Market access, marketing behavior and technical efficiency among farming households in Mozambique

Food insecurity and extreme poverty are widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, where around 70 percent of the African population relies on agriculture. Improving farm productivity and promoting market access are both important strategies to help farmers increase sales and alleviate poverty, but the relationship between farm productivity and markets is unclear. This thesis uses household survey data from Mozambique to analyze the determinants of farming household marketing behavior and farm productivity. The thesis is divided into two studies with the first feeding into the second. The first study analyses factors affecting market participation and level of participation using a switching regression technique inspired by Goetz (1992) which allows simultaneous estimation of variables related to probability for participation and variables related to quantity of sales out of total output. Three market participation models of increasing complexity are developed. The study indicates that households in districts with tarred roads have greater chances for participating in produce markets and sell significantly greater percentages. Distance to the nearest tarred road is not correlated to household marketing behavior. The second study evaluates the relationship between market participation and farm productivity. Market access is used as an instrument for market participation in evaluating the relationship between market participation and productivity. The study estimates both translog and Cobb-Douglass production functions using stochastic frontier analysis technique and in turn predict efficiency scores develop efficiency models. The second study shows that labor and land are complementary and critical inputs in farming household production systems and market participation is positively related to farm productivity.