were several significant famine in the first half of the 20th century, including one in the lower valley of the Shire River, an area which frequently experienced shortages, in 1903. Low rainfall in 1900–01, 1918 and 1920–21 and 1922 caused severe drought in the south and centre of the country, while in 1926 crops were destroyed by flooding. There was also distress in the north nearKasungu in 1924-25 and around Mzimba in 1938, and the shores of Lake Malawi suffered food shortages almost annually in the 1930s. However, for the first 50 years of colonial rule, much of the country fared better that the drier areas of southern Tanganyika, eastern Northern Rhodesia or Mozambique, where famine was endemic. The colonial authorities also provided some famine relief by moving maize from districts with surpluses to those with shortages and making free issues to children, the old and destitute, but they were reluctant to issue free relief to the able-bodied. After the great famine ended in 1863, despite regular seasonal hunger and high levels of chronic malnutrition, as well as acute episodes of food shortage and famine, there was no "famine that kills" until 1949. Markets where food was exchangeable for cash were established during the colonial era, although, as long Malawi as was largely agricultural, its markets remained rudimentary. It is likely that introduction of a market economy eroded several pre-colonial survival strategies and eventually created an underclass of the chronically malnourished poor. However, some coping strategies were in use up to the 1950s, including growing secondary crops like millet or sweet potatoes in case the maize crop failed, gathering wild food or relying on support from family or friends. The older strategies were supplemented by the use of cash to make good food deficits, whether it was earned directly, remitted by a migrant worker relative or borrowed. Many families could grow sufficient food for normal subsistence; other rural families contained the “traditional” poor. These include the aged, disabled and widows as well as some female-headed families that were unable to cultivate sufficient land for their families’ subsistence. However, the ranks of impoverished female-headed families were swelled by families of absent migrant workers if they did not receive cash remittances, a new and non-traditional group of the poor. Insecure rent-paying tenant families or sharecroppers required to concentrate on farming economic crops might lack land for subsistence cultivation, face the economic drains