Crop production forecasts are widely recognized as an important input into food balance sheets and for anticipating production shortfalls. However, the role of accurate crop production forecasting systems in mitigating food price instability and transitory food insecurity is often...

Crop income is the predominant source of income for most rural Mozambican households, accounting for 73% of rural household income on average in 2002, and greater than 80% of the total income of the poorest 40% of rural households. While the Government of Mozambique recognizes the need to...

This brief summarizes detailed analysis of the determinants of household crop income in rural Mozambique from 2002 to 2005. Increased crop income is associated with increases in household land area, use of animal traction, crop diversification into tobacco or cotton, access to market price...

This brief summarizes detailed analysis of the determinants of household crop income in rural Mozambique from 2002 to 2005. Increased crop income is associated with increases in household land area, use of animal traction, crop diversification into tobacco or cotton, access to market price...

National food security in Malawi depends on improving the performance of maize markets. Ensuring that grain is consistently available at tolerable prices is crucial for consumers’ food security. At the same time, surplus producing farmers need to receive farm-gate prices consistently above...

• The Zambia Urban Consumption Survey, a survey of 1,865 urban households in Lusaka, Kitwe, Mansa, and Kasama, was conducted in August 2007 and February 2008 by the Central Statistical Office in collaboration with the Zambia Food Security Research Project. • Survey results indicate that in...

Performance of the agricultural sector in developing countries is fundamental to ensuring robust and equitable economic growth and broad-based food security. Yet donor support to agricultural development in developing countries has declined continuously for 30 years. This same period saw...

After two decades of de-urbanization, Zambia is again becoming increasingly urban. While the urban share of the population fell to 35% in 2000 due primarily to the decline of the copper industry, over half of Zambia’s people will be residing in urban areas by 2040. Given this urbanization...

Zambia's record-breaking maize harvest of nearly 2.8 million metric tons (MT) in 2010 is a major achievement and a testimony to what input subsidies, output price incentives, and favorable weather can do to elicit a major supply response. Maize-growing smallholders harvested more than in...

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