Do estate farms affect smallholder household labour decisions in Sub-Saharan Africa? A Case Study of Malawi

Introduction Estate farming has been a historical part of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study investigated the role that proximity to estates in Malawi had on smallholders’ allocation of labour on their own farms, as well as their supply and hiring of casual agricultural labour (ganyu).Methods This study used propensity score matching and covariate adjustments with propensity score matching to estimate the effects of proximity to estates on the time spent by smallholders on different labour activities. We used data from the 2019 Malawian Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) and geospatial data from the OpenStreetMap project.Results and Discussion Our findings show that the presence of estate farms was negatively associated with the time smallholder household members spent on their own farms and was positively, albeit modestly, associated with the amount of time used for both casual labour (ganyu) supply and hiring activities. We also found that estates were negatively associated with the shares of smallholder household income that came from their own crop farming and positively associated with the shares of household income from non-crop farming activities, especially non-ganyu wage employment.