analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

a multivariate sample selection model estimating cigarette and alcohol demands with zero observations heckman s sample selection model is generalized to the multivariate case and used to estimate demands for cigarettes beer and wine by individuals in the united states the specification allows correlations between the error terms of multiple selection and level equations and nests the popular bivariate sample selection model and two part model empirical results suggest that the proposed model performs better than the restricted specifications differentiated effects of variables on probabilities and levels of consumption also suggest rejection of the tobit system gender differences are present and demographic variables are more important than income in determining consumption of cigarettes beer and wine

non farm income household welfare and sustainable land management in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model has been calibrated to the socio economic and biophysical characteristics of a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought necessitates development of non farm employment opportunities in the area the model has been used to assess the impact of improved access to non farm income on household welfare agricultural production conservation investments and land degradation in the form of soil erosion the model simulations indicate that access to low wage off farm income is restricted by lack of employment opportunities since households otherwise would have engaged in more off farm wage employment than observed the simulations show that better unconstrained access to low wage non farm income has a substantial positive effect on household income total agricultural production crop and livestock production and farm inputs used are reduced when access to non farm employment is improved and thus increases the need to import food to the area access to non farm income reduces farm households incentives to invest in conservation and this leads to more overall soil erosion and more rapid land degradation even though intensity of production is reduced special policies are therefore needed to ensure land conservation and to sustain local food production

what are the farm level impacts of malawi s farm input subsidy program a critical review this article provides a critical analysis of the current frontier of research evaluating malawi s farm input subsidy program fisp whose main objectives are increasing maize production promoting household food security and enhancing rural incomes we focus on farm level studies in malawi identifying consistent and contrasting research results in order to draw important policy lessons and provide suggested avenues for future research while national production estimates suggested dramatic increases in maize production and productivity during the years of the fisp the farm level studies found relatively modest increases in maize production and yields over the same period consistent with the farm level results of modest maize production increases there has been a relative increase in real maize prices and the country continued to import maize during most of the subsidy program years furthermore there is evidence that better off households gained substantially more than poorer households when they participated in the program together these findings cast some doubt on the fisp s ability to reduce food insecurity and poverty we propose a number of policy lessons and suggestions for rigorous investigation including research that directly measures the causal impacts of the fisp program on poverty in malawi

the economy wide impacts and risks of malawi s farm input subsidy program we estimate the impact of malawi farm input subsidy programme using an economywide approach we find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two fifths of total benefits due to these indirect benefits the cut off

weak separability and the estimation of elasticities in multistage demand systems the necessary conditions for multistage budgeting to be at least approximately justified are reviewed and the plausibility of these assumptions i e weak separability and low variability of price indices with utility level are discussed using no further assumptions simple relationships between expenditure and price elasticities in different budgeting levels are derived these results are applied to a three stage model for swedish food consumption and it is shown that the assumptions are not inappropriate restricting the analysis to the last stage of a multistage budgeting process is also shown to lead to considerable errors which could well have policy consequences

subsistence response to market shocks microeconomic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks we integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond in apparently perverse ways to changes in output market prices price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets in the case presented a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents stimulating maize production by subsistence households however real incomes of subsistence households fall

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

demand systems estimation with microdata a censored regression approach demand systems estimation increasingly makes use of household level microdata mainly to measure the effects of demographic variables data based on these household expenditure surveys present a major estimation problem for any given household many of the goods have zero consumption implying a censored dependent variable techniques which do not take this censored dependent variable into account will yield biased results we utilize a censored regression approach that is computationally simple consistent and asymptotically efficient the results are then presented and compared with those obtained using an uncensored technique

a macroeconomic model of price swings in the housing market this paper shows that a macro model with segmented financial markets can generate sizable movements in housing prices in response to changes in credit conditions we establish theoretically that reductions in mortgage rates always have a positive effect on prices whereas the relaxation of loan to value constraints has ambiguous effects a quantitative version of the model under perfect foresight accounts for about one half of the observed price increase in the united states in the 2000s when we include shocks to expectations about housing finance conditions the model s ability to match house values improves significantly the framework reconciles the observed disconnect between house prices and rents since in general equilibrium financial shocks can decrease rents and increase prices

