Malawi has a long history of public intervention programs in the fertilizer market, going back to 1992.

Between April and July 2021, IFPRI Malawi conducted its second, nationwide crowdsourcing exercise on the maize and soybean prices paid to farmers.

In this Policy Note, we examine both household and spatial factors that may drive participation by smallholder farming households in commercial value chains for pulses, legume crops that are primarily harvested for their dry seed.

By increasing their production for the market and realizing greater incomes, smallholder farming households can significantly accelerate local agricultural and rural economic development.

Price band schemes have been used in many countries to try and set minimum and maximum prices between which staple food prices vary.

While contract farming provides opportunities to link smallholder farmers to markets, its sustainability depends on how the interests of both farmers and buyers are addressed.

Structured markets are organized platforms where economic agents such as farmers, traders, processors and financial institutions enter transparent and legal trading and financial arrangements (East Africa Grain Council 2013).

This policy note examines employment patterns for evidence of the extent to which a structural transformation is underway in Malawi.

Malawi is unusual in having not one, but two commodity exchanges (Comex): The Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ACE), established in 2006, and Auction Holdings Commodity Exchange (AHCX) Ltd, established in 2013.

Malawi is extremely vulnerable to shocks and recurrent food crises (Barrett & Headey 2014). Malawi also suffers from persistently high levels of undernutrition (DHS 2016).

In early 2016, Malawi suffered its second consecutive year of harvest failure.

This study presents qualitative findings on the dynamics of household and community resources for food security and nutrition in Southern Malawi.

After reviewing Malawi’s recent export experience, this policy note examines the types and potential contributions of structured markets to export marketing with a specific focus on commodity exchanges and export mandates.

This policy note explores priorities for investment in irriga-tion in Malawi, and examines the trade-offs between invest-ment in new irrigation infrastructure, versus rehabilitation and maintenance of existing irrigation infrastructure.

This note focuses on how public investments affect crop productivity in Malawi’s districts, and estimates localized public expenditure multipliers.

Malawi has the potential to reorient its smallholder agriculture away from being primarily directed towards assuring household subsistence and self-sufficiency to increased commercial production, including of soyabean.

Since the early 2000s, the government of Malawi has used trade restrictions, export bans in particular, to control trade flows for maize and soya, among other crops.

In the last two decades, food security policy in Malawi has focused on enhancing the maize productivity of smallholder farmers, primarily through the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) (Chirwa and Dorward 2013).

The Government of Malawi put in place the National Extension Policy in 2000 to promote the provision of quality agricultural extension services.