Driving into Ilemba village in Mwanza district in southern Malawi, it is challenging, passing row upon row of waist-high plants of green peas, to understand the ongoing drought. However, as maize crops suddenly appear, the situation becomes clearer. Stunted, the stalks have managed to grow, despite the severe lack of rainfall, but the cobs they produced did not mature. The stalks now stand dried out and brown, their meagre fruit hardened.
"Families have now missed two harvests," says Joseph Moyo, who heads up the disaster management department at the Malawi Red Cross Society. "They tried to plant, but were not successful."
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