Although microfinance has elicited different reactions from different stakeholders, there seems to be a general agreement that it is useful in reducing poverty. This study is an attempt to contribute in to the debate on the impact of microfinance on household incomes. We use a pooled data set...

Striga hermonthica (del) Benth is threatening rural livelihoods in western Kenya where maize is the major food and cash crop. Vulnerability analysis was conducted on a sample of 802 households in eight districts of Nyanza and Western provinces. Farmers perceived Striga as the major cause of...

The objective of this study is to evaluate pesticide use as an important factor affecting potential adoption and farm level impact of genetically modified (GM) vegetable varieties in Ghana. Tomato is the most consumed vegetable and a food security crop. Cabbage is a vegetable of growing...

Discriminant analysis was used to identify the characteristics that distinguish between fully-certified organic, partially-certified organic and non-organic farmers in Umbumbulu district, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa (SA) during October- November 2004. 200 farmers interviewed were drawn by...

Due to the size of the European Union’s agricultural production and its market, the impact of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reaches far beyond Europe and has major implications for trade in agricultural goods all over the world including the ESA region. Since the 1950s, the CAP...

L’objectif de la présente étude est d’évaluer la diffusion et l’adoption des variétés de riz NERICA en Guinée cinq années après leur introduction. Les données collectées en 2002 sont relatives à 1535 paysans choisis dans 79 villages des quatre régions naturelles de la Guinée....

We assess the level and determinants of relative technical efficiency of maize-based smallholder farmers using a translog stochastic frontier (TL) model and a symmetric generalized Barnett production function (SGB), both of which are tested for economic regularity conditions. In addition, we...

Increasing foreign exchange problems and deteriorating prices of traditional export commodities have led policy makers and donor agencies to seek diversification in export crop production. In Ghana, crops such as pineapples and mangoes appear promising because of their high labour intensity and...

Many countries in the world have adopted genetically modified organisms as products that can have great beneficial impact on agriculture, industry and trade. However, to date for the whole of Africa, only South Africa has commercialized genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Realizing the high...

Many sorghum varieties have been developed by research institutes in an effort to address food security problems in the semi-arid areas of Tanzania. Although sorghum is better adapted to drier areas than maize, farmer adoption rates for sorghum varieties are always lower than that of maize. In...