Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

most important sources of input on credit are the Malawi Rural Finance Corporation (33 percent
of households), other sources (26 percent), ADMARC (14 percent), friends (14 percent), and
traders (11 percent). Traders in the Central region are more active as a source of input on credit.
In the North, the MRFC is the most important source of input on credit, while in the South, other
sources of input on credit are the most common. Traders and ADMARC seem to provide very
little input on credit to female-headed households; less than 8 percent of all female-headed
households receive input on credit from these sources. Female-headed households rely mainly on
other sources of credit, MRFC, and friends. ADMARC’s input on credit seems to favor more
male-headed households and farmers with larger farm sizes.
Tables 5.19 and 5.20 show the average price paid for the different types of seeds and fertilizers as
well as the average distance to the input source. Average distance to an input source is 6 km,
which is not excessively far. About 90 percent of all input purchases are conducted by the
household head.
5.1.6 Changes in labor and inputs since 1995
In order to capture changes in access to and use of inputs since the reforms of 1995, farmers were
asked directly about changes in their use of inputs such as hired labor, family work done by
women, seeds, and fertilizer, since 1995. As shown in Table 5.21, the majority of farmers
reported no change in the use of these inputs. Only about 9 percent noted a decrease in the use of
hired labor or family work performed by women, whereas about one-third said that their use of
women labor had increased. Also, only about 16-18 percent reported that their use of seeds or
fertilizer had decreased since 1995. This indicates that input market liberalization is not perceived
as having had dramatic impact on the use of labor, fertilizer or seeds by small farmers.
For those who reported changes in input use, the main reason for the increase in labor use was a
change in cropping pattern, whereas the main reason for the decrease in labor was blamed on the
inavailability or high cost of labor. Among farmers that claimed a change in the use of purchased
seeds or fertilizers, the main reason behind the decrease in use was higher prices. For those who
increased their use of input, this was attributed to higher revenues from buying and applying the
input. In addition, for seeds, about one-third of the farmers that increased their use of purchased
seeds explained that the main reason for the increase was the higher availability of seeds since the
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