Policy biases towards maize and tobacco pursued over the years have pushed other potential high value crops and staple food crops to the periphery and thereby limited the export potential and food production capacity of the country. Furthermore, limited agro-processing and low value-addition hamper steady growth in the agricultural sector, while unstable marketing policies and regulations restrict private investment in the sector. Other constraints in the sector include poor market infrastructure, lack of reliable market information systems, lack of cooling facilities and storage/assembling points, low capacity and poor coordination by FOs to effectively engage government in policy formulation. Strengthening agricultural value chains to improve capacity to supply quality produce to an expanding agro-processing sector is critical to strategise to promote sustained development of the farm sector in Malawi. Achieving these strategic objectives require interventions on how best to organize smallholder farmers in order to overcome the limitations associated with diseconomies of scale in marketing; as well as how to strengthen governance structures of the FOs so they can better serve the interests of smallholder farmers. Vibrant FOs would ensure that smallholder farmers are able to consolidate and deliver the required volumes and meet market-determined quality standards, thereby opening up access to lucrative markets. It will also encourage partnership between government and the private sector and so foster the creation and maintenance of a supportive policy and regulatory environment in the agricultural sector.

The National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) signed a contract with LEI Wageningen in December 2010 to undertake ESFIM 2 activities in Malawi, which were virtually suspended as reported in May 2010 as a result of funding constraints. Funding under the contract will be utilized in undertaking policy research studies in two main areas:

1) Lesson learning from smallholder commercial seed multiplication promoted by the Association of Smallholder Seed Multiplication Action Group (ASSMAG) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT). The lessons learnt will provide evidence for advocating relevant policy and regulatory interventions to strengthen, scale up and/or scale out models which enable smallholder farmers to actively participate in profitable seed multiplication ventures.

2) Promoting access by smallholder farmers to quality and timely market information by reviewing existing market information systems (MIS) in Malawi in order to generate evidence-based information to inform relevant policy interventions. This issue has been prioritised by the membership of NASFAM because of indications that despite government and donor investment in MIS projects in the country, there has been little or no progress improving access by smallholder farmers to the type of information that enables them to make well-informed marketing decisions.

Agrinatura researchers helped refining terms of reference for the case studies and will provide advisory inputs in support of the local consultants. The available funds will also support the organisation of stakeholder workshops to validate the outcomes and recommendations from the research as well as promote the embedding of the evidence generated in advocacy by farmers’ organisations and other parties with a stake in the agricultural sector in Malawi. Most of the planned activities will be undertaken in 2011.