This paper is based on an ongoing joint work with David Sahn and Xiaobo Zhang.

This paper examines the impact of marketing cooperatives on smallholder commercialization of cereals using detailed household data in rural Ethiopia. We use the strong government role in promoting the establishment of cooperatives to justify the use of propensity score matching in order to...

The traditional way of information dissemination has been through people; the modern way is through the electronic media – improved information and communication technologies (ICTs). For effectiveness, modern ICTs should help women to improve on their income generating capacity. Issues of level...

Rice sector contributes significantly to secure households with regard to their food needs but also to the creation of employments and income generation. The sector development and its evolution over the years have been marked by various policies and approaches. These development stages of the...

The long-term reduction of hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the great challenges for the International development community. Poverty in Africa is predominately rural, majority of the poor people live in rural areas and are dependent on food production through farming or...

The study was used by Plan International to formulate a common Nutrition Action Plan for its food and nutrition security interventions in developing countries. The aim was to get insight into the food and nutrition security as well as livelihoods status at the household and community level of...

Discriminant analysis was used to identify the characteristics that distinguish between fully-certified organic, partially-certified organic and non-organic farmers in Umbumbulu district, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa (SA) during October- November 2004. 200 farmers interviewed were drawn by...

Aflatoxins are poisons that occur naturally in the environment. They are produced mainly by the Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus fungi, which can affect many of important staple crops: maize, sorghum, millet, rice, oilseeds, spices, groundnuts, tree nuts, and cassava. Hot, humid,...

This paper evaluates farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the vegetative propagated orange fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) planting material that is many times considered as a public good. Famers’ WTP for OFSP vines was elicited by conducting a real choice experiment (RCE) among 121 small...