The knowledge of social stratification within the peasantry is a decisive precondition of sustainable economic and political measures for an effective support of agricultural production in least developed countries. This is one of the reasons why also in Nigeria social scientist focus on the...

African agriculture's importance for sustainable development is well appreciated. Indeed, recent years have seen a thorough reappraisal of the sector. What are less well understood, however, are the drivers that reallocate scarce human and physical resources across occupations and space, and...

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...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks but often lack access to insurance. Weather index insurance (WII) is a promising innovation, but uptake has been lower than expected. WII contracts are not yet sufficiently tailored to the needs and...

Weather risk is a serious issue in the African small farm sector, which will further aggravate due to climate change. Farmers typically react by using low amounts of agricultural inputs. Low input use can help to minimize financial loss in bad years, but is also associated with low average yield...

Commercialization of smallholder agriculture is widely seen as an essential pathway towards rural economic growth. While previous studies have analyzed effects of commercialization on productivity and income, implications for farm household nutrition have received much less attention. We...

This paper examines the state, drivers and, consequently, the impacts of agricultural mechanization in eleven countries in Africa. Using representative multistage stratified household survey data and robust analytical approaches, findings show light hand-held tools and equipment remain the main...

Digital tools may help to study socioeconomic aspects of agricultural development that are difficult to measure such as the effects of new technologies, policies and practices on the intra-household allocation of time. As new technologies, policies and practices may target different crops and...

In the quest to reduce global under- and malnutrition, which is particularly high among smallholder farmers, agriculture-nutrition linkages have received a lot of attention in recent years. Researchers have analysed the link between the quantity of food that farmers produce and nutritional...

Undernutrition and low dietary quality remain widespread problems especially among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Hence, the question as to how smallholder systems can be made more nutrition-sensitive is of particular relevance for research and policy. Recent studies analysed whether...