All Articles

This paper assesses the differences in technical efficiency of, and the cassava production systems employed by, male-managed (MMF) and female-managed (FMF) cassava farms in the Fanteakwa District of Ghana.

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.

Three experiments were conducted from 2014 to 2018 to examine the economics of yellow passion fruit production under different soil fertility management. In 2014, two yellow passion fruit genotypes, that is Conventional and KPF 4, were grown in the field and pot simultaneously under varying rates of poultry manure (PM), including 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 t/ha.

Agricultural digitisation is one of the key drivers of agricultural development, as well as of rapid economic growth, in many countries. This study aims to investigate the causal links between agricultural digitisation and high-quality agricultural development in the context of developed and developing countries.

This study applied stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine the technical efficiency of maize production in northern Ghana using cross-sectional data from 360 maize farmers for the 2011/2012 cropping season.

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

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.

This study examined the effect of sustainable intensification (SI) technologies, specifically the use of improved maize seed varieties, of improved bean seed varieties (Nua45), crop rotation, maize-legume intercropping and doubled-up legume systems on farm income in Dedza district, Malawi.

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.

This study examines the productivity of smallholder groundnut farmers in North-eastern Mozambique using data for 2016 from two provinces with high total production of said crop.

This is a special issue of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AfJARE), with papers contributed by the faculty members of the Collaborative Master’s in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE), one of the collaborative training programmes of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).

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.

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.

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.

This analysis sits against the backdrop of unsuccessful attempts to reindustrialise Africa. Zambia must diversify from copper dependency to agriculture and the agro-processing sectors, and the question is whether there is enough capacity to deliver jobs or growth.

A new high-yielding upland rice variety known as New Rice for Africa (NERICA) has been recognised widely as a promising technology for addressing the food shortage and poverty problems in sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

Climate change and heat stress are expected to worsen the issue of water scarcity that is affecting the agricultural sector, among others through increased crop prices and costs, in addition to changes in yields.

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.

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.

Since 2002, a range of South African policies have attempted to address the disproportionate burden of food and nutrition insecurity on the population. Yet malnutrition among the poor has worsened.

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.

Climate change and its pronounced effects have greatly disfranchised the livelihoods of aquafarmers. To leverage these negative effects of climate change, climate-smart aquaculture (CSA) practices have been developed for adoption by farmers. However, it is not known whether these practices have made any meaningful contribution to farmers in terms of their livelihoods and resilience to the vagaries of climatic change.

Agricultural commercialisation is a critical pathway for economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, the lack of market information may impede this development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine market information and preferences for soybean quality in a developing-world context.