All Articles

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 study compares the benefits of using digestate and compost in Burkina Faso. A mathematical programming model was used to simulate the advantages under three scenarios.

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.

Building up resilience in agricultural households has assumed a critical role in development strategies in recent years because, it is argued, the costs of strengthening resilience are less than the recurring expenditure for disaster assistance.

This continent-wide review of studies on price transmission implemented for the global, regional cross-border, within-country urban and within-country rural market segments provides a broad overview of current conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa food markets and provides insights into how market development varies across regions and crops.

The syndication of loans is an innovative financing model that has emerged in the financial landscape to help lenders spread risk and share opportunities. This study examines the relationship between syndicated loans and cocoa production in Ghana, using annual time-series data spanning from 1993 to 2020, as well as the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL).

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is known for its efficiency in converting resources into high-quality food, which can aid in poverty reduction. However, the potato yield in Rwanda has been declining, leading to farmer dissatisfaction with trading terms and a reliance on low prices in the value chain.

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.

Although organic farming is increasingly perceived as a viable alternative to conventional agriculture in the face of deteriorating environmental ecosystems, little is known about consumers’ preferences for organic products in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper bridges this gap in research and investigates the extent to which consumers value organic food in Dakar, Senegal.

The objective of this research was to assess the effects of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) on food consumption expenditure by agricultural households in the southwestern region of Burkina Faso.

This study examined the effect of collective marketing on mango income for 226 smallholder farmers in Mwala sub-county. The study employed an endogenous switching regression model to account for selection bias from observed and unobserved farmer attributes.

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.

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

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.

Smallholder farmers face considerable risk and uncertainty, particularly when markets are incomplete or missing. We consider household crop diversity and crop choice in Zimbabwe, where output markets are largely absent and price signals are inaccurate.

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.

This article analyses the level of integration in pastoral markets in Kenya using high-frequency data generated through a crowdsourcing endeavour. The vector error-correction model framework was used to estimate the causal relationships between the short- and long-run market price.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many governments adopt agricultural policies that affect production incentives across commodities. In addition, severe market failures in the form of high marketing margins often lower the prices that farmers receive.

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.