Estimating Groundnut Yield in Smallholder Agriculture Systems Using PlanetScope Data

Crop yield is related to household food security and community resilience, especially in smallholder agricultural systems. As such, it is crucial to accurately estimate within-season yield in order to provide critical information for farm management and decision making. Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to assess the most appropriate method, indices, and growth stage for predicting the groundnut yield in smallholder agricultural systems in northern Malawi. We have estimated the yield of groundnut in two smallholder farms using the observed yield and vegetation indices (VIs), which were derived from multitemporal PlanetScope satellite data. Simple linear, multiple linear (MLR), and random forest (RF) regressions were applied for the prediction. The leave-one-out cross-validation method was used to validate the models. The results showed that (i) of the modelling approaches, the RF model using the five most important variables (RF5) was the best approach for predicting the groundnut yield, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.96 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.29 kg/ha, followed by the MLR model (R2 = 0.84, RMSE = 0.84 kg/ha); in addition, (ii) the best within-season stage to accurately predict groundnut yield is during the R5/beginning seed stage. The RF5 model was used to estimate the yield for four different farms. The estimated yields were compared with the total reported yields from the farms. The results revealed that the RF5 model generally accurately estimated the groundnut yields, with the margins of error ranging between 0.85% and 11%. The errors are within the post-harvest loss margins in Malawi. The results indicate that the observed yield and VIs, which were derived from open-source remote sensing data, can be applied to estimate yield in order to facilitate farming and food security planning

Fluid boundaries : multiple meanings of the illness ‘moto’ in Northern Malawi

The study examined local child care practices (including feeding and care during illness), knowledge of childhood illnesses, as well as underlying assumptions of local Malawian people which help explain what people do and observe when children become ill. Findings indicate that ‘crossing over’ the boundaries of culturally appropriate sexual behavior is linked to “moto,” a kind of polluting ‘heat’ that can be transferred through touch, causing illness in children or the elderly through breastfeeding and food. The research could help in developing a culturally appropriate strategy for the prevention and treatment of infant and childhood malnutrition

Final technical report to IDRC : soils, food and healthy communities project 101829-002

The project examined whether farmers could organize to solve multiple problems, addressing questions regarding soil fertility, legume production and child nutrition, as well as improving seed access. It also involved the successful development of a community-based seed production system. The overall project research question was whether legume growing options improve child nutritional status. Gender relations were a key conflict area. Although legume production increased, men often sold the produce for non-beneficial purposes such as buying alcohol. Women are traditionally responsible for child care and men remain uninvolved in the nutritional status of their children

Ecohealth Capacity Building Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, November 26 - 30, 2007

The workshop explored how the Ecohealth framework plays out differently in different contexts. Included in Ecohealth is better understanding of gender and related social inequities, and as well, reducing inequity through this enhanced knowledge. Participants were able to recognize links between the project monitoring method of Outcome Mapping (OM), and Ecohealth approaches, and how they are mutually supportive. The workshop ended with an exploration around issues of knowledge translation and some successes participants have had. Annex 1 provides a table that organizes information regarding Integration of OM and Ecohealth

Ecohealth Capacity Building Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, November 26 - 30, 2007

The workshop explored how the Ecohealth framework plays out differently in different contexts. Included in Ecohealth is better understanding of gender and related social inequities, and as well, reducing inequity through this enhanced knowledge. Participants were able to recognize links between the project monitoring method of Outcome Mapping (OM), and Ecohealth approaches, and how they are mutually supportive. The workshop ended with an exploration around issues of knowledge translation and some successes participants have had. Annex 1 provides a table that organizes information regarding Integration of OM and Ecohealth

"We Grandmothers Know Plenty": Breastfeeding, complementary feeding and the multifaceted role of grandmothers in Malawi

