maize each year; they formed 55% of the population in 1989, including most smallholders. This included 20% of families with less than half a hectare or adults eating less than 133 kilos of maize (the ultra-poor). By 2003, 72% were poor, 41% ultra-poor: many were estate labourers or tenants, or in female-headed households. Many were malnourished, consuming only 1,818 daily calories (1,165 calories for the ultra-poor). Families with half a hectare or less relied on casual labouring (often food-for-work, termed "ganyu") and with those dispossessed by estate formation made up a virtually landless underclass. In congested parts of the Shire Highlands, the poorest 65% had only 0.2 hectare. As 95% of all suitable, and some marginal, land was already cultivated, land shortages could only intensify. Labour and fertilizer shortages or costs prevented poor households from growing Burley tobacco. For these, market liberalisation removed the safety net that subsidies had previously given. As fertilizer costs increased, in poor years the earnings of many smaller Burley growers did not meet the costs of production or allow purchases of extra food. Most tobacco growers reserved only 0.3 to 0.5 hectare to grow food, insufficient for family needs in some years. After the 1992 famine, foreign aid was made conditional on re-establishing political liberalisation. The privatised ADMARC received limited state funding to create a Strategic Grain Reserve of 180,000 tonnes to stabilise prices for farmers and consumers and had to use commercial loans to import large quantities of maize each year in the 1990s. From 1997, after criticism from the World Bank that ADMARC was subsidising imports of maize, ADMARC lost responsibility for this, controlling only domestically produced grain. The Malawi government required it to buy domestic maize at a fixed minimum price to support farmers, and this forced ADMARC to sell its strategic reserve in 1997, and again in 2000 to pay off its commercial loans, creating insecurity. Although universal fertilizer subsidies had been abolished in 1995, the Malawi government arranged for 2.86 million smallholders to receive free Starter Packs both in 1998 and 1999. Each contained enough hybrid maize seed and fertilizer to plant 0.1 hectare and produce between 125 and 175 kilos of maize, enough to feed a family for a month. Perhaps unfortunately, the 1999 and 2000 harvests were good and foreign aid donors criticised the scheme which, although it added an estimated 499,000 tonnes and 354,000 tonnes respectively to