Abstract
Land degradation, population growth, and chronic poverty in Eastern and Southern Africa challenge the sustainability of livelihoods for smallholder farmers. These farmers often manage soils depleted of nutrients, apply limited amounts of mineral fertilizer, and take decisions about their cropping systems that involve multiple trade-offs. The rotation of cereals with legumes bears agronomic and ecological merit; however, the socio-economic implications of the cereal-legume rotation require a deeper understanding. This study explores the yield, labor, profit, and risk implications of different legume and mineral fertilizer practices in maize-based cropping systems in central Malawi. Our method involves coupling crop modeling and an agricultural household survey with a socio-economic analysis. We use a process-based cropping systems model to simulate the yield effects of integrating legumes into maize monocultures and applying mineral fertilizer over multiple seasons. We combine the simulated yields with socio-economic data from an agricultural household survey to calculate indicators of cropping-system performance. Our results show that a maize-groundnut rotation increases average economic profits by 75% compared with maize monoculture that uses more mineral fertilizer than in the rotation. The maize-groundnut rotation increases the stability of profits, reduces the likelihood of negative profits, and increases risk-adjusted profits. In contrast, the maize-groundnut rotation has a 54% lower average caloric yield and uses more labor than the maize monoculture with mineral fertilization. By comparing labor requirements with labor supply at the household scale, we show for the first time that the additional labor requirements of the maize-groundnut rotation can increase the likelihood of experiencing a labor shortage, if this rotation is undertaken by farm households in central Malawi. We demonstrate that risk and labor factors can be important when examining trade-offs among alternative cropping systems.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record; open copy licensed cc-by. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 7
Claim · model-written summary
Maize-groundnut rotation increased average economic profits by 75% compared with maize monoculture using more fertilizer.
- Treatment
- maize-groundnut rotatione0
- Outcome
- average economic profitse0
- Direction
- increasese0
- Value
- 75%e0
- Comparator
- maize monoculturee0
Zea maysOrganisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“a maize-groundnut rotation increases average economic profits by 75% compared with maize monoculture that uses more mineral fertilizer than in the rotation.”
Claim · model-written summary
Rotation increased stability of profits and risk-adjusted profits.
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The maize-groundnut rotation increases the stability of profits, reduces the likelihood of negative profits, and increases risk-adjusted profits.”
Claim · model-written summary
Rotation reduced likelihood of negative profits.
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The maize-groundnut rotation increases the stability of profits, reduces the likelihood of negative profits, and increases risk-adjusted profits.”
Claim · model-written summary
Rotation increased risk-adjusted profits.
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The maize-groundnut rotation increases the stability of profits, reduces the likelihood of negative profits, and increases risk-adjusted profits.”
Claim · model-written summary
Rotation had a 54% lower average caloric yield than fertilized monoculture.
- Treatment
- maize-groundnut rotatione0
- Outcome
- average caloric yielde0
- Direction
- lowere0
- Value
- 54%e0
- Comparator
- maize monoculture with mineral fertilizatione0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“the maize-groundnut rotation has a 54% lower average caloric yield and uses more labor than the maize monoculture with mineral fertilization.”
Claim · model-written summary
Rotation used more labor than fertilized monoculture.
- Treatment
- maize-groundnut rotatione0
- Outcome
- labore0
- Direction
- moree0
- Comparator
- maize monoculture with mineral fertilizatione0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“the maize-groundnut rotation has a 54% lower average caloric yield and uses more labor than the maize monoculture with mineral fertilization.”
Claim · model-written summary
Extra labor could increase household labor shortage risk in central Malawi.
- Treatment
- maize-groundnut rotatione0
- Outcome
- likelihood of experiencing a labor shortagee0
- Direction
- increasee0
- Setting
- central Malawie0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“the additional labor requirements of the maize-groundnut rotation can increase the likelihood of experiencing a labor shortage, if this rotation is undertaken by farm households in central Malawi.”
The same questions in other papers
rotation · yield · Zea mays (maize)Positive and negative results
253 papers in the same direction as this paper · 52 in the opposite direction · 16 reporting no difference from an alternative
- positive
- positive
- negative
318 papers more in this group
See all 322 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.