This paper traces the trajectories of successful commercial smallholders operating under differing sets of market institutions. Analysis focuses on maize, cotton, and horticulture, three widely marketed crops with strikingly different market institutions. Maize receives intensive government...

This working paper explores the prospects for regional maize trade in helping to stabilize food availability and prices in Zambia. It reviews these general prospects within the maize economy of southern Africa. Given the important regional differences in Zambia’s food economy, it explores...

Zambia’s population clusters tightly in cities along the north-south line of rail and in the primarily rural areas of Eastern Province (Figure 1). Staple food consumption and purchases are similarly concentrated in these heavily populated clusters (Figures 4 and 5). Across the border, several...

Although a majority of Zambians work in agriculture, only a small minority of smallholders succeed in transitioning to high-productivity, high-value commercial agriculture. Only 20% of cotton farmers and less than 5% of maize and horticulture farmers succeed as top-tier commercial growers (Table...

This paper traces the trajectories of successful commercial smallholders operating under differing sets of market institutions. Analysis focuses on maize, cotton and horticulture, three widely marketed crops with strikingly different market institutions. Maize receives intensive government input...

This paper aims to develop and test methods for spatial mapping of population, food production, consumption, and marketed quantities in Africa. As an initial, exploratory exercise, the paper examines the spatial pattern of population, food production, consumption, and trade in the three...

Food and social safety nets have a history as long as human civilization. In hunter gatherer societies, food sharing is pervasive. Group members who prove unlucky in the short run, hunting or foraging, receive food from other households in anticipation of reciprocal consideration at a later time...