Climate-smart agriculture that promotes climate change adaptation and mitigation while improving livelihoods is being advocated to smallholder farmers. Most studies in this area focus on the yield and income impacts of practices, but we explore farmer well-being impacts. Using a multi-criteria analysis embedded in an in-person questionnaire, our findings suggest that smallholder farmers in Southern Malawi have diverse preferences for climate-smart practices based on location, access to markets and resources and importance placed on climate adaptation. The use of multidimensional well-being criteria provides deeper insights into the motivations and priorities of farmers, revealing trade-offs between immediate food needs and climate adaptation concerns, as well as between the need for incentives versus the risk of conditional credits. Our study calls for tailored climate-smart agriculture projects that allow farmers to adopt practices that meet their needs.
