This paper assesses the feasibility of the maize storage structures used in Kenya. Maize is the most important staple crop, but produced seasonally, and consumed continuously at farm level, hence the need for on-farm storage. However, heavy post harvest losses occur mainly during harvesting and...

The instability of world prices of traditional cash crops led to the promotion of nontraditional crops. Among the latter, vegetable farming is positioned as strategic cropping for meeting urban and periurban food consumption in most West African countries. Seasonality differences between coastal...

In many Western countries and elsewhere, agriculture commodity exchanges have been in existence for centuries. However, Africa did not follow the same route for various reasons. It was only in the mid-1990’s that farmers and stakeholders again started to ask, how should we go about to market...

Maize is a main staple food in Nigeria, high productivity and efficiency in its production are critical to food security and poverty alleviation in the country. Thus, this paper estimates cropping intensification, the levels of technical efficiency of 252 maize–based farming households in...

Developing countries have been promoting initiatives that aim at reducing information asymmetry among market players especially smallholder farmers. Using co-integration error correction models, the study assessed effectiveness of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based...

The efficiency with which farmers use available resources is very important in agricultural production. This study examines the resource use efficiency of cassava-based mixed crop farmers in Ogun and Oyo States, Nigeria. Cross-sectional data were collected from 265 cassava-based farmers (150 in...

Credit constraint occurs when a farmer cannot increase expenditure on inputs in order to maximize profit due to lack of farm credit or high cost of credit. Farming households are confronted with credit constraint that results in low crop output and profit. Using a non-parametric measure of...

Improving local rice production capacity is a key element on the agenda of most countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). There are several reasons for this drive: (1) the high levels of rice imports, which constitute a burden on the countries’ financial...