Malawi Farmer Focus Group Transcripts on Climate and Agriculture

199 transcripts from focus groups in Salima, Mangochi, and Zomba districts detail monthly agricultural activities. Farmers discuss how climate services and extreme weather events affect their decision-making for crops like maize. This data was produced in April-May 2019 as part of the NERC SHEAR program's IPACE-Malawi project.

Use Cases

• Analyze transcripts for mentions of specific monthly agricultural activities to model seasonal decision-making patterns.
• Extract discussions on extreme weather events to understand perceived risks and adaptive strategies among farmers.
• Code focus group data for references to climate services to assess their integration into farming calendars.
• Identify thematic patterns linking agro-climate indices, such as drought, to shifts in maize cultivation practices.

Strengths

• Data originates from 199 distinct focus group discussions, providing qualitative depth.
• Covers three geographically distinct districts in Malawi: Salima, Mangochi, and Zomba.
• Explicitly focuses on the intersection of climate services, extreme weather, and agricultural activities.
• Produced under a formal research program (NERC SHEAR) with a documented grant (IPACE-Malawi).

Limitations

• Sample data and column structure are unavailable, complicating initial data exploration.
• The qualitative, transcript-based format requires significant manual coding or NLP preprocessing for quantitative analysis.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a two-month period in 2019, lacking longitudinal perspective.

Provenance

Source

Environmental Information Data Centre

Collection Method

Focus group discussions transcripts

Time Range

April-May 2019

Freshness

null

Geography

Salima, Mangochi, and Zomba districts, Malawi