In the context of a growing population in an already densely populated area, agricultural yields will need to increase without putting additional stress on the environment. The adoption of modern inputs by smallholders is an important ingredient of agricultural transformation. In this study we...

Driven by increased demand from both local and export markets and facilitated by far-reaching liberalization and privatization policies, the dairy sub-sector in Uganda has undergone significant changes in the last decade. With a comparative advantage in milk production, the southwest of Uganda...

In situations with imperfect information, the way that value chain actors perceive each other is an important determinant of the value chain's structure and performance. Inaccurate perceptions may result in inefficient value chains, and systematic bias in perceptions may affect nclusiveness. In...

Market participation by smallholders farmers has the potential to pull farmers out of poverty while at the same time increasing food security at the more aggregate level. This paper looks at the dynamics of smallholder maize and beans marketing in Uganda and Mozambique. Using panel data from...

In developing countries, all too often policies formulated in response to high food prices are inspired by ideology instead of evidence-based policy research. We look at the immediate effects of these shocks faced by households in Uganda on their poverty and well-being. In addition, we look at...

Recent research on the intertemporal dynamics of poverty using microeconomic data often hints at the existence of poverty traps, where some find themselves trapped at a low-level stable equilibrium while others enjoy a higher stable equilibrium. Without a sizable positive shock to well-being,...

Rapidly increasing mobile phone coverage, cheaper technology, and an open platform that allows for the development of applications that extend the use of mobile devices provide new ways to reach farmers in isolated places. We investigate the impact of an intervention that uses information and...

To feed a growing and increasingly urbanized population, Uganda needs to increase crop production without further exhausting available resources. Therefore, smallholder farmers are encouraged to adopt sustainable crop intensification methods such as inorganic fertilizer or hybrid seeds. However,...

Agricultural advisory services generally rely on interpersonal knowledge transfers in which agricultural extension agents visit farmers individually or in groups to provide information and advice. This approach is not always effective and has often proved hard to bring to scale, particularly in...

In many developing countries, agricultural extension services are generally biased towards men, with information targeted mainly to male members of a farming household and in formats that are rarely tailored to female members. Nevertheless, female farmers may also benefit from such services as...