15% of allocated land is operated, a share that decreases from 88% in the group below 5 ha to 11% in the above 500 ha group (table 5). While smallholders below 1 ha cultivate more than 95% of their land, mean land use intensity for the few (154) smallholder farmers with more than 10 ha is only 22%.

Recent digitization of all the country’s estate leases by a World Bank supported project supports these general conclusions. It puts the number of leases at 58,733 (of which 35,140 are in agriculture) and suggests that the majority is expired. Even if 40% of the land leased to estates were non-existent or unsuitable for agriculture, collecting lease fees equivalent to the median value of rent paid (or self-declared willingness to pay) in the 2010/11 IHS for the remainder would generate a total of close to US$50 million per year, in lease fees. Further analysis to eliminate overlaps and so-called ‘ghost estates’,<sup>14</sup> align registered estate boundaries with actual land use, trace changes in ownership or occupation, and renew expired leases can help further refine this. Analysis also suggests that not all estate land may be effectively used.<sup>15</sup> Comparing production structure between smallholders and estates reveals differences in cropping patterns: for sampled estates, 42% of area is devoted to tobacco, followed by maize (39%), groundnuts (7%), and other crops (table 5). While differences in terms of crop composition somewhat limit the scope for comparing yields, mean values suggest that for all crops with the exception of sunflower and tea, yields by smallholders are significantly above those by estates. As estates use consistently more inputs than smallholders, this suggests a strong negative relationship between farm size and productivity on the land area actually cultivated. Non-parametric regressions of maize, rice, tobacco and coffee yields for the pooled sample plotted against the log of farm size in figures 1a-1d graphically illustrate that, although slope varies by crop, the overall relationship is stable and rather tightly estimated.

# **4. Econometric results**

Regression results support the notion that perceived risk of land loss was higher for the poor, strangers, people who transacted land, and those who had experienced land loss/encroachment or were involved in land disputes earlier. Fear of land loss is estimated to reduce productivity by 5% overall, an effect limited to females who, as a result of fearing land loss, are estimated to incur losses of 12%. While this would be large enough to fund a systematic low-cost program of land regularization to eliminate insecurity, the net effect of matrilineal inheritance on productivity remains limited.

> 14 Coordinates in relevant survey plans imply that about one-third (19,222 of the 58,733 estates) are located outside Malawi and further study is needed to determine whether this is due to transcription errors or whether estates in question do not exist. 15 Of the 26,277 agricultural estates for which cloud free SPOT 2013/15 satellite imagery was available, 11,287 (43%) left more than 50% of their total (cloud-free) land area uncultivated. While data would need to be updated to improve coverage and fine-tune land use classifications, freely available imagery offers immense opportunities for doing so.

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