The case for tackling multiple constraints for smallholder farmers: Evidence from Malawi

By Kate Ambler, Alan de Brauw, and Susan GodlontonJune 1, 2026

Key takeaways

• A four-year study in Malawi examined bundled support to smallholders, testing cash or in-kind transfers with and without intensive extension services.
• Combining the two interventions produced larger and more durable gains in crop production and household consumption than either intervention alone.
• The findings suggest policymakers should consider multiple constraints affecting the productivity of smallholder agricultural producers.

Republished with permission of VoxDev.

Smallholder agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall short of its potential. Recent evidence finds that crop yields among smallholders are stagnant or even declining (Wollburg et al. 2024), and that no single constraint fully explains this pattern (Suri et al. 2024). The implication is that interventions that address constraints in isolation are unlikely to be successful. Growing evidence suggests that combining multiple interventions can unlock benefits that no single component achieves alone. For example, in Kenya, a program bundling credit, inputs, insurance, and technical advice found large gains in yields and profits for smallholder maize farmers (Deutschmann et al. 2025). But there is still much to learn about which combinations of interventions work, for whom, for how long, and whether such gains translate into improvements in overall well-being.

While many programs evaluate the provision of farm inputs and/or extension services (Caldwell et al. 2019), a growing body of work suggests that agricultural labor markets are an important constraint for many farmers, even smallholders. Evidence from Rwanda shows that failures in land and labor markets generate misallocation that limits technology adoption, even when the technology is demonstrably profitable (Jones et al. 2022). Related evidence from Zambia shows that seasonal liquidity constraints force poor farmers to sell their labor at low wages during the hungry season rather than invest it on their own farms, and that relieving these constraints raises both farm output and local wages (Fink et al. 2020).

Our research contributes to this evidence base by examining a program in Malawi jointly targeting two binding constraints among smallholder cash crop farmers: resource constraints, addressed through cash or in-kind transfers, and information and management constraints, addressed through intensive agricultural extension services (Ambler, de Brauw, and Godlonton 2026). Our design allows us to isolate the independent effects of each component and identify their complementarities, while tracking these effects over four years. The design also recognizes the importance of labor shortages at specific times during the growing season and management advice as a complement to technical training.

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