Indemnifying smallholder farmers against crop loss is thought to be infeasible due to information problems. Consequently there is interest in developing alternative, partial, insurance products. Examples include rainfall insurance and the limited liability inherent in credit contracts. I argue that while these products may reduce information asymmetry, ambiguity averse farmers struggle to asses...

Much work has been done to improve smallholder farmers’ adoption of new agricultural technology packages in Uganda; however, little commensurate effort has been made to improve their access to formal market information channels like mobile telephony, FM radio stations, Internet, and other information centers. This study is based on data obtained in 2006 from farmers affiliated to Uganda Coopera...

— 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 a...

Due to the threat of anthelmintic resistance, livestock farmers worldwide are encouraged to selectively apply treatments against gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs). Targeted selective treatment (TST) of individual animals would be especially useful for smallholder farmers in low-income economies, where cost-effective and sustainable intervention strategies will improve livestock productivity and...

BACKGROUND The tissue culture banana (TCB) is a biotechnological agricultural innovation that has been adopted widely in commercial banana production. In 2003, Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AH) initiated a TCB program that was explicitly developed for smallholder farmers in Kenya to help them adopt the TCB as a scalable agricultural business opportunity. At the heart of the c...

At the end of 202, the Kyoto protocol was due to expire, leaving the world unprotected in the face of the continuing increase of carbon dioxide emissions and a temperature change that will not be constrained by the famous 2°C target, now rapidly becoming obsolete. In a dramatic push beyond the scheduled end of the meeting, the recent climate conference at Doha managed to scramble up an extensio...

The Indian population is growing rapidly (1.25 billion) and it has to fulfill its food and nutrition requirement. A collaborative strategy should be adopted for increasing productivity by intensifying available land use system. Intercropping is advanced management practices of soil fertility status, consisting of cultivating two or more crops in the same space at the same time, which have been ...

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Genetic improvement of planting material (in a broad sense) is an important component of agricultural growth for nations and regions in the process of economic development. Asia’s Green Revolutions in rice and wheat are perhaps the best-known examples of dramatic agricultural growth associated with crop genetic improvement. Most experts agree that no such seed-based revolution has occurred in S...