Consumers’ taste and preference for differentiated cocoa based on darkness and flavour quality has been rising over the years. Added value of such specialty cocoa is expressed by consumers’ willingness to pay more than the standard commodity price for the attributes and associations such as...

The recent international financial crisis and the steady decrease in development assistance have put many poor countries under increasing pressure to target more accurately their public spendings at the poor and the population in need. However, further progress is hampered by the lack of...

CAADP is an exciting change process of the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) to shape African agricultural policy making and development from within the continent. CAADP covers a wide range of issues from natural resource management through...

During the past decades farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa had been prevented from making more intensive use of their mostly under-utilised production potentials by unattractive prices and market conditions, which in many countries were reinforced by a less than conducive policy environment. At the...

Droughts in Syria have occurred during almost every second year over the past half century, and may become even more frequent in the future. This paper assesses the economic and social implications of droughts using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model for Syria. Results show that...

Women rice farmers in Africa are often constrained in accessing resources and technologies adapted to their requirements. AfricaRice has targeted women in disseminating NERICA to consider their needs. Along with top-down strategies, also processes that strengthen women rice growers at the...

This paper analyses investments of some 2000 farm households in rural villages in three provinces of Northeast Thailand. We use a multinomial logit model to analyse the determinants of different types of investments in agriculture as well as small scale enterprises and a hurdle model to...

Income fluctuations cause low-income families to cycle in and out of eligibility for food assistance. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. households with children experienced at least one monthly income change in the late 1990s that put them above or below the eligibility criteria for many programs....