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.).

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.

Weather is an important determinant of household well-being in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the relationship between novel measures of cropping-season weather conditions and household food consumption in rural Niger, and how household coping mechanisms mediate that relationship.

In sub-Saharan Africa, identifying estimates of consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for safe food continues to receive attention in the literature. Using experimental data from Nigeria, we examined the source of heterogeneities in preference and WTP for organically produced food.

This study applied the zero-inefficiency stochastic frontier (ZISF) to analyse the technical efficiency of 333 improved rice-farming households for the 2012/2013 farming season in Ghana.

Vitamin A deficiency is still a challenge in many African countries, including Tanzania. Survey data were gathered in Tanzania to determine consumers’ risk perceptions of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and severe visual impairment.

The adverse effects of weather extremes produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of household agricultural production in Zambia. Extreme weather events such as floods and drought are expected to increase in intensity and frequency due to climate change.

This study investigates the effect of temperature and precipitation on the economic value of agricultural output from farm households in six Sub-Saharan African countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

La production du riz sous contrat a pour avantage de répondre aux exigences de la qualité de la production du riz et de satisfaire la demande intérieure du riz pour le pays. Cette étude a pour objectif d’analyser les critères d’insolvabilité des contrats des riziculteurs au Burkina Faso.

This paper examines determinants of the adoption of rainwater-harvesting technologies in a rain shadow area of southern Malawi. The most common ex situ technologies in the area were dams, and the widely used in situ technologies were box ridges, contour markers and swales.

This study employs a binary probit model on a sample of 319 smallholder farmers in Thulamela and Collins Chabane municipalities to examine their willingness to pay for agricultural extension services.

Livestock, particularly cattle, are an integral part of livelihoods in rural sub-Saharan Africa. However, diseases such as African animal trypanosomosis (AAT) have limited the potential of this important sector in the rural household economy.

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) studies for traditional food products are plausibly affected by unobserved decisions and strategic collusion between the experimenter and respondents. Similarly, WTP estimates in developing countries using a one-time survey might be inconsistent, as the acceptance of new products likely varies with exposure to product attributes.

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.

To arrest the ongoing ecological disaster in the country, the government of Zimbabwe implemented the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE). Through the CAMPFIRE programme, each ward could benefit from two land uses – agriculture and wildlife.

Descriptive statistics show that women with land rights were more empowered, younger, more educated and owned more land than those without land rights.

This article investigated the role of cattle attributes in buyers’ choices and hedonic pricing in Benin. Cross-sectional data were collected on 347 market cattle transactions using the revealed preference method.

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

While a large body of literature documents the existence of informal arrangements to share risk across and within households, there has been little research on the various coping strategies through which risk sharing takes place, and how these strategies function.

The inverse farm size and productivity relationship (IR) is a recurring theme in the literature. However, most previous studies were undertaken within a setting of mixed cropping systems. In this article, we investigate the effect of farm size on productivity within the context of a perennial mono-cropping system, acute competition for farmland, frequent subdivision of farms and declining yields.

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.