El Niño is a phase in an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean. It occurs on average every 2 to 7 years and typically lasts between 9 months and 2 years.
In a recent IFPRI working paper, Van Cappellen and De Weerdt (2023), we show how urban growth reduces underemployment in the rural hinterlands of towns and cities.
Smallholder farmers constitute the largest group of economic actors in Malawi and there is increasing recognition that the small scale at which they operate does not offer for most a pathway out of poverty, let alone to prosperity.
If Malawi’s fertilizer subsidy program aims to increase food security in the country, it should strive to target the most productive farmers. Subsidy levels can be set to self-target this group of farmers.
The market price of fertilizer in Malawi has, in nominal terms, more than tripled compared to two years ago.
It is easy enough to calculate how much the Government of Malawi spends on subsidizing chemical fertilizer. Last year, for example, this was MWK 120 billion (about US$ 150 million) taking up over 50% of the agricultural budget.
Malawi’s Affordable Inputs Program (AIP) currently combines an economic and a social objective, respectively: (i) increasing agricultural production; and (ii) assisting poor farming households.
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.
This policy note examines employment patterns for evidence of the extent to which a structural transformation is underway in Malawi.
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).