smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

resource degradation and adoption of land conservation technologies in the ethiopian highlands a case study in andit tid north shewa abstract this paper reports results from a study of resource degradation and conservation behavior of peasant households in a degraded part of the ethiopian highlands peasant households choice of conservation technologies is modeled as a two stage process recognition of the erosion problem and adoption and level of use of control practices an ordinal logit model is used to explain parcel level perception of the threat of the erosion problem and the extent of use of conservation practices results show the importance of perception of the threat of soil erosion household land and farm characteristics perception of technology specific attributes and land quality differentials in shaping conservation decisions of peasants furthermore where poverty is widespread and appropriate support policies are lacking results indicate that population pressure per se is unable to encourage sustainable land use the challenge of breaking the poverty environment trap and initiating sustainable intensification thus require policy incentives and technologies that confer short term benefits to the poor while conserving the resource base

household level determinants of adoption of improved natural resources management practices among smallholder farmers in western kenya abstract integrated natural resources management inrm of which integrated soil fertility management isfm is a component offers considerable promise for increasing food production in kenya it nonetheless remains unclear whether isfm inrm techniques lend themselves easily to adoption by smallholder farmers using panel data collected in western kenya in 1989 and 2002 this study finds that resource constraints limit many farmers adoption of isfm inrm techniques the size of the farm owned by a household the value of its livestock off farm income family labor supply and the educational attainment and gender of the household head all had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of adoption similar factors were found to be statistically significant in discouraging abandonment of the practices under study there thus seem to exist reinforcing feedback between investments in soil fertility management and household wealth as measured by asset endowments our findings raise important questions as to whether isfm and related techniques are really affordable to poorer smallholder farmers

tradeoffs and complementarities in the adoption of improved seeds fertilizer and natural resource management technologies in kenya there is widespread consensus that agricultural technology has an important role to play for poverty reduction and sustainable development there is no consensus however about the types of technologies that are best suited for smallholder farmers in africa while some consider natural resource management nrm technologies as most appropriate others propagate input intensification with a stronger role of the private sector in the public debate these two strategies are often perceived as incompatible environmental non governmental organizations in particular consider low external input strategies as the only sustainable form of agriculture a view that has considerable influence on policymakers and the international donor community most existing research studies on smallholder innovation focus on the adoption of individual technologies so that comparisons between different types of technologies in the same context are not easily possible we use representative data from maize producing households in kenya and a multivariate probit model to analyze the adoption of different types of technologies simultaneously results indicate that nrm technologies and strategies that build on external inputs are not incompatible interesting complementarities exist which are not yet sufficiently exploited because many organizations promote either one type of technology or the other but rarely a combination of both

child labor and agricultural shocks this paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and child labor in particular we investigate the extent to which transitory income shocks lead to increases in child labor and whether household asset holdings mitigate the effects of these shocks using data from a household panel survey in tanzania we find that both relationships are significant we investigate mechanisms that could account for these results including buffer stocks and borrowing

the politics of liberalizing zambia s maize markets abstract this paper discusses the process of agricultural liberalization in zambia the central argument is that maize markets have been more quickly and fully liberalized than maize input markets because the perceived political risks of liberalizing input markets are greater than those of liberalizing maize markets and because economic interest groups benefited from maize liberalization while similar interests benefited from continued government interventions in input markets these finding imply that in order to understand the prospects for economic liberalization in new democracies we must disaggregate both civil society and markets

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

a test for complementarities among multiple technologies that avoids the curse of dimensionality abstract we propose a strategy to identify the complementarity or substitutability among technology bundles differences between the observed distribution of technology choices can be subjected to statistical tests combinations of technologies that occur with greater frequency than would occur under independence are complementary technologies combinations that occur with less frequency are substitute technologies we use the strategy to evaluate multiple technology adoptions on us hog farms as the number of bundled technologies increases they are increasingly likely to be complementary with one another even if subsets are substitutes when viewed in isolation

ex ante and ex post labor supply response to risk in a low income area abstract this paper tests for ex ante and ex post labor supply responses to weather risk for rural indian farm households the analysis uses panel data on 2115 households spanning 13 states in rural india merged with a 22 year series of district level rainfall data ex ante households facing riskier distributions of rainfall are more likely to participate in the labor market ex post unexpectedly bad weather and low rainfall increase labor force participation

shocks consumption and income diversification in rural ethiopia abstract we present new evidence that households are unable to protect themselves from rainfall failure that occurs on average every five years in rural ethiopia however other less extreme rainfall variation and idiosyncratic shocks such as illness and crop pests do not impact significantly on consumption agricultural shocks impact negatively on farm income as expected however they also stimulate non agricultural earnings by an equivalent amount in the case of a covariate shock such as severe rainfall failure this smoothing mechanism may be ineffective and rainfall insurance or drought triggered safety nets could provide further protection

