Count what is in your store against what your household eats, and see whether it reaches the June harvest — plus how big the gap is, months before it arrives.
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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/mzuzu-mzimba-mw/will-it-last
Before you decide whether to sell maize, it is worth knowing how much of it your family is going to eat.
This page does that arithmetic. Put in what is actually in your store, how many people eat from it, and it works out roughly how long it lasts, whether it reaches the next harvest, and how big the gap is if it does not. Nothing is sent anywhere — the numbers stay in your phone.
It is the question that comes before the store-or-sell page. Grain sold in June and bought back in February is the most expensive trade a household can make, and it is easy to make by accident when nobody has counted.
Count what is actually in the house — full 50 kg bags and part ones.
Everyone who eats from this store, including children.
National average: How much maize is available per person across the whole of Malawi, town and country together. It is the lowest of the three because it includes households that eat a lot of rice, cassava and bought food. Malawi's figure has moved between about 128 and 157 kg over the last ten years; this is the most recent. FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets — Malawi, maize and products, food supply per person(31 December 2023)
6.5 months
Your store lasts about
running out around April 2027
7.5 months
Next harvest is
the June harvest
1 month
Short by
about 1.3 bags to buy or find
56 kg
Lost in store
gone to weevils and rot before it can be eaten
On these numbers the store runs out about 1 month before the June harvest. That gap is bought at the dearest time of the year, or covered some other way.
That works out at about 53 kg of maize a month for the household.
A gap is not only a shopping list
If the store runs out before the harvest, the gap gets closed one way or another — by buying, by ganyu, by eating less, by selling something. Buying is the expensive one, because everybody is buying at the same time. This page will not tell you what to do about it, because your situation is not something a web page knows. What it can do is tell you the size of the gap now, while there is still maize in the house and there are still choices, rather than in January when there are fewer.Buying is dearest around February, which is when most households in this position are buying.
This is arithmetic, not a forecast
This is arithmetic on your own numbers, not a prediction. A household eats more when relatives arrive, when there is a funeral, when someone is ill, or when other food runs short and maize has to cover more meals. Nobody should sell down to the line this page draws — it is a rough count, and a rough count of your own food deserves some room in it. If your answer comes out close to the line, treat that as short, not as exactly enough.
Worth knowing
When the harvest actually comes
Malawi has one maize harvest a year. It starts in the south around April and works north, so around Mzuzu and Mzimba the grain is usually in the store through May and June. Green maize can be eaten from about February in a good year, but it is not a store — it is eaten as it comes. This page counts to the next full harvest, so in the months after June it is counting almost a whole year ahead.
What the store itself takes
Grain in the store is not the same as grain on the plate — weevils and the larger grain borer take a share, and the share grows the longer it sits. The figures here follow measured smallholder maize storage studies for the region (APHLIS / EU JRC; Dijkink and others, 2022), which cover roughly the first eight months; the twelve-month point is the upper end of the range those studies report for a full season in ordinary storage. How much you actually lose depends most on drying the grain properly, keeping the store clean, and whether you treat it. Airtight or PICS triple bags hold measured losses to around one or two percent even after a whole season — which, on the numbers this page works out, is often worth more than any price you could get for the grain. This page also allows for how long the maize has already been sitting: grain that came in at the last harvest is further along that curve than grain just brought in.
Why the published figures disagree
These three figures are all real and all published, and they differ by more than double. That is not a mistake in any of them — they count different people. A national average includes cities and households that eat rice and cassava; a farming household that eats nsima twice a day eats far more maize than the average Malawian. Nobody can tell you which one fits your house. If you know roughly how often you open a bag, that answer beats all three, which is why it is the first choice on this page.
National average — 128 kg a person a yearHow much maize is available per person across the whole of Malawi, town and country together. It is the lowest of the three because it includes households that eat a lot of rice, cassava and bought food. Malawi's figure has moved between about 128 and 157 kg over the last ten years; this is the most recent.FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets — Malawi, maize and products, food supply per person (31 December 2023)
Food-balance planning figure — 150 kg a person a yearThe figure FAO and WFP have used when working out whether Malawi as a whole has enough to eat — 150 kg of maize a person a year, out of 163 kg of all cereals together. A middle answer for a household that eats maize most days but not every meal.FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission to Malawi (8 July 2004)
Farming household, maize at every meal — 300 kg a person a yearWhat a district's own food-security planning assumes for farming households where maize is nearly the whole diet — nsima twice a day, little bought food. This is the figure used for Salima District in Central Malawi, not for Mzimba, so treat it as the top of the range rather than a local measurement. If your household buys little and grows most of what it eats, you are closer to this end than to the national average.Government of Malawi district data, as used in Ngwira and others, Central Malawi maize study (31 December 2018)
Where to check and read more
Store your maize, or sell now?Once you know how much is genuinely spare, this works out whether holding it to the lean season beats selling it now.
Crop prices around the northRecent maize prices for Zigwagwa and the trading centres around Mzuzu, from the WFP market survey.
FEWS NET MalawiWhere the harvest, the lean season and the national maize outlook are tracked through the year.