Utilisation of maize-legume intensified systems among smallholder farmers in Malawi

Abstract

Investment in soil fertility over the past three decades in southern African maize based systems has brought many novel technologies on legume diversification but has seen minimal uptake by smallholder farmers. This thesis investigates the utilisation of maize-legume intensified systems among smallholder farmers in Malawi using a mixed methods approach across three study questions: (i) What is the role of land size and use orientation of legumes in maizelegume intensified systems?; (ii) What is farmers’ motivation for integrating legumes only to a part of their maize area?, and; (iii) What factors affect women farmers’ intentions to increase area under improved maize-legume integration? A conceptual framework on legume diversification is developed from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to explain farmers’ motivation and intentions. The framework demonstrates how goal-related outcomes from legume diversification can be influenced by farmers’ attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control when they can make informed choices on legume diversification. Furthermore, a metric for benchmarking partial legume diversification is developed to estimate the degree of utilisation at farmer level. Both of these form the theoretical foundation of this thesis. Focus group discussions were then used to develop research questions on motivation and intentions. From this basis, structured questionnaires, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were used to explore the specific study questions. The quantitative data was subjected to regressions (zero-one beta and structural equation modeling), while the qualitative data was subjected to content analysis. The research finds that land size and use orientation for legumes are important factors affecting amount of legume diversification. Women farmers allocate more maize area to legume diversification than male farmers due to land limitations. Therefore, women farmers are less likely to increase maize area under legume diversification unless they trade off some of their cropping land to diversify more legumes. This is demonstrated in the strength of their intentions to increase legume diversification. A positive correlation between perceived behavioural control and their intentions to increase legume diversification is due to independence in decision making. A long history of utilisation of legumes by women in Malawi has made many women food security gate keepers. Therefore, they have received knowledge about agronomic and food security benefits from legumes through socialisation within their families and communities primarily. The research also finds that farmers are motivated to increase legume diversification by immediate expected cash income benefits from legumes and not by the benefit of combined yield gains from both maize and legumes arising from sustainable cropping environments. Furthermore, even though farmers generally hold positive attitudes towards legume diversification, their actual decisions on utilisation are influenced by obligations to extension services; expectation of incentives, and; social pressure within their communities. This study shows a strong correlation (r2 = - 0.6) between land size and the amount of legume diversification of maize systems, and recommends that extension messages be customised on the basis of a farm-size typology. It also shows that adoption decisions are more influenced by expected economic outcomes than the inherent value of soil fertility unless there is social pressure influencing the latter. Furthermore, in a bid to encourage farmers to host on-farm trials, extension workers influence diversion of subsidised farm inputs under national food security initiatives as incentives to farmers hosting on-farm trials. Generally some institutional rules in promotion of agricultural adoption are violated in such ways: overriding village nomination and endorsement of lead farmers; conferring preferential access to subsidised inputs given to on-farm trial hosts, and; by-passing deserving farmers in bulk marketing of legumes. Exclusion has discouraged participation of other farmers in on-farm trials and other extension modalities for legume diversification. The thesis recommends that both ecological and economic benefits from improved maizelegume integration should be emphasized to farmers in the promotion of legume diversification. This should be supported with attention to institutions within extension modalities facilitating the promotion. This thesis brings new insights into smallholder farmer decision making on legume diversification of maize systems. It demonstrates the importance of customising legume diversification technologies according to gender of the farmer as well as land size. In addition it reveals that adoption decisions on legume diversification of maize systems are influenced by the actions of organisations promoting these as well as farmers’ obligations to the organisations and their social networks.