This synthesis revisits the “maize success story” in Sub-Saharan Africa, drawing selectively from an extensive published literature about maize seed technical change and related policies. The review focuses on the countries of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, where maize is most...

"The choices that smallholder farmers are able to make are strongly conditioned by the geographic conditions in which they live. The importance of this fact for rural development strategy is not lost on policy makers. For example, the government of Ethiopia frequently frames policy discussions...

"Because the conditions for agricultural development vary considerably across space, we need to develop methods that allow us to take such variability into account when evaluating development strategies for particular crops or farming systems. This paper addresses spatially varying...