This book investigates if and how agricultural market structures and farm constraints affect the development of dynamic food and cash crop sectors and whether these sectors can contribute to economic transformation and poverty reduction in Africa. The authors map the current cash and food crops...

Part I. The Food and Agricultural Marketing System Overview -- 1. Evolution of Agricultural and Food Markets, Policies and Programs-Walter J. Armbruster, President Emeritus, Farm Foundation; and Ronald D. Knutson, Regents Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University -- 2. Expectations and Realities...

This report focuses on the significant developments in world agricultural markets and in the policies of major agricultural producing regions since the latest round of WTO negotiations began in 2001. In the past decade, production, prices and trade flows have been transformed and countries have...

"Covered mortgage bonds have been used successfully in Europe for two centuries, but failed in the U.S. when introduced as farm mortgage debentures in the 1880s. Using firm-level data and a sample of loans made by one Kansas mortgage company, I find that debenture programs grew out of...

How do borrowers respond to improvements in a lender's ability to punish defaulters? This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment in rural Malawi that examines the impact of fingerprinting borrowers in a context where a unique identification system is absent. Fingerprinting...