Since the 2005/06 agricultural season, the government
of Malawi has been implementing a targeted agricultural
input subsidy programme through the provision of
fertilizers and maize seeds to smallholder farmers at
subsidized prices. This paper analyses the factors that
influence access to agricultural input subsidies in Malawi.
The results show that vulnerable households such as the
poor and elderly-headed are less likely to receive fertilizer
coupons and receive less of the subsidized fertilizers.
Households with larger parcels of land and those who
sell part of their produce (commercialized) are more likely
to receive coupons and also tend to acquire more
fertilizers. Use of open meetings in the allocation of
coupons tends to favour the poor and the poor receive
more fertilizer compared with other alternative ways of
allocating coupons. We also find a positive relation
between participation in other social safety nets and
access to subsidized fertilizer coupons, suggesting that
households with multiple access to different types of
social protection programmes are not excluded from the
input subsidy programme by virtue of benefiting from
other social protection programmes.