AIP's greatest test: survey respondents prefer cash equivalents of subsidised farm inputs

Malawi: Two-thirds of 3,695 respondents (66 percent) on the question of the preferred modality of the Affordable Inputs Program (AIP) prefer to be given the cash equivalent of the subsidised farm inputs, according to a survey conducted in Zomba and Machinga districts by the Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR), writes Wanangwa Mtawali.

According to IPOR, the survey comes after a slew of hiccups with AIP since its inception in 2020, sparking mixed feelings about the program's effectiveness and mode of implementation.

It was part of a larger project investigating environmental governance in the vicinity of the Zomba Mountain Forest Reserve, which included traditional authorities Malemia, Nkapita, Mlumbe, and Nkula in the Zomba and Machinga districts.

34 percent of respondents prefer the current system of distributing coupons to beneficiaries.

AIP replaced the Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) with the goal of improving household and national food security. Targeted beneficiaries, for example, purchase two 50 kilogramme bags of fertiliser at MK15,000 per bag, which is subsidised from around MK75, 000 per bag.

According to the IPOR survey's interpretation, this means that a respondent would rather be given, among other things, an MK100,000 subsidy on two bags of fertiliser to fend for themselves.

Disaggregating the data by gender, the survey also found that “while majorities of both men and women prefer cash to coupons that they can redeem, women are nevertheless more likely than men to express a preference for cash while a slightly higher proportion of men prefers coupons”.

This, according to IPOR, interprets these differences by speculating that “women suffer the greatest burden of spending more time in redeeming AIP coupons than men, hence their preference for cash which might reduce the time spent in obtaining the farm inputs”.

On analyzing the data by age categories, the survey found that adults are much more likely to prefer cash compared to the youth. IPOR speculates that “this is a function of the youth having limited experience of the challenges that are encountered in redeeming farm inputs using coupons”.