Virtual Brown Bag: Understanding the Factors that influence Cereal-Legume Adoption amongst Smallholder Farmers in Malawi
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Time: 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm CAT
Presenter slides and a blog will be available in the days following the event.
Abstract
Although sustainable intensification (SI) practices like cereal-legume intercropping are believed to offer numerous benefits to farmers, the adoption of maize-legume intercropping remains low in Malawi. We use dynamic programing to assess the impact four key constraints that smallholder farmers face. These constraints include i) land, ii) labor, ii) input market access and iv) output market access. We use the model to evaluate the farmer’s optimal production plans across six scenarios that characterize some possible states of the world or policies where some constraints are addressed and compare the optimal production plans across these scenarios. The farmer’s decision process given these alternative policies is modeled to assess the impact of these policies on SI adoption decisions. Our model results suggest that both the resource (land and labor) and institutional constraints (access to input and output market) play a key role in influencing the farmers’ SI adoption decisions.
Presenter
- Tabitha C. Nindi, Purdue University/ Malawi University of Science and Technology
Moderator
- Bob Baulch, Program Leader/ Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI Malawi
Individuals attending this event may be audio taped, videotaped, or photographed during the course of a meeting, and by attending grant permission for their likenesses and the content of their comments, if any, to be broadcast, webcast, published, or otherwise reported or recorded. Questions? Please contact IFPRI-Lilongwe@cgiar.org
