Beyond ecological synergies: examining the impact of participatory agroecology on social capital in smallholder farming communities

ABSTRACT

The pivotal role of social capital in smallholder agriculture is widely acknowledged. The growth effect of social capital manifests in how networks and trust facilitate access to productive resources and knowledge sharing among farmers. While sub-Saharan Africa is considered a storehouse of rich social capital, recent literature indicates its rapid depletion due mainly to the rise of capitalist agriculture and concomitant reorganization of the relations of production that characterize smallholder agriculture. Agroecology is an alternative approach to agriculture aimed at addressing the adverse impacts of capitalist agriculture, including improving farmer-to-farmer networks. In this paper, we draw on longitudinal data from a five-year participatory agroecology intervention in Malawi using Difference-in-Difference (DID) to compare the social capital endowment of agroecology-practicing households (n = 514) and a control group of non-agroecology households (n = 400). We further employed linear regression to examine the relationship between social capital and agroecology adoption. Results from the DID analysis show a positive and statistically significant change in mean social capital for participatory agroecology households (β = 0.325, p< 0.001) compared to non-agroecology households (β = 0.108) after accounting for theoretically relevant factors. Overall, the average treatment effect of the intervention on social capital was positive (β = 0.217, p< 0.01). We also found a bidirectional relationship between social capital and adoption of agroecology practices (β = 0.12, p< 0.001). These findings reveal the positive inroads of agroecology beyond the farm-level and demonstrate the potential for policymakers to leverage these benefits to promote sustainable agriculture.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroecology
• social capital
• smallholder agriculture
• Malawi
• sub-Saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Detailed discussion of this survey is provided by Subramanian et al. (2002).

2. According to the IPBES, transformative change denotes a system-wide restructuring across technological, economic and social realms, including paradigms, goals and values (IPBES 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Global Affairs Canada [S065667].