Socio-economic drivers are putting pressure on soil fertility and crop productivity in smallholder agriculture in Malawi. Policy responses may be designed to address direct drivers of farmland degradation. However, less tangible indirect drivers may have an equally important role. This chapter reviews literature and policy to analyze interventions and outcomes for land restoration in Malawi, as framed by the DPSIR framework. The framework enables the systematization of societal drivers and responses to environmental issues. We extend it to include values and worldviews, to allow for a deeper understanding of how human agency has been shaped and can shape decision-making in land restoration. Four questions emerge relevant for designing policy and interventions to address land degradation: (1) What values, worldviews, beliefs, and perspectives exist about nature, the environment, and the local food system in the community? (2) How can we explore the underlying reasons and explanations for smallholder farmers’ willingness to engage in land restoration practices? (3) How do smallholder attitudes and perceptions concerning the benefits of environmental conservation compare with biophysical characteristics on the ground? (4) How are the current integrated learning approaches to environmental conservation enabling meaning-making, and how are they facilitating the integration of the options of being and becoming stakeholders? To achieve land restoration on degraded smallholder farmland in Malawi, it is necessary to stimulate local participation by integrating local knowledge, capacities, and values as drivers and responses to degraded farmland.