All Articles

This study was carried out to evaluate different spraying regimes for the production of two cowpea varieties (Ife Brown and IT2246) in the humid southwest agro-ecologies of Nigeria in order to recommend optimum spraying regimes for cowpea production in the zone.

Low agricultural commercialisation due to low productivity and a lack of access to and use of improved seeds are common features of smallholders in the Ethiopian highlands. Seed-producer cooperatives (SPCs) were established and strengthened in these highlands to facilitate smallholders’ access to improved seed.

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.

There is a significant soybean yield gap in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Sustainable intensification of the agricultural sector to reduce such a yield gap is important. Increasing soybean productivity can meet the growing demand for food and feed when complemented with higher soy meal demand by the local livestock industry.

Variability in climate and debility in soil fertility affect agrarian production, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and thus threaten food security. This has prompted the seed sector to introduce various varieties of climate-smart maize in Kenya and release them in the market. In contrast, there is little experiential insight into how the adoption of these varieties by small-scale farmers affects their household income.

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.).

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.

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.

African animal trypanosomiasis (AAT) and its vectors, mainly tsetse, are a major constraint to livestock production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Control efforts have been ongoing for decades, but finding a sustainable solution remains a major concern.

This paper analyses the heterogeneous effects of membership of a farmer group on access to water, use of inorganic fertiliser, household incomes, and farm asset holdings. A sample of 401 irrigators in South Africa was analysed using propensity score matching. The study found that group membership had a positive effect on all four outcomes.

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.

The world is facing unprecedented challenges from COVID-19, which is disrupting lives and livelihoods. The pandemic could profoundly affect the African continent and wipe out hard-won development gains, as sub-Saharan Africa heads into its first recession in 25 years.

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 the impact of variety awareness and nutrition knowledge on the adoption of biofortified crop varieties using a sample of 661 households from Kisii and Nyamira counties in Kenya.

Goat keeping is a common practice among rural farmers due to the adaptability of goats to harsh environments, their efficient forage conversion and rapid growth, and their multiple benefits, including the production of manure and high-quality milk.

Insect pollination improves the yield of most crop species and contributes to one-third of global crop production. The importance of this ecosystem service in improving agricultural production has largely been overlooked, however, in favour of practices that improve soil conditions such as fertiliser use and supplementary irrigation.

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.

Women’s time allocation is a dimension of women’s empowerment in agriculture, and is recognised as a pathway through which agriculture can affect child nutritional status in developing countries. Longer hours of farm work can potentially increase women’s time constraints, reducing the time allocated to child-caring responsibilities and raising the risk of poor child nutritional status.

Poverty in its various forms is widespread among smallholder farmers, including income poverty, rendering interventions that improve household income relevant. We employ a linear model on cross-sectional data collected from October to December 2015, with the preceding 12 months as the reference period.

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.

Conservation agriculture is promoted as a green technology that enhances the productivity and food security of farmers. However, there is limited evidence from practising farmers regarding these expected outcomes.

The impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on women\s health, indicated by their body mass index (BMI), is examined using an instrumental variable estimation approach on a sample of 4 267 women.

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.

In this paper, we establish a link between crop productivity, crop market participation and agricultural technology use among smallholder farmers.