Impact of Soil and Water Conservation Improvement on the Welfare of Smallholder Farmers in Southern Malawi

This study employed full Mahalanobis matching and a variety of propensity score matching methods to adjust for pre-treatment observable differences between treated and untreated groups for measuring the impact of technologies. Data were collected from 619 smallholder farmers in the districts of Nsanje and Balaka in southern Malawi during 2014-2015 cropping season. There was a 27% reduction in per capita income because of farmer’s involvement in soil and water conservation technologies. The impact is significant at 5% level. Similarly, there is an 8% reduction in per capita expenditure because of farmer’s involvement in soil and water conservation technologies. Although households practicing the technologies under study realized nominally higher yields, the yield differences between them and those not practicing were not as significant. The study concluded that adoption of soil and water conservation technologies did not improve the incomes of small-scale farmers in the areas. These results were surprising, but several feasible explanations were made for the incongruity in the findings. Keywords: propensity score matching, incomes, impact, smallholder farmer

Does Adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Technologies Reduce Household Vulnerability to Poverty?

Climate variability is one of the limiting factors to increasing per capita income and food production among smallholder farmers in Africa. This study investigated if the adoption of climate smart agriculture (CSA) technologies reduce household vulnerability to poverty by differentiating crop yields and income between adopters and non-adopters. This study used a mixed methods approach; both qualitative and quantitative techniques. A multi-stage stratified random sampling was applied, with 619 respondents interviewed in the districts of Nsanje and Balaka in southern Malawi during 2014-2015 cropping season. There was an increment of 26%, 37%, 9% and 26% in maize yield by farmers who adopted portfolio diversification, soil and water conservation, soil fertility improvement and irrigation and water harvesting technologies respectively. About 42% of the adopters had food throughout the year compared to 26% non-adopters. Adopters had 47%, 42%, 60% and 36% more in their crop revenues from portfolio diversification, soil and water conservation, soil fertility improvement and irrigation & water harvesting respectively, than their non-adopters counterparts. The study confirms the importance of agriculture technology adoption for increased household revenue and the need to take steps to reinforce existing adoption strategies. Keywords:  Climate smart agriculture, effectiveness, smallholder farmers, Malawi

Bio-economics of common resource over exploitation. Case of Lake Malombe Chambo (Oreochromis Sp. cichlidae) fishery in Malawi

Increased attention has been paid over recent years to the Over exploitation of small-scale fishery resources. This paper offers a simple bio-economic model of fishery exploitation orientated towards both Lake Malombe Chambo (Oreochromis sp.) and the Whole Lake Malombe Fishery. The catching of Chambo in Lake Malombe has historically been important to Malawi Fisheries, and the changes that have taken place in the Fishery have had major social and economic consequences on communities around the Lake. Bioeconomic exploration of this fishery has been based on the catch, effort and price data from 1976 to 1999. It has been demonstrated here that, Chambo. Fishery provides a unique illustration of the economic and biological effects of technological (gear type) change in situations where access to the natural resource remains virtually unrestricted (open access). The components of the model are explained with reference to their guiding economic (Maximum Economic Yield) and biological (Maximum Sustainable Yield) reference points. And it is estimated in the study that if yield of Chambo falls below 6900 tons and 14 621 tons for the Whole fishery, then the rate at which the population regenerates itself falls below the rate of extraction. The paper also draws the problem of effort over capacity as the current capacity exceeds, by a wide margin, the capacity that would be required to harvest a sustained yield. In addition to the over capacity is the problem of selectivity in the gear types. Such over capacity and non-selectivity in fishing gear makes control of catch and efforts difficult and threatens the fishery

Adoption Drivers and Its Intensity on Smallholder Goat Farming in Southern Malawi

This study identifies drivers of adoption and its intensity on smallholder goat farming in southern Malawi. A Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial model was estimated using survey data collected in Balaka and Nsanje districts in 2014/15 cropping season. The study found that farmers residing in Nsanje have higher probability of adopting goat farming as compared to farmers in Balaka. Interestingly, farmers with no extension contact have higher probability of adopting goat farming than those who have access to agricultural extension. Further, education and age of the household head, access to credit services, total household income and household size was found to positively influence the intensity of adoption. The study suggests that apart from increasing contact between farmers and extension service providers, agricultural extension should include more livestock farming messages. Furthermore, the study suggests that all relevant stakeholders should intensify efforts to educate Malawians as it positively influences intensity of adoption. Lastly, stakeholders should help smallholder farmer’s accessing credit services so that they get the much needed capital to intensify goat farming Keywords: Intensity, Adoption, Zero Inflated Negative Binomial, Technolog

‘Clearing the air’: common drivers of climate-smart smallholder food production in Eastern and Southern Africa

African smallholders should adopt climate-smart agriculture to make a sustainable transition towards cleaner, circular and more productive food systems. Farmers must play a key role in that process. However, the adoption and diffusion of climate-smart technologies have been slow. Here, a cross-sectional econometric analysis using primary data on sustainable farming practices in the cereal-legume farming systems of Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania is applied to analyse the drivers and intensity of innovation adoption. Socio-economic barriers reduce adoption intensity among marginalised farmers, and proper incentives are needed to overcome them. Business links between technology-ready smallholders and small-to-medium enterprises must be created to enable the uptake and scaling-up of innovations and the development of industrial application models. Such results can support the design of evidence-based strategies for the sustainable transformation of production systems. While national climate policies already include climate-smart agriculture as an adaptation blueprint, policy makers need empirical evidence to support large-scale adoption. This research is an innovative contribution to that effort. It uses a unique household dataset where data is scarce; it considers the impact of smallholders’ conditioning factors on technology climate-smartness level; and it estimates the correlations among a wide range of practices, agro-ecologies and geographical contexts