Soil health and grain yield impacts of climate resilient agriculture projects: Evidence from southern Malawi

CONTEXT: Climate resilient agriculture (CRA) projects like watershed restoration efforts can enhance agricultural systems' resilience to climate change and extreme weather shocks by improving soil health and grain yields in vulnerable communities. One such project, Wellness and Agriculture for Life Advancement (WALA) implemented watershed restoration across eight districts in southern Malawi from 2009 to 2014 to improve degraded soils and boost grain yields. Yet, rigorous analyses of soil health and grain yield impacts of CRA projects remain limited in southern Malawi, other dryland areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and elsewhere. OBJECTIVE: Using the watershed restoration context of the WALA project as a case study, we estimated the core determinants of CRA program participation and the impacts of participation on soil health and grain yields among smallholder farmers in southern Malawi in 2016. METHODS: We applied an endogenous switching regression with a control function approach to primary survey data from a sample of 808 agricultural households from five WALA districts to estimate the determinants of participation in the CRA project, and the impacts on soil health parameters and grain yields, accounting for endogeneity and selectivity bias. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: We found that participation in the project improved grain yields in terms of maize (Zea mays) by 61% in 2016 - a drought year, and soil health parameters including nitrogen, potassium, soil organic matter, and soil organic carbon by 41%, 31%, 57%, and 44% respectively. Results suggest that CRA projects are essential devices for improving soil health and grain yields in dryland areas such as southern Malawi, elsewhere in SSA, and beyond. SIGNIFICANCE: This research shows that CRA projects can enhance sustainable agriculture by improving soil health parameters, increasing grain yields, and building agricultural systems' resilience to climate change and extreme weather shocks, thereby contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals on hunger and climate action in dryland areas of developing countries.