In most developing countries, historically, the main strategy for improving the food sector has focused on increasing farm-level production. But in recent years, with the emphasis on value chain analysis, there has been much more focus on subsector studies, demand-driven approaches, and...

Prepared for the COMESA policy seminar on“Variation in staple food prices: Causes, consequence, and policy options”,Maputo, Mozambique, 25-26 January 2010under the Comesa-MSU-IFPRI African Agricultural Marketing Project (AAMP)

Paper to be presented at the Comesa policy seminar“Food price variability: Causes, consequences, and policy options"on 25-26 January 2010 in Maputo, Mozambiqueunder the Comesa-MSU-IFPRI African Agricultural Markets Project (AAMP)

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...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/04/09.

Using a panel data set for about 70 countries, this paper jointly analyzes agri-investment trends and food security developments in vulnerable countries. This work empirically connects two mainly independent debates about impacts of agri-investments on food security and on the proposed...

We assess the relative impacts of receiving cash versus food transfers using a randomized design. Drawing on data collected in eastern Niger, we find that households randomized to receive a food basket experienced larger, positive impact on measures of food consumption and diet quality than...

Proceedings of the 2012 Parliamentary Conference, with Sir John Beddington; Professor Jonathon Foley; Dr Derek Byerlee; Dr Frank Rijsberman and others

Despite being framed as a key component of the nation’s poverty reduction strategy, evidence suggests that inputs distributed under Zambia’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) tend to be targeted to the least poor rural households.

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...