This article examines an ICT-based intervention (known as the DrumNet project) that has succeeded in integrating smallholder-resource and poor farmers into a higher value agricultural chain. The article assesses the design of the project, and how it resolves the smallholder farmers’ idiosyncratic market failures and examines member-farmers’ marketing margins. The article finds that the design o...

This study was undertaken to investigate the impact of microfinance on agricultural productivity by smallholder farmers in Makurdi Metropolis of Benue State, Nigeria. Data were randomly collected from 120 farmers consisting of 60 credit beneficiaries (CB) and 60 non-credit beneficiaries (NCB) by which were analyzed through descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. The results of ...

Editorial PrEfacE The growing use of new generation, mobile-based, information and communication technologies (ICT) has expanded opportunities for food and agricultural marketing and rural financial service delivery among the smallholder farming community in Sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers in developing countries have struggled for many years under difficult conditions of poor access to...

The study investigated the effect of Community-Based Paid Extension (CPE) on vulnerability reduction of smallholder dairy farmers. Randomly sampled 255 farmers were interviewed together with 15 key informants’ interview. Both statistical analysis and thematic approach were employed to achieve triangulation. In about 68 % of cases, CPE reduced vulnerability to a degree experienced as ‘moderate’,...

The Smallholder Farmers’ Dataportrait is a comprehensive, systematic and standardized data set on the profile of smallholder farmers across the world. It can generate an image on how small family farmers in both emerging and developing countries live their lives. It is about putting in numbers, the constraints they face, and the choices they make so that policies can be informed by evidence to ...

Smallholder farming systems form unique ecosystems that can protect beneficial soil biota and form an important source of useful genetic resources. They are characterized by high level of agricultural diversity mainly focused on meeting farmers' needs. Unfortunately, these systems often experience poor crop production mainly associated with poor planning and resource scarcity. Soil fertility is...

the paper determined optimum farm plan for food security among smallholder farmers in imo state, nigeria. data were collected with structured and validated questionnaire from 180 smallholder crops farmers in imo state. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, frequency distribution and percentages), budgetary analysis and linear programming model. results show that the mean age of...

Across the tropics, smallholder farmers already face numerous risks to agricultural production. Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect smallholder farmers and make their livelihoods even more precarious; however, there is limited information on their overall vulnerability and adaptation needs. We conducted surveys of 600 households in Madagascar to characterize the vulnerabilit...

The growing demand for high-value food commodities is opening up opportunities for farmers, especially smallholders to diversify towards commodities that have strong potential for higher returns to land, labour and capital. However, there is an apprehension about the capability of smallholder farmers to participate in the market-oriented production due to their lack of access to markets, capita...

Contract farming has been subject to intense debates regarding its role in development. Opponents argue that large agribusiness companies generally exploit the low labour costs of smallholders and transfer production risks to farmers, while smallholder farmers are often excluded from contract farming schemes. This means that such schemes result in greater income inequality and social tensions i...