This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

China’s rural reforms expose farm households to the risk of administrative land reallocation and adjustment. The possibility of land reallocation gives rise to the problem of tenure insecurity which reduces farm households' incentives to invest in the land and to use the labor forces...

Ecological, evolutionary and economic issues involved in introducing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), mainly in agriculture, are discussed. The ecological and evolutionary impacts identified hamper (economic) valuation of GMOs and their biosafety regulation and creates difficulties for...

We estimate a distance function of grains production using generalized method of moments that enables us to accommodate multiple outputs of farmers as well as address the endogeneity issues that are related with the use of distance functions for multi-output production. Using a panel data set of...

This paper contributes to our understanding of the use and management of crop residues in East African highlands and farmers' decision-making associated with this important on-farm resource. Using the data from a socio-economic and household production survey of a sample of 310 households in 15...

Kenya is one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa experiencing an impressive rise in fertilizer use on food crops grown by smallholder farmers since the liberalization of input markets starting in the early-1990s. The impacts of these reforms and associated private sector investments on...

To date there is limited knowledge on the role that post-harvest storage protectants, chemical or otherwise, play in a smallholder farmer’s decision to adopt of high-yielding improved maize varieties. This is a key issue because higher yielding varieties are often more susceptible to storage...

Perennial crop production is inherently dynamic due to several salient physical characteristics including an establishment period of several years with low or no yields, long lives in commercial production (40 years or more), and path-dependence of yields on input use and other exogenous...