Surveys of the operation of agricultural traders in two Sub-Saharan African countries suggest that their performance would benefit from policies aimed at increasing their asset base, reducing transaction risk, promoting more sophisticated business practices, and reducing physical marketing...

Rural producer organizations, such as farmers' organizations or rural cooperatives, offer a means for smallholder farmers in developing countries to sell their crops commercially. They hold particular promise for Sub-Saharan Africa, where small-scale farming is the primary livelihood but...

This paper examines the impact of marketing cooperatives on smallholder commercialization of cereals using detailed household data in rural Ethiopia. We use the strong government role in promoting the establishment of cooperatives to justify the use of propensity score matching in order to...

"This paper examines the impact of cooperatives on smallholder commercialization of cereals, using detailed household data from rural Ethiopia. We review the involvement of cooperatives, in terms of who participates and where they are located. We then use the strong government role in promoting...

In this paper, performance of a sample of 131 livestock traders in 38 rural Ethiopian highland markets was analysed in terms of their costs and margins, how these were influenced by their assets and trading practices, and the implications of the findings for policy were outlined. The paper is...

In this paper, performance of a sample of 131 livestock traders in 38 rural Ethiopian highland markets was analysed in terms of their costs and margins, how these were influenced by their assets and trading practices, and the implications of the findings for policy were outlined. The paper is...

Based on original trader surveys, this paper examines how agricultural traders operate in Benin and Malawi. Results indicate that the largest transaction costs are search and transport. The use of modern technology is limited. Search methods rely principally on personal visits by the trader, and...

"In the context of on-going market reform in developing countries, there is a need for an improvement in the existing methods of spatial market efficiency analysis in order to better inform the debate toward designing and implementing new grain marketing policies, institutions, and...

"Wealthy countries' agricultural subsidies have also created unfair competition. African farmers not only have limited access to rich-country agricultural markets, but they also face unfair competition in their own domestic markets from subsidized imports of food staples. New challenges come...