• Agriculture
• Introduction

Livelihoods and agriculture

An obvious pathway out of poverty for poor households in agricultural based economy is to supplement agricultural incomes with non-farm economic activities. This paper identifies livelihood strategies at the household level as a function of assets held in Malawi. In particular, the paper tries to identify factors that may enable the poor to leave the poverty trap that subsistence agriculture represents.

The paper reveals that land, household size, age and primary education are important determinants of livelihood strategies. The paper's main findings are as follows:

• the pure farming strategy is more likely, the larger is the farm
• combination of farming with other activities is more likely in larger households
• younger people are more likely to find non-farm jobs
• completed primary education increases the chance of getting a salaried job
• there is more diversification in livelihood strategies in the southern region, where poverty is higher, but southern households may do more low salaried work and household businesses
• there are some differences between ethnic and religious groups, with households from the Muslim community being more likely to be engaged in household businesses

Equally important, the paper finds that some resources are needed to be able to conduct non-farm economic activities. It presents these two recommendations:

• investment in primary education, taking into account the low initial level of education in Malawi, is probably a good investment for rural development
• poorer farmers in southern region may learn from the more productive farmers in the central region, where there is more emphasise on cash-crop production, and also possibly combine agriculture with household businesses to a larger extent

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