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

soil fertility management and socio economic factors in crop livestock systems in burkina faso a case study of composting technology abstract the relation between technology adoption and farmers socio economic characteristics has increasingly been given attention in developing countries however most of the studies conducted by economists dealt with the adoption of external technologies here we test the determinants of compost adoption an alternative indigenous technology for soil fertility management the results of analysis of data from burkina faso using logit model strongly support the hypothesis that farmers socio economic characteristics and their agro ecological location significantly affect their adoption decisions there are two main conclusions of this study first the agro ecological location of farmers influence their decision to widely adopt compost technology second among farmers characteristics affecting compost adoption three groups can be distinguished the most important socio economic characteristics are farmers age their comparative perception on the yield effect of compost with regards to other fertilizers and their annual agricultural income a second group of characteristics include the institutional factors which are represented by the farmers participation in extension workshops a third group of factors comprises the farmer s labor force participating rate the number of ruminants owned and farmers gender

conservation agriculture organic marketing and collective action in the honduran hillsides conservation agriculture ca is often perceived to provide win win outcomes for farmers leading to reduced erosion and off site sedimentation as well as improved soil fertility and productivity however adoption rates for ca in many regions of the world remain below expected levels this article looks at the effects of participation in organic markets and farmers organizations on the adoption of soil conservation practices based on original survey data from 241 small scale farm households in honduras we find that both participation in organic markets and farmer based groups have positive effects on the number of soil conservation practices adopted the results indicate that besides supply oriented policy measures such as the provision of technical assistance and extension demand related factors are likely to play an important role in sustainable soil management demand oriented policy measures include support for labeling initiatives and consumer education to facilitate value added product differentiation and market segmentation jel classifications q01 q12 q13 q16

sequential adoption of site specific technologies and its implications for nitrogen productivity a double selectivity model this paper analyzes the sequential decision to adopt two site specific technologies soil testing and variable rate technology and the impact of adoption on nitrogen productivity the results indicate that while farm location was a key variable influencing adoption of soil testing farm size human capital and innovativeness of farmers had a significant impact on adoption of variable rate technology in four midwestern states a double selectivity model applied to correct for sample selection bias shows that adoption leads to significant gains in nitrogen productivity for farms with below average soil quality but statistically insignificant gains for farms with above average soil quality copyright 2001 oxford university press

are there systematic gender differences in the adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification practices evidence from kenya this paper uses sex disaggregated survey data at the plot level to test whether there are systematic gender differences in the adoption of multiple sustainable intensification practices sips in kenya we analyze plot level adoption decisions of sips by male female or joint plot managers within the household controlling for household characteristics asset wealth and land quality factors that condition investments in intensification options using a multivariate probit model we find gender differences in the adoption pattern for some sips compared to male plot mangers female managers are less likely to adopt minimum tillage and animal manure in crop production indicating the existence of certain socioeconomic inequalities and barriers for female farmers however we find no gender differences in the adoption of soil and water conservation measures improved seed varieties chemical fertilizers maize legume intercropping and maize legume rotations

the heterogeneous effect of shocks on agricultural innovations adoption microeconometric evidence from rural ethiopia abstract theoretically the relationship between shocks and agricultural innovation adoption could be ambiguous while shocks could lower the competence and capacity of households to adopt new agricultural innovations households can also take up agricultural innovations as a coping mechanism against the different shocks they face using a nationally representative household data from ethiopia of the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa of the world bank this paper analyzes the effect of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on adoption of different agricultural innovations assuming interdependence among the innovations we find shocks to have heterogeneous effects on the adoption of agricultural innovations specifically production and health shocks have negative effects on the adoption of high cost innovations such as improved seeds chemical fertilizer and irrigation however production shocks are positively associated with low cost innovations such as organic fertilizer to enhance farmers adoption of agricultural innovations especially high cost innovations there is a greater need towards the design of policies and interventions that would reduce household s exposure to production and health shocks

nonmarket institutions for credit and risk sharing in low income countries the design credit and risk institutions in low income countries provides one of the most exciting testing grounds for theories of contracting with imperfect information and limited enforcement this paper reviews some of the recent literature with a special focus on nonmarket institutions that cope with risk and provide credit this literature attempts to bring together insights from economic theory especially information economics contract theory and mechanism design theory however it is also applied being motivated by the circumstance of the poor countries that their authors have visited and studied

