Off-farm work accounts for a substantial and growing share of household income among smallholder farmers in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, but evidence on the effects of these earnings on farm investments remains sparse. We use panel data from a sample of smallholder farmers in Kenya to estimate...

A non-neutral stochastic distance function model is used to examine whether output specialization has an impact on the economic performance of vegetable producers in Benin. Specialization is assumed to have an effect on the production frontier and on the distance to the production frontier...

This paper analyzes the impact of Public Works (PW) from the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in the agricultural regions of Ethiopia. In particular, based on a household model with two inputs, I explore the eects of the program on capital and labor decisions using the Ethiopian Rural...

The benefits from increased levels of social capital have been shown to manifest themselves in ways that can increase the efficiency of the use and regulation of natural resources, as well as increase the resiliency of resource dependent communities against fluctuations in abundance. While the...

This paper examines the effect of off-farm work on the economic performance of corn farms. It estimates returns to scale and technical efficiency following an input distance function approach and compares the relative performance of corn farm operator households with and without off-farm work....

Use of soil amendments, including organic materials and mineral fertilizers, is highly recommended for the replenishment of soil nutrients, improved soil health and more efficient use of fertilizers in sub-Saharan Africa. Along with other constraints, underdeveloped markets are often cited as a...

Organically produced products are one of the fastest growing segments of food sales in the U.S. The extent to which proximity to consumer markets influences certification among producers that farm using organic practices was estimated in this study. Data from a 2012 survey of 16 states with...