Cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in Africa: evidence from Malawi
2005
W.H. Masanjala
This article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalisation in Malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalisation as an instrument for poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The principal justification for cash crop liberalisation is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods. <br /><br />Using a latent welfare model, the study finds that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than households that did not grow cash crops. However, the study also find that due to the seasonality of cash crop incomes, higher household incomes, while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake. Irrespective of participation in cash crops, for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on non-farm income for expenditure and consumption.<br /><br />The study offers the following recommendations:<br /> policymakers should strike a balance between the promotion of annual cash crops and complimentary sources of income - the seasonal cycles of which are not synchronized with the smallholder household's cropping season agricultural liberalisation and smallholder specialisation should be geared towards market niches that provide some cash but do not threaten the household's capacity for expenditure and consumption.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
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