Farm efficiency analysis provides significant insights into farms’ potential to enhance agricultural productivity. This article reports on an investigation of technology adoption and technical efficiency (TE) in the Ethiopian maize sector.

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.

Zimbabwe has set poverty reduction targets in a changing climate, yet the implications of climate variability for poverty remain under-explored.

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 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 study examines whether Liberian consumers are willing to pay for new, locally produced nutrient-dense rice, and if farmers are willing to grow such rice.

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.

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.

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.

Soybean has been the world’s fastest growing crop over the last 15 years. Yet, as an untraditional and unfamiliar crop, soybean requires small farmers to move beyond their traditional production practices and marketing arrangements in order to produce a successful crop.

Unexpectedly lower yield outcomes (downside risks) challenge farmers’ use of external inputs that can enhance crop productivity. Using household-level panel data collected from Ethiopia, we estimated the effects of crop diversification through maize-legume intercropping/rotation on maize yield distribution and downside risk.

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.

The conditions in which increased market participation leads to improved technical efficiency are still not adequately understood. This study therefore investigated farmers’ market participation rates and their predicted technical efficiency scores by performing a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis using household-level data obtained from the 2009 Ethiopian rural household survey.

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.

Bien que l’économie africaine en général et celle de l’Afrique de l’ouest en particulier demeure fortement dépendante du secteur agricole, ce dernier s’avère être le moins productif parmi les trois grands secteurs considérés de l’économie, notamment le secteur agricole, industriel et des services.

This study investigates the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture, their nutritional status and those of their children. Growing empirical evidence suggests that there is a positive link, but that not all empowerment dimensions influence nutritional outcomes.

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.

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.

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.

Uganda’s climate is changing in terms of rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns, leading to extreme meteorological conditions such as prolonged drought, floods and landslides. Yet the majority (68%) of Ugandans rely largely on rain-fed agriculture, which is affected by climate variability.

To enrich agriculture reform and reap its benefits, policy makers need to localise policy issues within and across their domestic zones. Using a stochastic meta-frontier function, this study analysed the production efficiency of the cassava subsector of cassava growers from Bomi and Nimba counties in Liberia.

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.