Summary This paper uses small-scale farm survey data from five countries of eastern and southern Africa to highlight four under-appreciated issues: (i) how land distribution patterns constrain the potential of crop technology and input intensification to enable many small farms to escape from...

Research on household food grain sales behavior in developing countries has tended to focus on the roles of market access and prices to explain why many rural households do not sell staple crops, though recent literature suggests that low household asset endowments may also be key constraints....

This paper draws upon development economics theory, demographic projections, and empirical evidence toconsider the likely consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for the agricultural sector of the hardest-hitcountries of Eastern and Southern Africa. We identify four processes that have been...

This study measures how Kenyan farmers and farming systems have responded to changes in population density and associated land pressures. Kenya is a relatively densely populated area, with 40% of its rural people residing on 5% of its rural land. We develop a structural model for estimating the...

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...