Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study...

This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real...

Sub-Saharan Africa is typically regarded as land abundant, and previous efforts to estimate the true extent of potentially available cropland (PAC) have largely affirmed this perception. Such efforts, however, have largely focused on production potential and have underemphasized economic...

"The choices that smallholder farmers are able to make are strongly conditioned by the geographic conditions in which they live. The importance of this fact for rural development strategy is not lost on policy makers. For example, the government of Ethiopia frequently frames policy discussions...

"The choices that smallholder farmers are able to make are strongly conditioned by the geographic conditions in which they live. The importance of this fact for rural development strategy is not lost on policy makers. For example, the government of Ethiopia frequently frames policy discussions...