Promoting Sustainable Farming Practices in MalawiPDF version
Low productivity in agriculture is a pressing challenge in the developing world. The compound effects of farming with mechanized soil tillage, climate change, and increasing urbanization are adversely affecting the long-term productivity of soil worldwide. As a result, crop yields in developing countries are often many times lower than those that could be achieved using readily available technologies and farming techniques. Improving food security and agricultural incomes therefore depends on farmer adoption of these tools and techniques. A critical determinant of new technology adoption is the learning process through which information on these techniques is disseminated, understood, and applied. Although the importance of information flow through existing village and social networks in developing countries is well-documented, to what extent these networks can be used to disseminate new information from public sources—such as agricultural extension officers—remains unclear.
A lush climate and rich soil make Malawi well suited for agriculture, which is central to the country's economy and national life, making up 36 percent of its GDP and occupying more than 80 percent of its workforce. Tobacco is the leading export crop, followed by tea, sugar and cotton. The staple food crops are maize, cassava and millet, grown by smallholder farmers mostly at the subsistence level. Most rural families have too little land to produce sufficient food and too little income to buy extra. According to some reports, a quarter of the population runs out of food only five months after the harvest.
Researchers investigate how new information on agricultural technology from outside sources, such as government-employed agricultural extension agents, is transferred through existing village and social networks. Understanding how gender and relationships affect communication between extension officers and farmers, as well as between farmers is crucial to designing effective information-based interventions to promote technology adoption. Both the technologies and methods for disseminating information are evaluated in the context of the Malawi Agricultural Development Programme Support Project (ADP-SP). This project is intended to support the efforts of the Malawi Ministry of Agriculture to achieve sustainable productivity growth in smallholder maize production systems.
Each village assigned to receive the intervention will be randomly assigned a dissemination method as well as a farming technique that is to be promoted. The two techniques for dissemination are:
- Fertilizer Nutrient Management (FNM), which includes the use of efficient combinations, timing, and spatial concentration of fertilizer application and results in short-run increases in land productivity.
- Conservation Agriculture (CA), which includes pit planting, minimal tillage, and mulching. CA is associated with long-run returns, as CA practices increase the biodiversity of farm ecosystems, allowing non-chemical organisms to take a role in soil maintenance.
The randomly varied dissemination methods are:
- Extension officers, working through their existing channels and provided with incentives based on the adoption of the techniques in their areas.
- Extension officers collaborating with lead farmers in each village, whom they select in consultation with the community. Lead farmers will be provided with incentives based on the adoption of the techniques in their villages.
- Extension officers collaborating with peer farmers, selected through focus groups in each village and representing average farmers spatially dispersed throughout the village. Peer farmers will receive incentives based on adoption in their neighborhoods.
Across all three types of dissemination methods, incentives were sometimes randomly assigned to the communicators. In the lead and peer farmer villages, the gender composition of the message sender will be varied. The random variation in the technology promotion agent and in the technique being promoted will allow researchers to determine the potentially differing outcomes of various components of information dissemination programs.
Results forthcoming.
