This article contributes to the limited literature on farm size and productivity in smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Farm survey data, and the results from a linear programming farm-household model, provide evidence for a positive relationship between farm size and productivity in...

Agricultural input subsidies were a major feature of development policies in rural economies until the 1980s. Continuing rural poverty with low productivity and fertilizer use in smallholder staple crops has led to their resurgence in Africa. These subsidies are, however, controversial with...

Using a linear-programming model of farming systems in northern Malawi, the conditions under which peasant farmhousehold models may need to allow for embedded risk are investigated. Tactical, sequential responses to uncertainty are found to be more important to labour-scarce households with...

The predominance of rain-fed agricultural cultivation in Malawi, makes income and consumption to be highly seasonal for more than 80 percent of the population that largely derive their livelihoods from agriculture. Seasonality of livelihoods for the poor is bound to affect their consumption at...

The recent food crisis in Malawi has drawn stark attention to the failures of development policies over the last 40 years to create wealth and develop a robust economy or the markets on which such an economy must depend. Current market liberalisation policies have achieved at best mixed success...

There is a limited but growing literature on direct impacts of HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality on rural household livelihoods. Less is known, however, about indirect impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural communities, allowing for market interactions between households. Thus while labour shortages are...

Malawi’s implementation of a large-scale agricultural input subsidy programme has attracted significant international interest. This paper reviews the programme from 2005/06 to 2008/09. Nationwide disbursement of heavily subsidized fertilizers and seed to large numbers of beneficiaries...