Determinants and impact of climate smart agriculture technology adoption on the welfare of smallholder farmers in Malawi

This study identifies factors affecting adoption of multiple climate change adaptation technologies and its impact. An ordered probit model, a full Mahalanobis matching and a variety of propensity score matching methods were used. Age of household head, total area of land that a household owns, being involved in petty trading and formal employment reduce the probability of adopting more than two technologies. Farmers that observed changes in moisture levels for about 20-year period prior to our survey had lower probability of adopting four technologies compared to those that did not observe any changes in moisture for the same time period. Interestingly, the study has shown that household income does not affect the number of technologies adopted. Overall, technology adopters performed better than non-adopters, as they were well off in their yield and sources of revenue. Irrigation and water harvesting technology adopters are better off as compared to adopters of the other technologies which had a mixed bag. This study recommends that relevant stakeholders should strive to provide smallholder farmers with climate smart agriculture related extension messages, if more farmers are to adopt many technologies to make their agricultural production systems resilient to climate change.