It is argued that dairying is vital to future viability of many small farms in East Africa and that high transactions costs for dairy production and marketing limit participation by asset- and information-poor smallholders. Case studies from Kenya and Ethiopia illustrate the role of dairy...

The author argues that African rural areas behave differently from rural areas in fully commercialized market economies. In commercialized economies, price signals quickly induce factor flows, including items such as investment and technological change. A need for more food is quickly translated...

The high use of modern inputs in Egypt's agricultural system well before the reforms has been very favorable to the development of private markets, particularly in the fertilizer sector. The level of adoption being very high, the usual demand constraints did not operate and traders' entry was...

A primary focus of the IFPRI 2020 Vision initiative is to find ways for people to attain food security, that is, sufficient food to lead healthy and productive lives. But what is "sufficient"? And is providing access to food the primary means of protecting people (particularly women and...

In this Food Policy Review, the authors take a fresh look at the role of rural financial policy in improving household food security and alleviating poverty. They develop a conceptual framework for relating access to financial services to food security and review empirical findings on household...

This empirical study uses data from 1970 to 2010 to estimate levels of neopatrimonialism in Malawi. We then test how neopatrimonialism has affected policy-induced agriculture producer incentives. Three dimensions are used to measure neopatrimonialism – systematic clientelism, a power...

This paper assesses critical factors that constrained the successful implementation of the National Agrarian Extension Program, (PRONEA, from Programa Nacional de Extensão Agrária), by MINAG’s National Directorate of Agrarian Extension (DNEA, from Direcção Nacional de Extensão Agrária),...