This study examines how food prices and related seasonality factors affect the dietary choices of low-income farm households in rural Tanzania. The Kishapu and Mvomero districts were selected based on contrasting rainfall patterns, farming practices and economic activities.

One of the debates around sustainability and the scaling up of micro-financial services is the commercialisation of micro-finance institutions (MFIs). This paper examines the contribution of the commercialisation of MFIs to ensuring the sustainability of MFIs and in scaling up their commitment to serve their primary target groups: poor and marginalised people.

This paper analyses the extent to which an increase in food crop yield strengthens the relationship between agricultural commercialisation and rural poverty reduction in Burkina Faso.

This paper examines farmers’ preferences for an improved Bambara groundnut variety, the key attributes desired, factors influencing preference, and the number of attributes desired by smallholder farmers in Ghana.

Sub-Saharan African countries, with their initially large agricultural sectors, reduce poverty and urbanise most rapidly and efficiently when they achieve rapid agricultural growth.2 The faster agriculture grows, the faster its relative importance declines.

Cette étude examine l'impact économique de l'utilisation des semences améliorées sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages ruraux au Cameroun.

This paper investigates the extent of price volatility of maize and rice in Ghana following the introduction of public buffer stockholding operations (PBSO) as a policy to stabilise farm output prices in the last decade.

This article examines the current state of food safety preparedness and response in three representative countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. We focus on foodborne diseases associated with the microbial contamination of animal-sourced foods.

The starting point for this article is the concept of a commodity exchange. A working definition is a physical or – more likely – electronic marketplace for buying, selling and trading commodities, whether ‘hard’ commodities, which typically are natural resources that must be mined or extracted (gold, rubber, oil, etc.), or ‘soft’ commodities, which are mainly agricultural products or livestock (coffee, corn, cotton, sugar, soybeans, etc.).

L’Afrique Subsaharienne n'a pas assez bénéficié des grandes révolutions connues du monde agricole qui ont permis d’accroitre les productivités. Malgré l’existence des nouvelles technologies, les niveaux des productivités agricoles demeurent faibles et inférieurs à ceux d’autres régions en développement.

The determinants of the technical efficiency (TE) of adopters and non-adopters of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies in the upper Rwizi micro-catchment of south-western Uganda are compared using cross-sectional survey data from 246 smallholder farmers.

Rural areas across the developing countries in every region of the world lag behind their urban counterparts in many important sectors and, most importantly, in improved water supply services.

Many governments adopt agricultural policies that affect production incentives across commodities. In addition, severe market failures in the form of high marketing margins often lower the prices that farmers receive.

Fair trade is an important ethical concern in the food value chains of developed countries. However, there is a dearth of empirical insights into consumer preferences for this critical aspect in the domestic markets of developing countries.

The adoption of improved agricultural technologies is very low in Tanzania, which has led to both low crop productivity and low production. This paper therefore analyses the factors that influence the adoption of improved seeds, inorganic fertilisers and a package of technologies by smallholder maize farmers in Tanzania

This study analyses the trade-offs between welfare (measured by income) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using a farm-level optimisation model that incorporates the predominant cereal (sorghum), legumes (groundnut, soybeans), livestock (cattle, goats and sheep) and trees (locust bean, camel’s foot) representative of production systems at two contrasting sites in northern Nigeria.

Using a non-experimental cross-sectional dataset of 471 households, we evaluate the impacts of satellite collection points (SCPs) under the Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) on storage decisions and crop income from maize sales among smallholder farmers in Uganda.

Agricultural commercialisation is a critical pathway for economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, the lack of market information may impede this development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine market information and preferences for soybean quality in a developing-world context.

Our understanding of climate-induced crop failure and crop abandonment is limited at present. This study surveyed theoretical and empirical literature on climate-induced crop failure and crop abandonment.

Achieving state market policies depends partly on the extent to which changes in commodity prices are transmitted along supply chains. This paper examines the effect of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) on price transmission between white maize wholesale and retail markets in Kumasi, Ghana.