Politicts of conservation agriculture: Kasungu rural district, Malawi

The objective of this study was to examine and discover the agrarian political economic factors hindering adoption of conservation agriculture in Malawi by small scale farmers. The location of the study was at Chingati-Phiri Village in Lisasadzi Extension Planning Area, Traditional Authority Kaomba and at Chilemba Village, Traditional Authority Mnyanja in Kasungu District, Central Region. The analytical frame work used was the agrarian political economy by Bernstein where qualitative analysis was mainly used for deep understanding of the issues on agrarian political economy. Though, to know the profile of the respondents, the quantitative viewpoint was used. The study interviewed 31small scale farmers’ respondents from both villages and conducted 2 focus group discussions in both villages with a total of 23 participants. It has been explored that the small scale farmers possess small land sizes because of increased population and illegal transferring of land by chiefs. They are also scared to use rented land because CA is a long term benefit technology so owners can easily take back their land. The majority of small scale farmers have inadequate capital for agricultural production since there is low labour wages, lack of jobs and capital to start business. Additionally, the technology is labour demanding due to the family labour which has no capital. The State is extremely requested to implement the land reform arrangement so that the small scale farmers gain both access to land and land security. This will enable them adopt CA and other improved technology leading to more income. Therefore, the State is argued to use agrarian political economy perspective to know the farmers without land. There is also need for the State to be well coordinated with the Non Governmental Organizations for appropriate exist strategy.