More than two decades after the initiation of agricultural market reforms in eastern and southern Africa (ESA), governments in the region are increasingly using parastatal grain marketing boards (GMBs) and/or strategic grain reserves (SGRs) to directly influence the prices faced by farmers and...

Over the last decade, governments in eastern and southern Africa have become increasingly involved in grain marketing via strategic reserves and marketing boards. Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia all have one or both of these entities, and their level of involvement in...

This policy synthesis estimates the effects of the Zambia Food Reserve Agency’s (FRA) activities on maize market prices in the country. The FRA, a government parastatal strategic food reserve/maize marketing board, buys maize at a pan-territorial price that typically exceeds wholesale market...

In spite of vast expanses of the country’s land currently being uncultivated, there is increasing evidence that a surprisingly high share of rural smallholder households face land constraints that adversely affect their productivity and ability to participate in agricultural supply chains.

This paper traces the trajectories of successful commercial smallholders operating under differing sets of market institutions. Analysis focuses on maize, cotton, and horticulture, three widely marketed crops with strikingly different market institutions. Maize receives intensive government...

Though Zambia has considerable agricultural potential, the sector’s contribution to growth and poverty reduction has been limited. The sector remains one of the most important employers of labour and remains the main source of livelihood for most rural households in Zambia. Thus key...

A number of problems plague the current Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), including: late delivery of inputs; distribution of standardized inputs that may not be appropriate for all agro-ecological zones or soil types; crowding out of private sector; poor targeting, and; high cost to the...

Despite being framed as a key component of the nation’s poverty reduction strategy, evidence suggests that inputs distributed under Zambia’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) tend to be targeted to the least poor rural households.

Livestock products and fish form an important component of urban consumers’ diet accounting for about one third of the total monthly budgetary expenditure on food. The budgetary share of livestock products increases with affluence or household income while the opposite is true for fish; 2) The...

Despite upward trends in fertilizer application rates on maize fields over the last twenty years, there remains a perception in Kenya that fertilizer use is not expanding quickly enough and that application rates are not high enough to reverse the country’s growing national food deficit. In...