In many African countries, as well as in other parts of the world where a significant part of the rural population is poor and food insecure, policymakers face what is called the food price dilemma. On the one hand, they need to provide farmers with incentives to increase the quantity of...

Crop income is the predominant source of income for most rural Mozambican households, accounting for 73% of rural household income on average in 2002, and greater than 80% of the total income of the poorest 40% of rural households. While the Government of Mozambique recognizes the need to...

This paper aims to better understand the determinants of household crop income, by using the TIA panel household survey of 2002-2005 to measure the impact of various private and public assets on crop income. We build upon Walker et al.’s (2004) analysis of TIA02 crop income by utilizing the...

This brief summarizes detailed analysis of the determinants of household crop income in rural Mozambique from 2002 to 2005. Increased crop income is associated with increases in household land area, use of animal traction, crop diversification into tobacco or cotton, access to market price...

This brief summarizes detailed analysis of the determinants of household crop income in rural Mozambique from 2002 to 2005. Increased crop income is associated with increases in household land area, use of animal traction, crop diversification into tobacco or cotton, access to market price...

Despite upward trends in fertilizer application rates on maize fields over the last twenty years, there remains a perception in Kenya that fertilizer use is not expanding quickly enough and that application rates are not high enough to reverse the country’s growing national food deficit. In...

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...

Zambia’s maize crop grew by roughly 48% between the 2009 and 2010 harvests, leading to the largest crop recorded in recent history. The 2009 maize harvest was also very good, making the 48% rise in 2010 even more remarkable. The forces driving that increase, however, remain widely debated....

The world food and financial crises threaten to undermine the real incomes of urban consumers in eastern and southern Africa. This study investigates patterns in staple food prices, wage rates, and marketing margins for urban consumers in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia between 1993 and...