This paper describes the different food policy courses pursued in recent years by four countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, and documents their differential effects on farmer and consumer behavior. Results are based primarily on a survey and synthesis of recent analysis. The paper...

The objectives of this report are to identify market-oriented strategies to alleviate both chronic and transitory food insecurity, and to examine the interactions between short-run targeting mechanisms and longer-run strategies designed to alleviate the chronic causes of inadequate access to...

This report analyzes the effects of grain market reform and food subsidy elimination in Eastern and Southern Africa on access to food for low-income consumers. The report also assesses the potential to use "self-targeted commodities" to improve vulnerable groups access to food though market...

Economists have long held that broad-based agricultural growth is the most powerful source of poverty reduction in developing countries where most of the rural population is engaged in agriculture (Johnston and Mellor 1961; Mellor 1974; Lipton 2006). However, in Zambia’s case, despite sustained and...

Only a small percentage of well-capitalized smallholders are able to sell maize to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) and take advantage of the maize price support. For example, in the 2007/08 marketing year, only 10% of smallholders sold maize to the FRA and these households had larger landholdings,...