a cross section analysis of household demand for food and nutrients in tanzania abstract undernutrition and malnutrition are still problems of unacceptable proportions in many developing countries however the debate on the roles of income and other socio economic variables such as women s education and household size on food and nutrient demand continues this study examines the demand for food and nutrients amongst households in tanzania using recent survey data a quadratic almost ideal demand system quaids is employed to estimate price and expenditure elasticities as well as the impact of socio economic variables on food demand patterns a moment based instrumental variable approach is then used to analyse the determinants of nutrient demand the results show that income and other socio economic variables exert significant effects on the demand for food and nutrients the estimated expenditure elasticities for the nutrients range from 0 307 for iron to 1 26 for vitamin b12 the elasticities are higher for those micronutrients that are consumed through animal products and lower for those micronutrients that are mainly obtained through staple foods these results reflect the higher expenditure elasticities for meat fish eggs milk and milk products as well as fruits and vegetables relative to cereals and pulses reinforcing the assertion that the demand for vitamins a and b12 as well as calcium and zinc will increase with rising income

on price indices in the almost ideal demand system a number of papers have discussed the relationship between the almost ideal demand system aids and its linear approximation la aids in this paper it is shown that if the prices in the system are normalized to one the aids and la aids representations are identical at the point of normalization also at the point of normalization the expressions for price and expenditure elasticities from both systems are identical

a two stage rural household demand analysis microdata evidence from jiangsu province china in this paper we evaluate economic and demographic effects on china s rural household demand for nine food commodities vegetables pork beef and lamb poultry eggs fish sugar fruit and grain and five nonfood commodity groups clothing fuel stimulants housing and durables a two stage budgeting allocation procedure is used to obtain an empirically tractable amalgamative demand system for food commodities which combine an upper level aids model and a lower level gles as a modeling framework the results indicate that the slow growth of food consumption in china during the latter half of the 1980s is a result of income stagnation rather than consumption saturation growth in the demand for better food and shelter by chinese rural households will continue to be a major concern

can agricultural input subsidies reduce the gender gap in modern maize adoption evidence from malawi abstract nationally representative data for malawi were used to measure the gender gap in adoption of modern maize and to investigate how if at all malawi s farm input subsidy program fisp has impacted the gap regression results show the probability of adopting modern maize was 12 lower for wives in male headed households and 11 lower for female household heads than for male farmers receipt of subsidized input coupons had no discernible effect on modern maize adoption for male farmers receiving a subsidy for both seed and fertilizer increased the probability of modern maize cultivation by 222 for female household heads suggesting the fisp has likely reduced the gender gap in adoption of modern maize in malawi

cash transfers and high food prices explaining outcomes on ethiopia s productive safety net programme an ongoing and highly politicised debate concerns the relative efficacy of cash transfers versus food aid this paper aims to shed light on this debate drawing on new empirical evidence from ethiopia s productive safety net programme psnp our data derive from a two wave panel survey conducted in 2006 and 2008 ethiopia has experienced unprecedented rates of inflation since 2007 which have reduced the real purchasing power of psnp cash payments our regression findings confirm that food transfers or cash plus food packages are superior to cash transfers alone they enable higher levels of income growth livestock accumulation and self reported food security these results raise questions of fundamental importance to global humanitarian response and social protection policy we draw out some implications for the design of social transfer programmes and describe some steps that could be taken to enable predictable transfers to meet predictable needs

crop biodiversity risk management and the implications of agricultural assistance this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of financial assistance to farms on crop biodiversity in an uncertain setting the findings reveal that risk aversion is an important driving force for crop biodiversity conservation risk averse farmers can hedge against the uncertainty they face by allocating land to different crop species however policies intended to stabilize revenues by supporting particular species may alter this link by delinking crop biodiversity from the management of revenues risk

nesting quadratic logarithmic demand systems abstract we propose a new generalised rank 3 demand system which nests all known and new rank 3 and rank 2 demand systems derived from the quadratic logarithmic ql cost function we investigate its statistical adequacy against commonly encountered alternatives using uk household data

