The Role of Seed Security in Smallholder Farmers’ Household Nutrition, Climate Change Resilience and Empowerment in Northern Malawi
Abstract
Climate change is a threat multiplier that significantly exacerbates the vulnerability of agrarian livelihoods, especially smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the predominantly agricultural context of Malawi, the frequency and intensity of climate-induced stressors such as frequent floods, droughts, and erratic rainfall and intra-seasonal dry spells have drastically undermined agricultural productivity, prompting the declaration of at least six states of emergency over the past decade. While there has been calls to improve adaptive capacities of smallholder farmers, seed insecurity—the inadequate access to sufficient, reliable, and affordable seeds of preferred varieties—in the region stands as a major barrier impeding farmers from unleashing other adaptive strategies amid the changing climate. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on the impact of seed insecurity in smallholder farming communities. Hinged on the geographies of vulnerability, resilience, and feminist political ecology, this study employed mixed methods combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine seed security as a conduit for enhancing nutritional outcomes, climate change resilience, and empowerment in smallholder households in northern Malawi. Logistic regression analysis of survey data (n=1090) underscored that seed-secure households were significantly more likely to report stronger resilience to climate change than those that were not seed-secure, even after controlling for theoretically relevant variables (OR=1.89; p