This paper has two purposes: first of all, we examine grandmothers' role and views of child feeding practices in northern Malawi, and their influence on younger women's practices. Secondly, we consider the implications of these findings for health promotion activities and models of health education. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, focus groups and a participatory workshop. Findings demonstrate that, to address child feeding practices which have an effect on nutrition, attention must be paid to the broader context that influences child nutrition, including extended family relations. Paternal grandmothers have a powerful and multifaceted role within the extended family in northern Malawi, both in terms of childcare and in other arenas such as agricultural practices and marital relations. Grandmothers often differ in their ideas about early child feeding from conventional Western medicine. Some practices have existed in the area at least since colonial times, and have strong cultural significance. Despite the important integrated role, older women have within households and communities in this part of Malawi, hospital personnel often have disparaging and paternalistic attitudes towards 'grannies' and their knowledge. Health education rarely involves grandmothers, and even if they are involved, their perspectives are not taken into consideration. Hospital staff often reject grandmother knowledge as part of a broader modernization paradigm which views 'traditional knowledge' as backward. Grandmothers view current child health conditions within a broader context of changing livelihood conditions and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. The paper concludes by discussing the challenges of involving grandmothers in health education, and the difficulties of incorporating local knowledge into a medical system that largely rejects it.Malawi Child nutrition Grandmothers Health education Child health Breastfeeding

Unpacking a crop diversity hotspot: farmer practice and preferences in Northern Malawi

Crop diversity is a key principle of sustainable food production systems. Yet, inter and intra specific diversification is declining in many regions of the world. In Northern Malawi, a participatory action research project (Soils Food and Healthy Communities) has conducted agroecological co-learning with farmers for over a decade, providing an opportunity to explore farmer management, crop choice and variety selection practices. Farmers who participate receive seed for 0.10 ha of on-farm testing for one growing season and then decide whether to continue to grow the crop. Cropping system diversity, management practices and traits associated with crops grown and lost were assessed through interviews with 198 farm households (757 fields). We found an average of 1.3 species per field and 4.0 crops per farm. This is almost twice the level of diversity in other reports from Malawi smallholder farms. Farmers cited a wide range of preferred groundnut variety traits, as well as concerns (namely, high labour requirements). Both modern and local maize varieties are being grown and those retained were often associated with early maturity or preferred grain quality traits such as storability. Overall, farmers at this Northern Malawi agroecology education site are growing diverse crop mixtures that include traditional as well as modern varieties of maize and groundnut

Crop Type and Land Cover Mapping in Northern Malawi Using the Integration of Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and PlanetScope Satellite Data

Mapping crop types and land cover in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa remains a challenge due to data costs, high cloud cover, and poor temporal resolution of satellite data. With improvement in satellite technology and image processing techniques, there is a potential for integrating data from sensors with different spectral characteristics and temporal resolutions to effectively map crop types and land cover. In our Malawi study area, it is common that there are no cloud-free images available for the entire crop growth season. The goal of this experiment is to produce detailed crop type and land cover maps in agricultural landscapes using the Sentinel-1 (S-1) radar data, Sentinel-2 (S-2) optical data, S-2 and PlanetScope data fusion, and S-1 C2 matrix and S-1 H/α polarimetric decomposition. We evaluated the ability to combine these data to map crop types and land cover in two smallholder farming locations. The random forest algorithm, trained with crop and land cover type data collected in the field, complemented with samples digitized from Google Earth Pro and DigitalGlobe, was used for the classification experiments. The results show that the S-2 and PlanetScope fused image + S-1 covariance (C2) matrix + H/α polarimetric decomposition (an entropy-based decomposition method) fusion outperformed all other image combinations, producing higher overall accuracies (OAs) (>85%) and Kappa coefficients (>0.80). These OAs represent a 13.53% and 11.7% improvement on the Sentinel-2-only (OAs < 80%) experiment for Thimalala and Edundu, respectively. The experiment also provided accurate insights into the distribution of crop and land cover types in the area. The findings suggest that in cloud-dense and resource-poor locations, fusing high temporal resolution radar data with available optical data presents an opportunity for operational mapping of crop types and land cover to support food security and environmental management decision-making