gender and agricultural productivity implications of the farm input subsidy program in malawi alleviating gender differences in agricultural productivity is vital for poverty reduction while numerous studies suggest that gender differences in agricultural productivity are a result of female farmers having limited access to resources few studies investigate the role of agricultural interventions in alleviating the constraints to input use and subsequently the gender gap in productivity this study investigates whether there are gendered gains in agricultural productivity from participating in an input subsidy program and if these gains help reduce the gender gap using nationally representative data that is disaggregated at the plot level this study analyzes the large scale voucher based farm input subsidy program in malawi focusing on the total value of output per hectare relationships are identified using weighted estimators where the weights are constructed from propensity scores and spatial fixed effects to address the unobservable factors that may confound the relationship between program participation and productivity the findings suggest that participation in the program improves agricultural productivity for both male and female farmers but it does not provide disproportionate help to female famers to overcome gender disparities in agricultural productivity this suggests that female farmers face additional constraints to productivity apart from nonlabor input use

welfare consequences of food prices increases evidence from rural mexico this paper presents an analysis of the welfare consequences of recent increases in food prices in mexico using micro level data we estimate a quaids model of demand for food using data collected to evaluate the conditional cash transfer program oportunidades we show how the poor have been affected by the recent increases and changes in relative prices of foods we also show how a conditional cash transfer program provides a means of alleviating the problem of increasing staple prices and simulate the impact of such a policy on household welfare and consumer demand we contrast this policy with alternative policy responses such as price subsidies which distort relative prices and are less well targeted

household equivalence scales and welfare comparisons abstract the ratio of cost functions of different households facing the same prices and attaining the same utility level is a true cost of demographic characteristics index this index is independent of a base level of income or utility ib if and only if it equals a ratio of household equivalence scales that are themselves ib applied cost index and equivalence scales specifications are usually ib this paper describes the general restrictions on cost functions and social welfare functions required for ib scales and for their use in welfare analysis

how do fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use in sub saharan africa crowding out diversion and benefit cost assessments a major determinant of input subsidy programs effects on the achievement of national policy goals is the extent to which they raise total fertilizer use this study synthesizes recent literature on how the new generation of targeted input subsidy programs has affected national fertilizer use after accounting for crowding effects and derives benefit cost bc estimates of the fertilizer subsidy programs for kenya malawi and zambia after accounting for crowding out and diversion we highlight two major findings first accounting for the illicit diversion of program fertilizer can profoundly influence estimates of how fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use and program impacts given recent evidence that 33 or more of total program fertilizer may be diverted before being received by intended beneficiary farmers the failure to account for program diversion is shown to overestimate the contribution of the subsidy programs to national fertilizer use by 67 3 in the case of malawi by 61 6 for zambia and by 138 0 for kenya the second major finding is that the incremental value of maize output produced from these subsidy programs is considerably less than their costs in most years except under unusually high maize price assumptions conventional bc analyses that do not account for crowding out and diversion may seriously overestimate the benefits of input subsidy programs greater attention to program design and implementation details to reduce problems of crowding out and diversion can substantially raise the returns to such programs

input subsidies cash constraints and timing of input supply is low input use by poor smallholder farmers caused by time inconsistent behavior or by limited ability to buy inputs are input subsidies the best solution to stimulate input demand or are there smarter solutions these issues are investigated by combining survey data stated preference questions and randomized experiments in malawi the demand for fertilizer at harvest time and at planting time farm gate shadow prices for fertilizer and the gap between the willingness to accept wta and willingness to pay wtp prices for a standard input package were investigated significant effects of timing and of cash constraints were found suggesting the possibility that smarter designs exist such as distribution of smaller packages from harvest time to planting time

