All Articles

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.

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.

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.

The adoption of improved agricultural technologies is known to significantly improve incomes, create more wealth, alleviate poverty and contribute to rural development in many developing countries.

The literature on what drives crop failure and crop abandonment is scant. This paper explores the interplay between risk factors and crop abandonment. We examine the role of risk sources and risk management strategies in crop abandonment by smallholder maize farmers in Zambia.

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.

This paper investigates the interdependence of decisions on the adoption of agricultural technology and the simultaneous interaction between adoption and food security situations of smallholders, using a sample of 260 households from rural Ethiopia.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is viewed as a potentially effective intervention to address low agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while strengthening farmers’ capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change.

This study examines determinants of food loss and waste behaviour among farming households in western Nigeria

This study uses primary data from smallholder sugarcane farmers in Kenya to investigate how women’s empowerment affects household poverty. Instrumental-variable tobit (IV tobit) was used to determine the causality between women’s empowerment and household poverty.

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.

Using nationally representative cross-sectional data, the study investigated the impact of CA adoption through a multivalued treatment framework.

Climate change and its pronounced effects have greatly disfranchised the livelihoods of aquafarmers. To leverage these negative effects of climate change, climate-smart aquaculture (CSA) practices have been developed for adoption by farmers. However, it is not known whether these practices have made any meaningful contribution to farmers in terms of their livelihoods and resilience to the vagaries of climatic change.

Climate change and heat stress are expected to worsen the issue of water scarcity that is affecting the agricultural sector, among others through increased crop prices and costs, in addition to changes in yields.

The reintroduction of innovative forms of input subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) following the food crisis of 2008 raises concerns about their effectiveness in the fight against poverty. In this context, this paper examines the effect of the targeted fertiliser subsidy implemented in Togo from 2017 to 2019.

The main focus of this paper was to: (i) determine the impact of women’s share of household income on the pattern of expenditure on various categories of basic goods in southeast Nigeria; (ii) explain the pattern of household expenditure using the bargaining model of household behaviour; and (iii) extrapolate the results to the policy implications of gender-specific control of household incomes.

Zambia has been implementing agricultural input subsidy programmes to stimulate crop production and productivity among smallholder farmers with the goal of increasing national food security.

In this paper, we explore the role of wildlife in climate change adaptation, especially in areas used predominantly for livestock production in South Africa. Using a sample of 3 449 wildlife and livestock ranches, we estimate a multinomial choice model of various ranching options in these areas. The results indicate that mixed wildlife-livestock ranches are less vulnerable to climate change when compared to ranches with only wildlife or only livestock.

Using the potential outcomes framework, we estimate the influence of the adoption gap, adoption drivers and impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties (IGVs) on groundnut yield among smallholder farmers in Nigeria.

One of the three components of Rwanda’s flagship anti-poverty programme, Vision 2020 Umurenge (VUP), is the provision of credit to relatively poor households, nearly all of them farmers. In this paper we estimate the impact of the programme using high-quality household survey data from 2013/2014 and 2016/2017.

We measured the producer price impacts of food and cash transfer programmes in Ethiopia using monthly panel data from 37 zones in four major regions over the period January 2007 to December 2010.

Kenya, like most countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa region, has continued to be overwhelmed by high and volatile food prices. In an effort to mitigate this problem, the government has implemented various trade and marketing policy instruments. The aim of this study is to examine whether the policies implemented have achieved their desired effects.

Despite the crucial role played by Nile perch in the income of fishers around Lake Victoria, Tanzania, fishing pressure has increased in recent years and has led to overfishing and, consequently, a risk to the lake’s future sustainability and the fishers’ livelihoods. This study used data collected in 2018 from 268 randomly selected sample fishers at 10 landing sites across Lake Victoria.

This study investigates risk perceptions and management strategies among maize growers in the equatorial region of South Sudan. A cross-sectional study design included a survey questionnaire that was used to analyse data from 510 respondents.