Doctoral Dissertation Research: Calculated, Constrained, and Co-Opted Decisions: Explaining Agricultural Behavior of Malawian Farmers in Times of Uncertainty

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University of Georgia doctoral student Joseph W. Lanning, under the guidance of Dr. Bram Tucker, will conduct research that addresses a classic but important debate about how individuals make decisions. Are they rational, economic decision makers who, given certain constraints, carefully calculate costs and benefits or do they make decisions as social actors who are embedded in networks and structures that share low-cost, but potentially flawed, strategies? The research will be conducted among farmers in Malawi who are challenged by persistent hunger, uncertain prices for agricultural inputs, and decreasing soil fertility. Farmers are faced with decisions to invest in hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizer or to use alternatives, like planting legumes, to increase soil fertility and maintain yields. The researcher asks how variation in agricultural behavior among Malawian farmers is explained by (1) economic and environmental constraints, (2) ethno-agricultural knowledge of cause and effect, (3) attitude towards risk, or by (4) a farmer's use of decision-making short cuts such as just imitating what other farmers in their social networks do. The project will begin with a census recording basic demographics and the slope (flat, gentle, steep) of a farmer's primary maize field. A sample of farmers from the census, capturing variation in field slope, will participate in field mapping and semi-structured interviews, focused on economic and environmental constraints. An historical matrix exercise will explore perceptions of agricultural cause and effect relationships, while a small-stakes choice experiment will measure attitudes towards risk. Social network analysis will be used to examine the interactions with and influence of prestigious and successful farmers in each network. This project contributes to the development of decision-making models that unravel the degree to which ecological/economic variables versus social variables influence behavior. Revealing the determinants to investment in agriculture may be instrumental in the design of strategies that promote behaviors that maintain yields while preventing environmental decay or exacerbation of social and economic inequality.