All Articles

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.

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

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.

While irrigation is key to boosting agricultural productivity in Burkina Faso, it may come with hidden health costs. Drawing on data from over 1 000 households in the Sourou Valley and using propensity score matching, this study uncovers the unintended consequences of irrigation for public health.

The special issue focused on topics in environmental and resource economics that originated from the inaugural conference of the African Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AFAERE), held on 2-4 August 2021.

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.

Consumers are increasingly becoming very concerned about food safety, with many giving preference to organic food products over conventional food products, which make use of agrochemicals with potential implications for health.

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.

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.

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.

Cet article analyse les effets des produits forestiers non ligneux (PFNL) sur la pauvreté multidimensionnelle au Burkina Faso. Il s'appuie sur des données primaires collectées auprès de 384 ménages sélectionnés aléatoirement.

This study uses primary data from smallholder sugarcane farmers in Kenya to investigate how women’s empowerment affects household poverty. Instrumental-variable tobit (IV tobit) was used to determine the causality between women’s empowerment and household poverty.

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.

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.

Cet article analyse le rôle du crédit et de l’éducation dans les différences de productivité du maïs entre femmes et hommes au Burkina Faso.

La production du riz sous contrat a pour avantage de répondre aux exigences de la qualité de la production du riz et de satisfaire la demande intérieure du riz pour le pays. Cette étude a pour objectif d’analyser les critères d’insolvabilité des contrats des riziculteurs au Burkina Faso.

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.

Climate variability threatens farmers’ livelihoods. Efforts to address climate stress recognise climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a promising approach to minimising the damage caused by increasing weather variability.

Cette étude vise à analyser les dispositions à acheter et le consentement à payer le riz local par les femmes au Burkina Faso. Les préférences des consommatrices et leurs consentements à payer le riz local de Bagré ont été révélés à partir des enchères expérimentales conduites auprès de 120 femmes de la ville de Ouagadougou.

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.

Index-based insurance has emerged as a compelling strategy for agricultural risk management in Africa, particularly in contexts where smallholder farmers are disproportionately exposed to climate-related hazards.

The study provides evidence for how risk preferences determine fishing location choices by artisanal fishers on the south-west coast of the island of Mauritius. Risk preference is modelled using a random linear utility framework defined over mean-standard deviation space.

The starting point for this article is the concept of a commodity exchange. A working definition is a physical or – more likely – electronic marketplace for buying, selling and trading commodities, whether ‘hard’ commodities, which typically are natural resources that must be mined or extracted (gold, rubber, oil, etc.), or ‘soft’ commodities, which are mainly agricultural products or livestock (coffee, corn, cotton, sugar, soybeans, etc.).

This study used panel data from the 2016 and 2019 waves of the Malawi Integrated Household Survey to examine the impact of credit access on smallholder farmers’ maize productivity and household food security.