Mobile phone based money services have spread rapidly in many developing countries. We analyze micro level impacts using panel data from smallholder farmers in Kenya. Mobile money use has a large positive net impact on household income. One important pathway is through remittances, which contribute to income directly but also help to reduce risk and liquidity constraints, thus promoting agricultural commercialization. Mobile money users apply more purchased inputs, market a larger proportion of their output, and have higher farm profits. These results suggest that mobile money can help to overcome some of the important market access constraints of smallholder farmers.
Supermarkets and high-value exports are currently gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on farming efficiency have hardly been studied. Using a survey of...
Weather risk is a serious issue in the African small farm sector that will further increase due to climate change. Farmers typically react by using low amounts of agricultural inputs. Low input use can help to minimize financial loss in...
This paper analyses a biotechnology-focused project which aims to promote the development and adoption of tissue culture bananas by small-scale farmers in Kenya. The paper highlights the generation of several important narratives that are used to justify the development and...
The recent proliferation of mobile phones in rural Africa has also led to increased interest in mobile financial services (MFS), such as mobile money and mobile banking. Such services are often portrayed as promising tools to improve agricultural finance, especially...
Farm input subsidies are often criticised on economic and ecological grounds. The promotion of natural resource management (NRM) technologies is widely seen as more sustainable to increase agricultural productivity and food security. Relatively little is known about how input subsidies...
