Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study...

This paper critically examines the dimensions of market access. Using farm panel survey data from Kenya, we investigate changes in ten indicators of market access during the 1997–2010 post-liberalization period. We find major improvements in certain market access conditions and little change...

Pro-agricultural policies have had a large and continuing impact on pro-poor growth. Yet over the last three decades, policy support for agriculture has declined for the majority of underdeveloped countries. This paper studies the causes and manifestations of this 'urban' bias both in domestic...

The purchase of commercial farm land in Zimbabwe for resettlement has been a factor in government policy since independence in 1980, but from l 980 to 1989 only 52 000 families were relocated. The Land Acquisition Bill of 1992 made compulsory purchase easier and at present the government has...

Small-scale assemblers are both the most vilified and least understood actors in food value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on data from Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, this article explores how maize assemblers influence the market access conditions of small-scale farmers. Assembly...

It is widely perceived that African farmers are under-utilizing inorganic fertilizer. However, very little long-term evidence from farmers’ fields, accounting for variations in agro-ecological conditions, has been assembled to back this claim or determine the conditions under which it is true....

Research on household food grain sales behavior in developing countries has tended to focus on the roles of market access and prices to explain why many rural households do not sell staple crops, though recent literature suggests that low household asset endowments may also be key constraints....

Conservation farming (CF) practices are widely considered to be important components of sustainable agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa because of their potential to raise farm productivity and incomes while maintaining or improving soil quality and reducing vulnerability to variable...

Despite Zambia’s sustained and fairly robust agricultural growth since 2000, rural poverty levels have remained at about 80% over the past 15 years. Because over 70% of Zambia’s agricultural households are small-scale farmers cultivating less than two hectares of land, they must effectively...