economic shocks diversification and forest use in uganda we investigate household outcomes arising from economic shocks in rural uganda focusing on patterns of income diversification and forest use and the role of assets in shaping ex post response to shocks income poor households and those with below average landholdings are observed to have more diversified income portfolios than their cohorts households encountering above average losses tend to have more diversified income portfolios subsequent to the losses larger negative shocks are associated with greater use of the forest in subsequent periods especially among asset poor households findings suggest that development of better safety nets would reduce both vulnerability and forest pressure

adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in ethiopia this article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in ethiopia we adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics we expand this further with the generalized propensity score gps approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables we find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties this study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in ethiopia

cropping system diversification conservation tillage and modern seed adoption in ethiopia impacts on household income agrochemical use and demand for labor the type and combination of sustainable agricultural practices saps adopted have a significant effect on agricultural productivity and food security this study develops a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of farmers choice of combination of saps and impacts on maize income and agrochemicals and family labor use in rural ethiopia four primary results were found first adoption of saps increases maize income and the highest payoff is achieved when saps are adopted in combination rather than in isolation second nitrogen fertilizer use is lower in the package that contains system diversification and conservation tillage third conservation tillage increased pesticide application and labor demand perhaps to compensate for reduced tillage however when it is used jointly with system diversification it does not have a significant impact on pesticide and labor use fourth in most cases adoption of a package of saps increases women workload suggesting that agricultural intensification technology interventions may not be gender neutral this implies that policy makers and other stakeholders promoting a combination of technologies can enhance household food security through increasing income and reducing production costs but need to be aware of the potential gender related outcomes

the term structure of interest rates during a financial reform argentina 1977 81 abstract this paper studies the term structure of interest rates in argentina following the financial and monetary reforms of 1977 which mainly entailed the liberalization and deregulation of the financial system using first order conditions from the international capital asset pricing model we derived a set of term structure equations expressed in terms of returns data alone empirical implementation of these equations yielded results that are consistent with an important degree of time variation in term premiums

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

smoothing consumption by smoothing income hours of work responses to idiosyncratic agricultural shocks in rural india while research has demonstrated that farm households in developing economies are able to protect consumption from idiosyncratic crop shocks little evidence shows how this is achieved this paper examines the extent to which labor markets allow households to shift labor from farm to off farm employment and the extent to which such a shift explains the observed lack of correlation between consumption and idiosyncratic crop shocks the empirical analysis uses a novel measure of the idiosyncratic crop income shock which utilizes information on start of season cropping choices to more accurately estimate household expectations of weather

yield gap based poverty gaps in rural sub saharan africa summary given africa s challenge of feeding a growing population narrowing yield gaps is an efficient way of raising production under covariate constraints using household panel data from 21 regions in eight sub saharan african countries this article unravels the determinants of yield gaps it also tests the hypothesis that poverty gaps are increasing with yield gaps the results suggest that yield gaps are increasing with cultivated area that yield differences are reducing with fertilizer use particularly when combined with improved seeds in low production potential regions that poverty gaps are increasing with yield gaps particularly in low production potential regions

policies for sustainable development in the hillside areas of honduras a quantitative livelihoods approach in this article we use data for 376 households 1 066 parcels and 2 143 plots located in 95 villages in the hillside areas in honduras to generate information needed by decision makers to assess the needs and opportunities for public investments and design policies that stimulate natural resource conservation we develop a quantitative livelihood approach using factor and cluster analysis to group households based on the use of their main assets this resulted in seven household categories that pursue similar livelihood strategies we use a multinomial logit model to show that livelihood strategies are determined by comparative advantages as reflected by a combination of biophysical and socioeconomic variables while 92 of the rural hillsides population in honduras lives on us 1 00 capita day or less households that follow a livelihood strategy based on basic grain farming are the poorest because they often live in isolated areas with relatively poor agro ecological and socioeconomic conditions opportunities for off farm work tend to be limited in these areas and household strategies that combine on farm work with off farm work earn higher incomes per capita incomes can be increased by improving road infrastructure widening access to land policies that reduce household size and dependency ratios and adoption of sustainable land management technologies that restore soil fertility we used probit models to show that the latter can be promoted by agricultural extension programs and land redistribution investments in physical assets should be directed toward households that pursue livelihood strategies based on off farm employment or coffee production while agricultural training programs are best focused on livestock producers

modelling trends in food market integration method and an application to tanzanian maize markets abstract pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions on the one hand there is the parity bounds model pbm using a switching regressions technique while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive tar models has been proposed this article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that tar models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets furthermore we extend the standard tar model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in tanzania we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

