The increased recognition of the multiplicity of roles played by women in, and their crucial contributions to, the fisheries sector exists in stark contrast with the low presence of women in fisherfolk organizations around the globe, and the lack of access to decision-making positions in many formal fisheries-related organizations. This paper summarizes analyses of a global literature review on women in fisherfolk organizations.
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.
Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a recent survey of smallholder maize farmers in two zones of Tanzania. Hybrid adoption rates are 48% and 13% in the North and East, respectively. Average net yield gains of hybrids are 50-60%, and there are also significant profit effects.
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 Kenyan vegetable growers and a stochastic frontier approach, we show that participation in supermarket channels increases mean technical efficiency by 19%. This gain is bigger at lower levels of efficiency, suggesting the potential for positive income distribution effects.
Classical innovation adoption models implicitly assume homogenous information flow across farmers, which is often not realistic. As a result, selection bias in adoption parameters may occur. We focus on tissue culture (TC) banana technology that was introduced in Kenya more than 10 years ago. Up till now, adoption rates have remained relatively low.
In the existing literature, the effects of contract farming on household welfare were examined with mixed results. Most studies looked at single contract types. This paper contributes to the literature by comparing two types of contracts – simple marketing contracts and resource- providing contracts – in the Ghanaian oil palm sector. We investigate the effects of both contracts on farm income, as well as spillovers on other household income sources. We use survey data collected with an innovative sampling design and a control function approach to address possible issues of endogeneity.
In Sub-Sahara Africa, adoption rates of improved crop varieties remain relatively low, which is partly due to farmers’ limited access to information. In smallholder settings, information often spreads through informal networks. Better understanding of such networks could potentially help to spur innovation and farmers’ exposure to new technologies. This study uses survey data from Tanzania to analyze social networks and their role for the spread of information about improved varieties of maize and sorghum.
Rising demand for agricultural commodities coupled with population growth, climate change, declining soil fertility, environmental degradation and rural poverty in the developing world call for strategies to sustainably intensify agricultural production. Sustainable intensification refers to increasing production from the same area of land while reducing its negative environmental consequences.
Policy brief No. 1. In recent years, food consumers have become in- creasingly aware of and concerned about the sa- fety of food products. As a response, public and private actors have introduced different standards to ensure that food safety reaches the degree de- manded by consumers. Developing countries often lack the institutional capacities and financial and non-financial resources to comply with standards.
Policy brief No. 2. The majority of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers in developing countries. These smallhol- ders face several obstacles that limit their produc- tivity and profits, such that their incomes remain low. Institutional changes in the agricultural value chains are required to reduce poverty rates among smallholder farmers, and to stimulate agricultural growth.