The maize milling industry is highly characterised by continuous growth in maize milling and retailing margins in real terms (Traub and Jayne, 2004) despite the benefits and opportunities brought about by the deregulation of the South African maize market in 1997. This may be indicative of the...

The objective of this paper is to propose an alternative measure of irrigation water efficiency based on the concept of input- specific technical efficiency, which contracts with measures previously used in the literature. The proposed methodology is applied to a randomly selected sample of 144...

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...

L’objectif de ce papier est d’identifier les contraintes de commercialisation des petits ruminants sur le marché aux bestiaux. Ces contraintes sont particulièrement prononcées chez les petits éleveurs. Notre recherche met en évidence la relation entre les caractéristiques de cette...

Agriculture in Ethiopia is changing. New players, relationships, and policies are influencing the ways in which information and knowledge are used by smallholders. While this growing complexity suggests opportunities for Ethiopian smallholders, too little is known about how these opportunities...

The study used programming methods to assess the farm-level impact of incorporating forages, including dual purpose Cajanus cajan (C. cajan), into the crop-livestock system in the Coastal Savannah Zone of Ghana. The system was modeled in GAMS and solved using linear programming. The optimal...

Many developing countries are currently in the process of designing regulatory systems that should make it possible to use the potential of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for agricultural development, while at the same time managing the risks for food safety and the environment that are...

This paper determines the degree or extent of farmer’s risk aversion that affects sustainable maize production in Northern Nigeria. Using a ridge regression analysis, a measure of risk aversion was derived for each individual farmer in a model of safety-first behaviour from a cross-sectional...

Today, development and dissemination of new technologies constitute an important strategy for agricultural intensification, poverty reduction and food security in developing countries. Rice is an important source of farmers’ income and foreign currencies in developing countries. Although women...

The paper intends to take stock of the situation in the agricultural sector of Rwanda. The main purpose is to identify the gaps in the efforts so far; and subsequently to consider new policy interventions that are needed to achieve the goal of eliminating the ‘Fear of Want’. The sector’s...