All Articles

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.

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.

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.

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.

Recognising potential selection bias due to non-randomness of the data, this study used propensity score matching on data from a nationally representative fifth Integrated Household Survey (IHS5) to investigate the effect of agriculture extension services on the technical efficiency of maize farmers in Malawi.

This study aimed to bring forth empirical evidence of the effect of the sustained adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) on the technical and profit efficiency of farmers. Previous studies remain inconclusive about whether the adoption of SAPs has any bearing on the efficiency of maize farmers.

This study uses an online laboratory experiment and a post-experimental survey to test whether the Mastercard Foundation (MCF) scholarship programme causally influences the creation of cognitive social capital among University of Pretoria recipients.

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 paper analyses the impact of adaptation to climate change on bean productivity on a micro-scale using instrumental variable techniques in a two-stage econometric model, using data collected from farming households in northern and central Uganda.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

This study investigates how public agricultural expenditure can mitigate the effect of climate variability on banks’ agricultural credit supply in sub-Saharan Africa.

Limited access to timely and adequate information has been identified as a major hindrance to smallholder agriculture in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This has negatively affected the socio-economic welfare of smallholder farmers, resulting in high numbers of food insecure households.

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.

Empirical studies on the effects of governance structures on incentives have still received little attention in the wheat value chain research of developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of governance structures on actors’ incentives in different functional nodes of the wheat value chain.

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.

This paper examines farmers’ preferences for an improved Bambara groundnut variety, the key attributes desired, factors influencing preference, and the number of attributes desired by smallholder farmers in Ghana.

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.

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

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.