National governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have limited budgets and are forced to make difficult funding decisions regarding the provision of social services and the support of agricultural programs. These provisions can play a critical role in rural incomes and agricultural...

Many developing countries are experiencing a rapid expansion of supermarkets. New supermarket procurement systems could affect farming patterns and wider rural development. While previous studies have analyzed farm productivity and income effects, possible employment effects have received much...

This article investigates determinants and impacts of cooperative organization, using the example of smallholder banana farmers in Kenya. Farmer groups are inclusive of the poor, although wealthier households are more likely to join. Employing propensity score matching, we find positive income...

Against the background of rising food demand, decreasing productivity growth, and environmental degradation, natural resource management technologies, such as the system of rice intensification (SRI), have been propagated, especially in a smallholder farm context. However, system technologies...

Studies from different countries show that transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops can reduce chemical pesticide use with positive economic, environmental, and health effects. However, most of these studies build on cross-section survey data, so that longer term effects have not been...

In this article, we critically review the three most common approaches of assessing chronic food insecurity and undernutrition: (i) the FAO indicator of undernourishment, (ii) household food consumption surveys, and (iii) childhood anthropometrics. There is a striking and worrying degree of...

Overweight is an increasing problem in many developing countries, coexisting with underweight and contributing to a dual burden of malnutrition, sometimes in the same households. We analyze the phenomenon of dual burden households in Indonesia, using 15-year panel data. Currently, 16 percent of...

Genetically modified (GM) crops have been used commercially for more than 10 years. Available impact studies of insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant crops show that these technologies are beneficial to farmers and consumers, producing large aggregate welfare gains as well as positive effects...

While several studies have shown that genetically modified Bt cotton can benefit smallholder farmers economically, the sustainability of these effects is still unclear and debated controversially between biotechnology proponents and critics. We use unique panel data of 533 cotton farmers,...