factors influencing adoption of land enhancing technology in the sahel lessons from a case study in niger abstract technical change through the introduction of land enhancing conservation technologies is essential to economic growth in the sahel tobit analysis was used to identify factors that motivate level and intensity of adoption of specific soil and water management technologies the results show that higher percentage of degraded farmland extension education lower risk aversion and the availability of short term profits are important for increasing the adoption and intensity of use of improved tassa and half crescent shaped earthen mounds age and attitudes to differential gains between farm and non farm income showed no influence on adoption three main policy implications emerge from these findings first technologies should be targeted to locations that have large percentages of degraded farmlands the probability of adoption and intensity of use are likely to be high at such locations second there is the need to provide extension education that demonstrates risk reduction capacities of conservation techniques this will make available information capable of stimulating adoption of land enhancing technologies finally policy makers should not seek to target innovations to younger farmers because age has no relationship to adoption of the improved tassa and half crescent shaped earthen mounds lessons from the case study have broad relevance to cropped areas in the sahel

managing environmental risk in presence of climate change the role of adaptation in the nile basin of ethiopia this study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation on farm households downside risk exposure in the nile basin of ethiopia the analysis relies on a moment based specification of the stochastic production function we use an empirical strategy that accounts for the heterogeneity in the decision on whether to adapt or not and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm we find that past adaptation to climate change i reduces current downside risk exposure and so the risk of crop failure ii would have been more beneficial to the non adapters if they adapted in terms of reduction in downside risk exposure and iii is a successful risk management strategy that makes the adapters more resilient to climatic conditions

analysis of adoption and impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia summary this paper analyzes the adoption and welfare impacts of improved maize varieties in eastern zambia using data obtained from a sample of over 800 farm households using both propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models the paper shows that adoption of improved maize leads to significant gains in crop incomes consumption expenditure and food security results further show that improved maize varieties have significant poverty reducing impacts in eastern zambia the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption and impacts of modern varieties in zambia

evaluating the effectiveness of inter regional trade and storage in malawi s private sector maize markets abstract this paper evaluates the effectiveness of the private sector maize marketing system in malawi using threshold autoregression models two dimensions of maize market performance are evaluated 1 inter regional trade and spatial price transmission and 2 storage and seasonal price relationships in both cases threshold autoregression models which account for nonlinearities predicted by economic theory are applied results indicate that spatial price transmission and seasonal price patterns in private sector maize markets in malawi are generally consistent with long run competitive inter regional trade and storage behavior and that in most cases shocks to long run equilibrium are arbitraged away quickly this suggests the private sector in malawi is generally doing a good job of transporting maize from surplus to deficit regions and smoothing maize consumption between harvests

the adoption and impact of soil and water conservation technology an endogenous switching regression application this paper identifies the factors that affect farmers decisions to adopt soil and water conservation technology in africa and how this technology impacts farm yields and net returns this technology is important because it improves efficiency of water use from rainfall a critical issue in water deficient sub saharan africa an analysis of new data from a survey of 342 rice farmers in northern ghana shows that farmers education capital and labor constraints social networks and extension contacts and farm soil conditions mainly determine adoption of field ridging and the adoption of this technology increases rice yields and net returns significantly jel q15 q24

exploitative briefcase businessmen parasites and other myths and legends assembly traders and the performance of maize markets in eastern and southern africa summary small scale assemblers are both the most vilified and least understood actors in food value chains in sub saharan africa drawing on data from kenya zambia malawi and mozambique this article explores how maize assemblers influence the market access conditions of small scale farmers assembly markets for maize are found to be highly competitive in terms of the number of traders operating and marketing margins farmers market access conditions in remote areas are particularly improved by the operation of assembly traders direct state operations in markets have sometimes unintentionally exacerbated market access conditions for farmers through their effects on rural assembly markets while smallholder farmers face important marketing challenges the brightest prospects for effectively addressing them require greater support for the development of competitive assembly markets rather than supplanting them

modeling multiple adoption decisions in a joint framework a multinomial probit mnp model is applied to the modeling of adoption decisions by farmers facing multiple technologies which can be adopted in various combinations this model allows for full investigation of the interactions between decisions to adopt or not adopt several technologies estimation is carried out in a bayesian framework employing gibbs sampling to circumvent past difficulties encountered in maximum likelihood estimation of the mnp model the model is estimated for a sample of u s apple growers with four possible sustainable production technology bundles the results show that adoption decisions are most significantly influenced by off farm labor supply

consumption risk technology adoption and poverty traps evidence from ethiopia much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture with issues such as input availability knowledge and education risk preferences profitability and credit constraints receiving much attention this paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests building on an explicit model this is explored in panel data for ethiopia historical rainfall distributions are used to identify the counterfactual consumption risk controlling for unobserved household and time varying village characteristics it emerges that not just ex ante credit constraints but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail discourage the application of fertilizer the lack of insurance causes inefficiency in production choices