Towards Food Sovereignty: The Role of Smallholder Farmers’ Seed Security in Improving Climate Change Resilience in Northern Malawi

With climate extreme events increasing in frequency and intensity in Malawi, the future of local food production faces serious threats, necessitating renewed efforts to build the adaptive capabilities of the majority poor smallholder farmers. In this context, seed security is critical to improving rural livelihoods and agrobiodiversity; however, knowledge of its role in climate change resilience is sparse. Drawing insights from vulnerability and resilience literature, this paper examines the role of seed security in enhancing climate change resilience in northern Malawi. Using a cross-sectional survey of 1,090 smallholder farmers and applying logistic regression analysis, the study found that households that are seed-secure were significantly more likely to report stronger resilience to climate change than those that were not seed-secure, even after controlling for theoretically relevant variables (OR = 1.89; p < .01). Other noteworthy predictors of climate change resilience included level of education, wealth, agroecological practice, and seed sources. Based on the findings, we advocate for promoting seed security as part of broader localized and place-specific action plans to foster resilience to climate change in agricultural regions.