Latest Resources

5 October 2016

Farmer-managed seed systems in Dowa, Malawi: A legacy of eroded confidence and agricultural diver...

This report is the product of field work conducted by ACB and Kusamala Institute for Agriculture and Ecology in Dowa district in central Malawi. The objective of the research was to deepen our understanding of the role of farmer seed varieties in smallholder production systems that have come under heavy pressure from concerted Green Revolution […]

20 June 2016

Green Revolution dead-end in Malawi: Two case studies— AGRA’s Pigeon Pea Project and Malawi’s Agr...

This report that the Alliance for a Green Revolution’s ( AGRA’s) sponsored pigeon pea project in Malawi was a dismal failure and its agrodealer project had some major and fundamental weaknesses. The AGRA pigeon pea project and the Malawi Agro-dealer Strengthening Programme (MASP) were implemented under AGRA’s Soil Health Programme (SHP) and the Programme for […]

6 July 2015

GM and seed industry eye Africa’s lucrative cowpea seed markets: The political economy of cowpea ...

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has today released a new report titled, GM and seed industry eye Africa’s lucrative cowpea seed markets: The political economy of cowpea in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi. The report shows a strong interest by the seed industry in commercialising cowpea seed production and distribution in West Africa, […]

6 October 2014

Running to Stand Still: Small-Scale Farmers and the Green Revolution in Malawi

According to ACB lead researcher, Dr Stephen Greenberg, “small-scale farmers are using shockingly high levels of synthetic fertilisers at great financial costs to themselves and the public purse. Rising soil infertility is a feature of farming systems reliant on synthetic fertiliser. We found that farmers are increasingly adopting hybrid maize seed, encouraged by government subsidies […]

11 February 2007

Malawi – GMO Legislation

The government of Malawi published its biosafety draft regulations in The Malawi Gazette Supplement on 13 September 2002 (“biosafety law”), at the height of the GM food aid controversy when several countries in Southern Africa imposed restrictions on the acceptance of genetically modified food aid from the United States. Malawi accepted the GM food aid, […]