Starter Packs

Although Starter Packs are nowadays often associated with the introductory packages of mobile telephone providers, in rural Malawi they refer to a policy that sought to achieve national food security through the distribution of tiny bags of free inputs—improved maize seed, legumes and fertilizer—to smallholder farmers. First implemented in 1998/99 as a universal policy, the Starter Pack programme was continued up to 2003/04, albeit in a scaled-down form, targeting only the most vulnerable rural households. This book analyses and evaluates this policy as it developed, capturing both the macro-economic and (donor) political context in which it emerged, and the way in which it impacted on the farm practices of Malawian smallholders. Contributions to this volume have been written by those involved in the planning and implementation of the Starter Pack programme, a number of its monitors and evaluators and several scholars of Malawi who were not directly involved in the programme.

Agriculture · Business · Context (archaeology) · Developing country · Distribution (mathematics) · Economic growth · Economics · Food security · Geography · Political science · Politics · Starter · Agricultural Innovations and Practices · Engineering · ICT Impact and Policies · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development