will be caused due to increased food prices since there is low food production and the rainy season is going to an end. Food may become more expensive since more farmers will have little or no harvest; this will lead to other producers being affected, depending on food aid. In addition to that even in the past years ever since the cyclones emerged in Malawi there has been an issue of food insecurity in Malawi. Water required for food production will become more scarce, since in two months to come, the rainy season will be over, so there will be little or no rainfall.

Pertaining to drought, another consequence is soil degradation due to soil erosion. These cyclones caused flooding and the flooding caused soil erosion which led to most of the fertile soil being washed away as run-off; thereby leading to soil degradation. In addition to that soil degradation may increase due to many factors such as water logging amongst others. 

Lastly, all these explained factors may lead to economic crisis in Malawi, since Malawi is a nation that depends much on agriculture, and moreso most farmers lost their harvest and livestock, this means that the agriculture sector is badly affected - a pointer to many consequences. This has led to low yield, which affects the prices of the commodity.