Malawian farmers have had a good year, enjoying their best corn harvest in 12 years or more. So why, in a year of "historic plenty", is Malawi yet again on the receiving end of food aid, asks Alex Renton in Britain's Observer newspaper.

Malawi suffered food crises in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Last year it produced a 250,000-tonne surplus of maize, yet still received over 40,000 tonnes of food aid from the United States.

You might think there's no such thing as too much food. But surplus food donations from rich countries can actually hurt the people they're supposed to help, often by distorting local markets.

"We have so much maize this year...But we have a problem over where to sell it. It's not just that the price is so low because there is so much maize, there isn't anyone to sell it to. The traders normally visit the village but they haven't come," Felicita Bailoni tells the paper.

This means Felicita doesn't have enough money for her children's school fees and clothes. And there are already fears of another food crisis in 2008 if farmers stop growing corn or can't afford seeds, according to Charles Rethman, a Malawi-based food security analyst.

School-feeding programmes are also included in foreign interventions. The U.N. World Food Programme runs a project designed to encourage children back to school by offering at least one nutritional meal a day. The organisation buys some of the food for school meals locally, and some is donated by the Malawian government.

The United States likes the idea so much it has agreed to contribute around $20 million to expand the programme. Sounds good, but what's not publicised is that the contribution is conditional. The money has to be spent on U.S.-grown corn and soya shipped on American ships to Malawi, rather than buying food in the country itself.

If that were the case, more children could be part of the scheme, the Observer reports. "(It) doesn't make any sense... (It) undermines farmers, households. It's not sustainable and it won't bring about any long-term change to malnutrition rates," Rethman tells the paper.

"This is giving aid with one hand and taking it away with another. It's the Big Man saying: kneel down before I give you the help," argues a sceptical aid worker.

Even food aid sent in times of sudden disasters can do more harm than good. According to Renton, the United States insisted on sending 30,000 tonnes of rice to countries affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, even though they had adequate supplies of cheap rice.

And there's speculation that Afghan farmers switched to poppy growing after the price of the wheat they farmed became too unstable. The reason? Huge amounts of food aid after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The WFP depends heavily on the United States, which provides nearly half the food aid it distributes. So its enthusiasm for the new U.S. donation isn't surprising. "(The) child doesn't care if his porridge is Malawian or American. The important thing is that more of them are going to be getting it," says Dom Scalpelli, WFP's representative in Malawi.

But why do rich countries produce all this surplus food when they don't need it? Activists argue that it's mainly to keep their own farmers afloat, with the United States leading the way in subsidising its farmers to produce unwanted crops and dumping the produce abroad.

Neither does the European Union have an exemplary record. It moved away from giving food aid in kind in 1999, but still provides subsidies for farmers. Critics say that makes it impossible for African, Latin American and Asian farmers to compete in European markets.

So is there any prospect of change?

Distributing cash instead of food - allowing people to buy the food they need locally - is gaining more ground among aid agencies. Biofuels, which can be made from corn, are expected to use up much of the crop produced by U.S. farmers, leaving little to be dumped abroad. Then there are political attempts to change the U.S. food aid system, inspired by a Congress report on its inefficiencies.

However, the main challenge to current practice may come from aid recipients themselves. Last year, Eritrea refused all food aid in the midst of a drought. The government said it wanted to stop the spread of "a culture of dangerous dependency", according to Renton. Sooner or later, other countries may decide to follow suit.

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