Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 63% of the population estimated to live in poverty. 1 It is also heavily reliant on its agricultural sector, not only for employment, as is common with most other countries in sub- Saharan Africa, but also for income generation. In 1993, agriculture accounted for 39% of Malawi’s gross domestic product and 94% of its export earnings. Obviously, any program designed to confront the immediate poverty problem must address agricultural productivity. As Malawi’s history indicates, this is no easy feat in a country that is landlocked and has but a single rainy season. Malawi in fact did invest heavily in an agriculturally led growth strategy between the 1960s and 1990s. This was aimed primarily at increasing pro- duction in the large estate sector that was purchased from English owners. 2 The sector increased by land expropriation from traditional chiefs. 3 Rather than using the land to resettle the large population from the south, the gov- ernment leased the land at low fees to large estate holders and prohibited smallholder farmers from producing selected commercial crops. This increased the demand for estates and effectively created a labor pool for estate owners. While this strategy did generate significant export revenues, mostly from tobacco production, it did not make a significant dent in alleviating rural poverty. One of the reasons is that the government was a monopoly purchaser of maize in the country, so producer prices were set very low, acting as a tax on smallholder maize producers