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

flexible and semiflexible consumer demands with quadratic engel curves in this paper we introduce three flexible consumer demand systems in which expenditures on goods are quadratic functions of income we view these alternatives as to the demand systems used heretofore in the empirical modeling of rank three demands namely those in which expenditure shares are quadratic functions of the logarithm of income curvature conditions required by theory can be imposed locally during the estimation for each and a semiflexible version can be estimated for illustrative purposes we estimate various forms of two of the systems using canadian data on seven categories of goods for the period 1947 to 1995

post green revolution food systems and the triple burden of malnutrition developing country food systems have changed dramatically since the green revolution period at the same time malnutrition still represents a challenge and is now understood to encompass the three simultaneous dimensions of undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition manifest in overweight and obesity these changes in food systems and in the understanding of the global malnutrition challenge necessitate fresh thinking about food systems based strategies to reduce malnutrition this paper introduces a special section that offers such new perspectives we discuss trends with respect to indicators of the triple burden of malnutrition to understand the extent of global malnutrition challenges and then relate those to food systems transformation in developing countries

poverty status and the impact of formal credit on technology use and wellbeing among ethiopian smallholders summary this paper examines the impact of formal credit largely microfinance on the use of improved technology and on consumption and asset growth across households in different degrees of asset poverty using data from rural ethiopia the analysis finds no relationship between participation in microfinance programs and the use of technologies or consumption growth among the poorest households even though the use of certain technologies like fertilizer contributes to their asset accumulation over time for other households microfinance has positive effects on both consumption and asset growth as well as on the use of improved technology the findings imply variation in constraints faced by different classes of poor households and suggest the value of asset based poverty classifications in identifying target groups for poverty interventions

yield gap based poverty gaps in rural sub saharan africa summary given africa s challenge of feeding a growing population narrowing yield gaps is an efficient way of raising production under covariate constraints using household panel data from 21 regions in eight sub saharan african countries this article unravels the determinants of yield gaps it also tests the hypothesis that poverty gaps are increasing with yield gaps the results suggest that yield gaps are increasing with cultivated area that yield differences are reducing with fertilizer use particularly when combined with improved seeds in low production potential regions that poverty gaps are increasing with yield gaps particularly in low production potential regions

expanding access to agricultural inputs in africa a review of recent market development experience abstract this paper asks what can be done to expand input use in africa and can it be done in a manner that supports continued growth of private sector input markets the precarious food security situation in many african countries has prompted governments and donors to use input distribution or credit programs as a means of rapidly increasing food supply for the poor these efforts however often reduce the ability of input market development programs to stimulate commercial interest in input supply a review of both types of programs describes recent efforts to address constraints to expanded input use and finds that further expansion is often constrained by inadequate investment in a variety of public goods needed to stimulate input led agricultural intensification rather than continuing to invest resources in programs to provide inputs or credit directly to farmers governments with donor assistance should consider shifting their focus to the serious deficiencies in the provision of public goods roads irrigation basic education market information systems research and extension and improved institutions contract law and enforcement systems of grades and standards improvements in these areas can both lower costs of supply and increase farm level demand creating a situation where the private sector will have greater incentives to expand input distribution networks to zones and farmers who currently do not have access

intra household resource allocation under negative income shock a natural experiment summary using households from coastal districts in bangladesh as a case and applying the difference in difference estimation method this paper demonstrates a gender differentiated outcome of negative income shocks for education expenditures of households the cyclonic disaster that reduced crop income substantially increased the demand for labor as well as wages for rebuilding damaged farms this in turn increased the opportunity costs of boys schooling as reconstruction is a male friendly sector consequently parents withdrew their sons from school and engaged them in their households repair work and or in wage earning activities however girls schooling expenditure was unchanged in the affected farm and non farm households

input use and market development in sub saharan africa an overview abstract this paper sets forth the background and objectives of this special issue trends in input use since 1980 are reviewed and a conceptual framework is presented for analyzing problems of input use and formulating strategies for resolving them reasons for low levels of fertilizer use by smallholder farmers are summarized briefly the essential points of the papers in the special issue and their implications for further expansion of input use in sub saharan africa are then outlined

