Despite having the second largest livestock population in Africa and favorable climate, the contribution of the livestock, especially the dairy sector to the Ethiopian economy is minimal. The per capita consumption of dairy products of 16 liters is one of the lowest in the world. With increasing...

An understanding of the efficiency with which women farmers are operating, particularly where they account for the largest share of the labor force required for agricultural production, is essential for designing appropriate policies to improve the overall performance of agriculture as well as...

There are well-founded fears that it is unrealistic to expect Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG1) to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and to halve the proportion of people who suffer hunger by 2015. Recent efforts of African governments to meet the MDG1 have resulted...

A team of researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) collaborated to produce this comprehensive and even-handed attempt at defining the...

Mathematical programming analysis has been quite effective for commercial farm planning in developed countries, but less so for subsistence farms in developing countries. In particular, it is difficult to reproduce the level of diversification observed on subsistence farms using a simple profit...

On farm conservation of crop diversity entails policy challenges, especially when the diversity of crops maintained on farms has both inter-specific (among crops) and infra-specific (within a crop) components. Survey data is used to compare the determinants of inter- and infra-specific diversity...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the most important development challenge of the 21st century. Poverty is higher in most African countries than elsewhere in the developing world. According to the recently published Report of the Commission for Africa, economic growth in Africa is necessary for...