All Articles

Smallholder rural farmers are exposed to diverse idiosyncratic and covariate shocks that lead to high income and consumption volatility. Formal cash management tools, which are important for managing risk and volatility, often break down due to high information asymmetries and the transaction costs of operating in rural areas.

This paper assesses the differences in technical efficiency of, and the cassava production systems employed by, male-managed (MMF) and female-managed (FMF) cassava farms in the Fanteakwa District of Ghana.

This study examines the extent to which, in the Sahelian environment – where the scarcity of forage is intensifying – climate change perceptions influence the adoption of cottonseed cake among livestock producers in the Hauts-Bassins region of Burkina Faso.

Baobab products provide cash income and supplement diets for local communities living in marginalised, arid and semi-arid regions. However, these products are neglected by research, selectively traded and considered underutilised. This study endeavours to narrow this information gap by analysing the determinants of baobab collectors’ choice of marketing channels in Kenya.

This study examines the effects of rising food prices on rural household living standards, with a particular focus on the moderating role of non-farm diversification.

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.

This study investigated the food security effect of the adoption of improved maize varieties among farming households in Uganda using four waves of the Uganda National Panel Survey (UNPS) spanning the period 2013 to 2020.

Climate variability threatens farmers’ livelihoods. Efforts to address climate stress recognise climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a promising approach to minimising the damage caused by increasing weather variability.

The underutilisation of coconut and its by-products imply poor livelihoods and, ultimately food insecurity for farmers growing coconut. Sustainable practices like a circular economy (CE) need to be promoted for uptake by the farmers to achieve sustainable development through better utilisation of coconuts and their by-products.

This study examines the impact of privatisation on the productivity of smallholder sugarcane out-growers in Malawi using a case study of Dwangwa Cane Growers Limited (DCGL).

Understanding rice farmers’ responses to market prices is essential for policy makers to design effective policies to better manage input demand and rice supply. This paper applies duality theory to derive the elasticities of input demand and output supply for Vietnamese rice production using a translog profit function approach.

This paper analyses the impact of adaptation to climate change on bean productivity on a micro-scale using instrumental variable techniques in a two-stage econometric model, using data collected from farming households in northern and central Uganda.

While irrigation is key to boosting agricultural productivity in Burkina Faso, it may come with hidden health costs. Drawing on data from over 1 000 households in the Sourou Valley and using propensity score matching, this study uncovers the unintended consequences of irrigation for public health.

Kenya has become a driving force of trade integration at the regional and continental level, albeit this process is still incomplete.

The burden of low-quality diets and childhood undernutrition is widespread in rural areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, where households rely mostly on agriculture. Various empirical studies have shown the relative importance of the market, and hence food purchases, compared with farm diversification in raising dietary diversity.

The effects of climate change on smallholder agriculture under different crop technologies, namely conservation agriculture, Falbedia albida, optimal fertilisation and intensive farming, were analysed against the conventional subsistence farming in Malawi.

Integrated pest management (IPM) has been promoted globally as an alternative approach to the widespread broad-spectrum chemical insecticidal application for the control of pests and diseases in agricultural production to minimise the harmful effects of the chemicals on humans and the environment.

Mali’s population is experiencing lifestyle and dietary changes that are driven in part by urbanisation and income growth. Utilising two large-scale datasets, we bring new empirical evidence regarding whether Malians are shifting toward highly processed foods, meals purchased away from home, and sugary foods.

This paper evaluates output supply and input factor demands for livestock products in the Southern rangelands of Kenya. A flexible translog profit function that permits the application of the primal approach to the output supply and factor demand analysis was estimated using household-level data.

The hazards and impacts of climate change are exacerbating. They threaten crop productivity, farmers’ resilience and the mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Understanding climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and applying it is crucial.

This study characterises the nature of the vegetable production shortfall throughout Ghana for remedial action to be taken. By applying the meta-stochastic frontier analysis to a sample of okra, pepper and tomato farmers, the results show that the ranking of production inputs in production is in the order land, hired labour, fertiliser, pesticide and family labour.

This paper argues and provides empirical evidence that trade-offs and/or complementarities are inherent in technological options that shape the adoption of and land-use decisions in production systems involving multiple crops in Ethiopia.

This paper evaluates the extent to which changes in international wheat prices are transmitted to domestic markets in Kenya using an error correction model (ECM) that employs monthly producer price data for the period 2002 to 2020. Domestic wheat markets in Kenya were found to be strongly integrated while, international wheat markets were cointegrated with domestic prices at the port of Mombasa.

Recognising potential selection bias due to non-randomness of the data, this study used propensity score matching on data from a nationally representative fifth Integrated Household Survey (IHS5) to investigate the effect of agriculture extension services on the technical efficiency of maize farmers in Malawi.