This paper traces the trajectories of successful commercial smallholders operating under differing sets of market institutions. Analysis focuses on maize, cotton, and horticulture, three widely marketed crops with strikingly different market institutions. Maize receives intensive government...

When food prices shoot over import parity, this often leads to social and political unrest and even the toppling of governments. If markets behaved efficiently and in the absence of trade barriers, food prices should not exceed the price in world markets plus the cost of importing it to domestic...

De 1997 a 2007, os programas de monetização do Título II da Agência Americana para o Desenvolvimento Internacional (USAID) venderam mais de $200 milhões de trigo e óleos vegetais não refinados destinados à ajuda alimentar em Moçambique. Este estudo tem três objectivos: 1) documentar as...

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...

Performance of the agricultural sector in developing countries is fundamental to ensuring robust and equitable economic growth and broad-based food security. Yet donor support to agricultural development in developing countries has declined continuously for 30 years. This same period saw...

Performance of the agricultural sector in developing countries is fundamental to ensuring robust and equitable economic growth and broad-based food security. Yet donor support to agricultural development in developing countries has declined continuously for 30 years. This same period saw...

Rapid growth in urban populations and renewed growth in per capita incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are creating major opportunities for local farmers by driving rapid growth in domestic market demand for food. At the same time, these trends plus rising income are putting enormous stress on...

Daily quantities of tomato, rape and onion entering Soweto market in Lusaka fluctuate dramatically. The market does a remarkable job of moderating the impact on prices of these unstable quantities, through stabilizing mechanisms such as short-term storage of tomato and rape by traders and...

Cotton is an unquestioned success of Zambia’s turn towards a market economy. After privatization in late 1994, seed cotton production rose from 32,000 metric tons (mt) to about 180,000 mt a decade later (three-year averages centered on 1994 and 2005). The number of farmers involved in the...