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...

Geographical indications (GIs) have gained increasing interest since their protection has been ensured multilaterally under the TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Thung Kula Rong-Hai Thai Hom Mali Rice (TKR) is the first officially registered GI Jasmine rice in Thailand. This...

A wide variety of farm household models have provided a valuable theoretical basis for empirical and conceptual analysis of interactions between production and consumption resource allocations of poor rural people. A weakness of common applications of many such models, and unfortunately of much...

This study assesses the determinants of income diversification of farm households in the Western Region of Ghana. A censored Tobit regression model was used to find the determinants of the degree of income diversification measured by the Simpsons Index of Diversity (SID). The results indicate...

The Seed Voucher System (SVS) was adopted by the Emergency Rice Initiative (ERI) to grant farmers access to certified improved seed, in order to mitigate the adverse effect of the 2008 global food crisis on resource poor farmers in rural Nigeria. This study examined the impact of the SVS on...

After the launch of Brazilian program of biodiesel use and production (PNPB) in 2004, the oil seed production became an economic alternative for family farmers since they might have the chance to improve their income and supply the biodiesel enterprises with raw material. Theoretically speaking...

This study aims to test 1. whether two indicator-based tools for poverty assessment in rural Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, developed in 2005 are capable of predicting absolute poverty in 2007, and 2. whether the indicator composition of these poverty assessment tools remains robust over time. In...

Stochastic production frontiers of irrigated and rain-fed smallholder agriculture in Tigray, Ethiopia, were fitted to a random sample of irrigated and rain-fed plots to compare their technical efficiencies. Propensity Score Matching Method was applied to select rain-fed plots with comparable...

An ex post measure of risk reduction is commonly used in the literature to predict the potential reduction of farmers’ yield risk due to weather-based index insurance and area-yield crop insurance. In this paper, we evaluate the predictive power of the ex post risk reduction for different...

This paper describes the participation of smallholders in commercial horticultural farming in Kenya and identifies constraints and critical factors that influence their decision to participate in this industry by selling their produce. The study employs panel survey data on smallholder producers...