estate-grown, in 1988 to 142,200 tonnes (including 98,600 tonnes grown by smallholders) in 2000. It grew 10% of world Burley in 1992, but the market started to decline and the US dollar price of Malawian Burley halved between 1988 and 2000; its lower grades were unsaleable. Detailed surveys estimated that in 2000 10% of Malawi's rural households grew Burley tobacco using 3% of cultivable land each year. In the four-year cycle, and including the estates growing it, Burley tied-up 300,000 hectares of land that could have been used for maize, when the areas of maize plantings were some 1.6 to 1.7 million hectares. Households with sufficient land, labour, fertilizer and credit for both food and tobacco achieved only modest returns but were vulnerable to price fluctuations and bad weather. Burley was not the solution to Malawi's problems. Malawi currently has a food gap equivalent to 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes a year of maize. Attempts have been made to close this gap with other foods, but the two most likely ways to close it are either to import large quantities of maize or grow more maize. Paying for maize imports reduces Malawi's foreign currency reserves to very low levels and creates very high level of debt, and growing more maize would require massive investment. Agricultural marketing Colonial period The declared objectives of colonial Malawi's legislation on the production and marketing of economic crops were to increase the quantity and improve the quality of the crops, and to stabilise the income of farmers through periods of price fluctuation. However, rather than promotion, restrictions were imposed on the number of African smallholder growers and their output by registration schemes, fixing producer prices, licensing buyers and exporters and establishing commodity boards, which often had exclusive responsibility for crop production and marketing. These restrictions did not apply to the production and marketing of the crops grown on European-owned estates. The use of marketing controls allowed the Nyasaland government to increase its revenues. By offering smallholders prices that were lower than the world market prices, the colonial state indirectly taxed the smallholders, extracting large parts of their profits. Market regulations were extended food crops after the Second World War, and by the mid-1950s marketing boards controlled the trade of most African small holder produce. Regulations introduced for tobacco in 1926 and cotton in 1934 required the registration of African peasant growers, and a Native Tobacco Board