Smallholder farmers in Malawi account for over 80 percent of the population and if the country is to achieve food security, poverty reduction and sustainable development attention to agricultural extension is a sine qua non. Since 2000, Malawi introduced extension reforms to better serve the needs of smallholder farmers. Some...

SOFI 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets

In Malawi, where most of the population relies on agriculture and is considered “small farmers”, better characterizing the diversity of agricultural holdings and the drivers of their transformation is key to inform policy makers and design programs better fitted to the diverse needs and capacities. The World Agriculture Watch (WAW)...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries play a key role in meeting the future food demands of a growing and increasingly rich and urbanized population. However, smallholders are not a homogeneous group that should be supported at all costs. Whereas some smallholder farmers have the potential to undertake profitable commercial activities...

Agroforestry is a set of tools which farmers can use to increase yields, build soil fertility, raise their income, and boost their food security. ICRAF and its partners have worked closely with farmers for decades to promote and develop simultaneous intercropping practices to address the challenges in soil fertility facing...

The objective of this article was to develop a deeper understanding of the interdependences between smallholder farming and the state of environmental management in rural Malawi. We examined the agricultural local governance framework in Malingunde Extension Planning Area (EPA), its contribution to food security and how it conflicts with overall...

Evergreen Agriculture is a combination of conservation agriculture and agroforestry practices within the same spatial and temporal dimensions. In other circles, evergreen agriculture is referred to as agroforestry based conservation agriculture or Conservation Agriculture With Trees (CAWT). Evergreen agriculture is being tested by ICRAF in conjunction with partners in Malawi...

Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing eight of the countries that make up southern Africa — Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security...

Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world, and therefore poverty remains a key challenge in the country.  The great variations in Malawi’s landscape result in wide spatial differences in climate.

A programme run by the Government of Malawi is providing cash transfers to more than 26,000 of the country's poorest households. FAO's 'From Protection to Production' project (PtoP), run in collaboration with Unicef with funding from DFID and the EU, is evaluating the impact of these cash transfers on economic...

En appui au bureau d’études Bourbon Madagascar, le Gret a participé à l’évaluation de la convention programme de l’ONG Inter Aide dans quatre pays (Madagascar, Ethiopie, Malawi et Sierra Leone) sur le renforcement de l’autonomie et des capacités productives des agricultures familiales en zones rurales isolées d’Afrique Subsaharienne. Le Gret...

This paper is an attempt to measure the economic efficiency of Dedza smallholder Irish potato (Solanum tuberosum) farmers in Malawi using a translog cost frontier, inefficiency effect model and input Elasticities from Seeming Unrelated Regression Model for asystem of cost share equations for labour, fertilizer, seed and land. A sample...

Aflatoxins are more than a barrier to trade for smallholders— they are a serious risk to public health. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 4.5 billion people are chronically exposed to the toxin through the consumption of staple foods, leading to cancer and childhood stunting as...

Large-scale foreign land acquisitions - land grabs - are major and real concerns for African populations.   The consequences of land deals are highly significant for local populations and the environment. Some see economic opportunities for local communities through employment and income generated from leasing or selling land. Others see land...

One direct way in which agricultural input subsidies can provide social protection to the poor is by targeting the poor with very high subsidies to ensure that they are able to access inputs. Although the Malawi Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme (MAISP) generally targets resource-poor households, the targeting guidelines also accord...

The National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi has used its multi-tiered membership structure to build a ‘knowledge chain’, spreading conservation agriculture techniques to more than 37,000 farmers. Combining this effort with support for adult literacy is empowering farmers (particularly women) to both gain and use new knowledge.

Without financial access and sufficient yearly earnings, many farmers also lose up to 50 percent of their annual potential income because they must gain quick access to cash to afford household expenses all year. In the time leading up to harvest, farmers often experience a “hungry season” in which they...

The Government of Malawi has been promoting the establishment of farmer organisations including cooperatives in an effort to help small-scale farmers improve their income and develop their managerial skills by venturing into a business oriented approach to farming. However, despite the benefits associated with cooperatives, general cooperative membership is still...

There is often a mismatch between the apparent benevolent intents and the practical manifestations of the large scale land deals. The empirical realities of the large-scale land deals call for critical scrutiny and interrogation of the underlying interests of the stakeholders involved to assess the extent to which they genuinely...

This research will evaluate carcass quality and processing potential of goat meat produced by smallholder farmers in Malawi. The farmers will keep local Malawi goat and Norwegian goats under three management systems (intensive, extensive and semi-intensive). The carcasses from these goats will be analyzed for gross and chemical composition. They...