A new MaSSP Project Note analyses the price of maize and soybean in Malawi during the main harvest marketing season of 2020. The authors used crowdsourced data from 1,048 maize and 1,265 soybean farmers by broadcasting jingles on three leading radio stations. The jingles invited farmers to report the prices and locations at which they had sold their maize and soybeans to a free call center operated by Farm Radio Trust. The reported prices were then compared to the minimum farmgate prices set by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MoAFS).
Minimum farmgate prices, set by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MoAFS) since the early 2000s, are calculated based on the farmers’ cost of production to protect them from low prices. However, little is known on whether these farmgate prices are binding.
The authors’ findings show that 76 percent of maize farmers and 90 percent of soybean farmers sold their crops at below the official minimum farmgate prices. On average, prices received by these farmers were approximately three-quarters of official minimum farmgate prices.
Read and download the MaSSP project note here. (PDF 387.4 KB)
Authors: Bob Baulch and Dennis Ochieng
Note: The project report, published in October 2020, can be found here.
