Enabling Small-scale Maize Marketing and Processing to Assure Supplies of Low-cost Staples

INTRODUCTION: The current food crisis in Southern Africa has lead to an urgent concern about how to make food affordable to low income consumers in both rural and urban areas when crops fail and local prices surge. We suggest in this policy synthesis that the more fundamental question is how to make markets work to provide more food security options for the poor in both surplus and deficit years. Policies that facilitate regular availability of low-cost staple foods to poor consumers during good harvest years will also increase the ability of markets to contribute to food security objectives during crises. The poor are always at risk of food insecurity, and markets always have a major impact on their ability to meet their food needs. Even during surplus years, rural net buyers (and urban consumers) depend on markets for some portion of their food needs. Likewise, even during periods of national food shortfalls, most rural and urban poor rely more on markets than on emergency distributions to secure their residual food needs.