Off-farm earnings account for a substantial and growing share of household income among smallholder farmers in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, but evidence concerning the effects of these earnings on investment in food production remains sparse. Conceptually, some factors may push farm families to...

Since 2002, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded programs to promote maize, dairy, and horticulture enterprises among smallholder farmers in Kenya under the Strategic Objective 7 of Increased Rural Household Incomes. On behalf of USAID, Tegemeo Institute has...

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...

Kenya has been recognized globally as maize success story since the 1970s. Released on the eve of independence, Kenya’s first maize hybrid diffused faster than did hybrids in the U.S Corn Belt during the 1930s-1940s. In recent decades, policy researchers have lamented that earlier gains in...

Women are central to food production and maize is a dominant food staple in Sub-Saharan Africa, but published gender analyses of hybrid seed use in Sub-Saharan Africa are uncommon. Building on previous work, this paper tests the effects of headship definitions on hybrid seed use and explores the...

This paper uses information from rural household surveys in 24 districts in Kenya to inform current debate on maize pricing policy. Specifically, it sheds light on how rural farm households are being affected by governmental efforts to support maize price levels. Using information on landed...

This study looks at the urban consumption patterns of fresh fruits and vegetables and the major supply chain systems used in the distribution of fresh produce. The study integrates issues of supply chain organization and performance into the analysis of consumer demand for fresh produce. In...

This study explores the dynamics of poverty in Kenya. The study specifically examines how initial conditions, household decisions, and other factors that may change over time affect poverty. Dynamic relationships are identified between behavioral variables, exogenous shocks at one point in time,...

Campaigns to prevent the spread of HIV require accurate knowledge of the characteristics of those most likely to contract the disease. Studies conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s generally found a positive correlation between socioeconomic characteristics such as education, income,...

The goals of this study are: 1) to determine the relative importance of spatial factors in explaining household wealth; 2) to identify the spatial characteristics of the chronically poorest, the consistently well off, and households escaping from poverty as well as descending into poverty; 3) to...