All Articles

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.

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.

Cette étude analyse les effets de la politique de réglementation de la vente du soja sur les performances des producteurs au Bénin de 1990 à 2023, en se concentrant sur l'offre de production et le revenu net agricole.

In this study, we investigate whether land tenure security is a pull factor for household income diversification.

Accessing water supply services remains a serious challenge in Wakiso District in Uganda, where most households travel long distances to collect water – a process that threatens their health, productivity and economic wellbeing.

This paper conducts ex-ante impact assessments for policy interventions to promote amaranth value chains in Tanzania and Kenya. Amaranth is an underdeveloped, drought-resistant, and nutrition-rich crop used for human food, animal fodder, and ornamental purposes.

Soil acidity is a major constraint to crop production in tropical regions. Although agricultural lime is one option to remediate acid soils, there is limited information on the potential returns on investments to liming by smallholders.

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.

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.

Evaluating the impact of agricultural practices helps policymakers and farmers in their decision-making. In Zambia, most households depend on agricultural activities, in particular maize production.

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.

Smallholder rural farmers are exposed to diverse idiosyncratic and covariate shocks that lead to high income and consumption volatility. Formal cash management tools, which are important for managing risk and volatility, often break down due to high information asymmetries and the transaction costs of operating in rural areas.

Fair trade is an important ethical concern in the food value chains of developed countries. However, there is a dearth of empirical insights into consumer preferences for this critical aspect in the domestic markets of developing countries.

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.

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 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.

Sub-Saharan African countries, with their initially large agricultural sectors, reduce poverty and urbanise most rapidly and efficiently when they achieve rapid agricultural growth.2 The faster agriculture grows, the faster its relative importance declines.

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 determinants of the technical efficiency (TE) of adopters and non-adopters of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies in the upper Rwizi micro-catchment of south-western Uganda are compared using cross-sectional survey data from 246 smallholder farmers.

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.

The recent increase in farmland investments in developing countries by private equity funds, large multinationals and sometimes foreign governments has attracted widespread attention and strong emotions from various interest groups.

Nutrition knowledge is an important driver of household dietary diversity that can be improved through access to nutrition information. However, in many rural areas, the formal flow of nutrition information is limited, although social networks could play an important role as an informal source of such information.

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.

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.