Summary This paper uses small-scale farm survey data from five countries of eastern and southern Africa to highlight four under-appreciated issues: (i) how land distribution patterns constrain the potential of crop technology and input intensification to enable many small farms to escape from...

This paper assesses rural households’ decision to use improved maize varieties in Malawi and examines its impact on household welfare using a three-year household panel data. The distributional effect of maize technology adoption is investigated by looking at impacts across wealth and gender...

This study uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi and Zambia to identify the determinants of subsidized maize seed and fertilizer receipt, and to estimate how input subsidies affect households’ commercial purchases of improved maize seed varieties. In both...