Insect Resistant Maize for Africa Project (IRMA) aims at developing and deploying insect resistant maize varieties to reduce grain losses due to insect pests. As part of incorporating farmer’s perceptions and improving the adoption of the developed varieties, participatory approaches are...

Maize is a key food crop in Kenya. While maize yields increased from 1.25 t ha-1 in early 1960s to over 2 tonnes in 1982, they fell below 1.5 t ha-1 in 2000. Given the limited land area, there is no doubt that Kenya will have to rely more on modern technologies for increased yields .Use of...

Empirical evidence from research on Bt maize in Kenya puts to rest most concerns raised against GMOs (not responding to farmers' needs, expensive, benefiting agro-business, risk of decreased biodiversity), but does indicate that contamination of local varieties is likely and buildup of insect...

This paper uses a random sample of 881 farmers drawn from eastern and western Kenya to examine the prevalence and drivers of seed and pollen mediated geneflow in the two major sorghum growing regions. It employs both qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess farmers’ awareness of wild...

Maize is the staple food crop and source of income for majority of the Kenyan population and many sub-Saharan African countries. The increasing Kenyan population demands an increase in maize production if intermittent food deficits have to be averted. Since the introduction of improved maize...

The maize green revolution, which increased maize yields through the use of improved varieties and fertilizer, has stalled since the mid-eighties in Kenya. This paper examines whether the stagnation of yields continued in the 1990s in spite of the implementation of the maize liberalization...

The simple neo-classical household model presents a major problem - the cooperative unique household utility function might not always be appropriate. More specifically, women's and men's utility functions might be different. To accomodate the problem, this paper explores the possibility of an...

Paper accepted for presentation at the 27th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), Beijing China, August 16-22, 2009, (Ref 690)

Maize is the major food crop and an important cash crop in East Africa, but yields have not increased in the last years. Maize prices fluctuate heavily both over time, causing price insecurity which hampers investment decisions, and over space which, combined with limited knowledge of that...