crowding out diversion and benefit cost assessments in fertilizer subsidy programs in sub saharan africa a comment on jayne t s mather d mason n ricker gilbert j 2013 how do fertilizer subsidy programs affect total fertilizer use in sub saharan africa crowding out diversion and benefit cost assessments agric econ 44 6 687 703 jayne et al make a valuable contribution to emerging empirical evidence on agricultural input subsidy programs in africa by examining the effects of corrupt diversion of subsidized fertilizers on the displacement or crowding out effects of farmers purchases of subsidized fertilizer on purchases of unsubsidized fertilizer unfortunately their estimation of the effects of this on economic and financial benefit cost ratios bcrs is methodologically flawed and for malawi is also undermined by problematic use of data this comment presents a consistent methodology for revised estimates of both economic bcr and fiscal efficiency for the malawi program this shows that the underlying economic bcr of subsidized fertilizers in malawi has been higher than estimated by jayne et al and is largely unaffected by diversion and displacement but that the fiscal efficiency of investments in the program is strongly affected by diversion and displacement in program implementation

frontier production functions and technical efficiency a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics abstract the modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades forsund lovell and schmidt 1980 and schmidt 1986 present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication this paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper

conceptualizing interventions to support on farm genetic resource conservation abstract interest is increasing worldwide in on farm conservation as a component of a strategy to conserve crop genetic resources this may require outside support to small scale farmers in areas of crop diversity this paper argues that crop diversity maintained by farming households results from the interplay between a demand and a supply for this diversity interventions to support on farm conservation can be conceptualized by the way they influence these two factors demand interventions should increase the value of crop diversity for farmers or decrease the farm level opportunity costs of maintaining it while supply interventions should decrease the costs of accessing diversity

diversification economies and specialisation efficiencies in a mixed food and coffee smallholder farming system in papua new guinea smallholder farming systems in papua new guinea are characterised by an integrated set of cash cropping and subsistence food cropping activities in the highlands provinces the subsistence food crop sub system is dominated by sweet potato production coffee dominates the cash cropping sub system but a limited number of food crops are also grown for cash sale the dynamics between sub systems can influence the scope for complementarity between and technical efficiency of their operations especially in light of the seasonality of demand for household labour and management inputs within the farming system a crucial element of these dynamic processes is diversification into commercial agricultural production which can influence factor productivity and the efficiency of crop production where smallholders maintain a strong production base in subsistence foods in this study we use survey data from households engaged in coffee and food crop production in the benabena district of eastern highlands province to derive technical efficiency indices for each household over two years a stochastic input distance function approach is used to establish whether diversification economies exist and whether specialisation in coffee subsistence food or cash food production significantly influences technical efficiency on the sampled smallholdings diversification economies are weakly evident between subsistence food production and both coffee and cash food production but diseconomies of diversification are discerned between coffee and cash food production a number of factors are tested for their effects on technical efficiency significant technical efficiency gains are made from diversification among broad cropping enterprises

testing the rank of engel curves with endogenous expenditure abstract we find that the endogeneity of consumer expenditure tends to increase the estimated rank of engel curves this result based on nonparametric procedure is in line with previous results obtained in the context of parametric specifications

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

the impact of kinship networks on the adoption of risk mitigating strategies in ethiopia the adoption of certain farm management practices such as tree planting and soil and water conservation can reduce exposure to weather shocks however in many countries the adoption of such risk mitigating measures is far from complete we explore how risk sharing networks in the form of kinship characterized by the moral imperative of within group sharing affects the adoption of risk mitigating activities in rural ethiopia we find suggestive evidence that compulsory sharing invites free riding and attenuates incentives for self protection against weather shocks we also find evidence of the existence of a possible substitution effect between credit and social networks

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

the impact of the social cash transfer scheme on food security in malawi abstract the malawi social cash transfer scheme scts was launched in 2006 to improve food security by directly providing cash transfers to the country s most destitute households although government implemented cash transfer schemes have gained popularity throughout latin america these schemes are just emerging in africa while where there is evidence of the beneficial impact of cash transfers on food security from latin american countries there is a dearth of evidence from resource poor countries in africa in order to fill this gap we conducted a longitudinal randomized community control study of the pilot scts in mchinji malawi from march 2007 to april 2008 in this study we describe the impact of approximately us 14 per month on food security among recipient households compared to control households using indicators of food consumption and expenditures and dietary diversity we present compelling evidence whereby each of the tested outcomes yields large effect sizes that are highly statistically significant demonstrating a sizeable impact of cash transfers on food security and food diversity in rural malawi the scts appears to be an effective tool within the national social welfare policy for improving food security in the country s destitute households