Prepared for the COMESA policy seminar on “Variation in staple food prices: Causes, consequence, and policy options”, Maputo, Mozambique, 25-26 January 2010 under the Comesa-MSU-IFPRI African Agricultural Marketing Project (AAMP)

Prepared for the Comesa policy seminar on “Variation in staple food prices: Causes, consequence, and policy options”, Maputo, Mozambique, 25-26 January 2010 under the African Agricultural Marketing Project (AAMP)

Zambia’s population clusters tightly in cities along the north-south line of rail and in the primarily rural areas of Eastern Province (Figure 1). Staple food consumption and purchases are similarly concentrated in these heavily populated clusters (Figures 4 and 5). Across the border, several...

This paper is concerned with the conduct of meaningful policy and project relevant research on small enterprise development. It responds to a growing demand for operationally useful small enterprise research, a demand which has surged over the past ten years in the wake of increasing concern...

This paper explores two sets of issues. The first concerns the magnitude of policy induced distortions in developing countries and the impact of these distortions on the economy, paying special attention to differential impacts between firms of different sizes and resulting effects on the level...

Distributed as: Appendix 1. Background Paper for Agriculture and Lands. African Ministers Meeting, April 2009. Prepared under the Food Security III Cooperative Agreement (GDG-A- 00-02-00021-00) between the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, and...

Given heavy dependence on rainfed maize production, Zambia must routinely cope with pronounced production and consumption volatility in their primary food staple. Typical policy responses include increased food aid flows, government commercial imports and stock releases, and tight controls on...

• Maize production varies widely from year to year, given Zambia’s heavy dependence on rainfed cultivation. Thus consumers face wide swings in availability of their primary food staple. • Typical public responses include increased food aid inflows, government commercial imports and stock...

The study reported in this paper measures differences in profitability between conservation farming (CF) practices and conventional agriculture by comparing the value of differential output with the differential input costs. The main objective is to address and fill several important knowledge...

The rapid recent appreciation of the Kwacha has placed these gains at risk. The sudden strengthening of the Kwacha since November 2005 has reduced the Kwacha value of agricultural exports by 30%, forcing reductions in farmgate prices and eroding exporter profit margins. As in a classic case of...