Malawi Technology Adoption and Risk Initiative (MTARI) household baseline survey is a part of a larger impact evaluation study, being conducted by the World Bank and the University of Michigan researchers. The randomized field experiment was designed to examine whether provision of insurance against a major source of production risk induces farmers to take out loans to adopt a new crop technology. The study sample was composed of roughly 800 maize and groundnut farmers. Randomly selected half of the farmers in the sample were offered a credit to purchase high-yielding hybrid maize and groundnut seeds for planting in the November 2006 crop season. The other half of farmers were offered a similar credit package, but were also required to purchase (at actuarially fair rates) a weather insurance policy that partially or fully forgave the loan in the event of poor rainfall. In Malawi, the dominant source of production risk is the level of rainfall.
The household baseline survey was administered to all farmers in the sample in September and October 2006. The survey covered income, education, assets, income-generating activities (including detailed information on crop production and crop choice), measures of risk aversion, and knowledge about financial products such as credit and insurance.