Because gender roles and relations are dynamic, programs built on a solid up-to-date understanding of how men and women share labor responsibilities and the proceeds from their agricultural activities have the potential to bring forth positive outcomes. Better information on gender-based...

In 2011, Zambia recorded its second consecutive record-breaking maize harvest, and aggregate maize production levels in 2011 were more than double the average level from 2006 to 2008. The expansion in maize production over the period corresponds with the scaling up of the Government of the...

The past two years are a tribute to Zambian farmers; they have responded admirably to government efforts to promote maize production. But ironically, rural poverty remains stubbornly high despite the fact that the government has spent over 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product in...

1. According to nationally representative Crop Forecast Survey data, over the past 10 years farmers have harvested between 55 and 90 percent of the area that they planted to maize. 2. In the 2009/10 and 2010/11 crop years, over 80 percent of the maize area planted by small- and medium-scale...

1) Export diversification has long been at the centre of Zambia’s economic diversification policies. This article focuses on the coffee sector as a potentially important source of export diversification and examines its supply response to changes in various incentives. 2) Zambian coffee...

In the late 1990s, several governments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) embarked on various market reforms to improve commodity market performance. The success of such market reforms depends partly on the strength of the transmission of price signals between spatially separated markets and between...

The Farmer Input Support Program (FISP, formerly the Fertilizer Support Program) has expanded the scale of its fertilizer distribution from 48,000 metric tons (MT) in 2002/03, when the program started, to nearly 183,000 MT in the 2012/2013 farming season. Yet, after more than a decade of input...

Nearly three decades after the initiation of agricultural market reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), subsidies for fertilizer and seed are once again the cornerstone of many SSA governments’ agricultural development and poverty reduction strategies. Zambia is a prime example. In the last...

With only a few months remaining, Zambia still has a long way to achieving the millennium development goal of halving the number of stunted children by the end of 2015. Almost half of the children in Zambia remain undernourished and 40% of them have stunted growth, a long term malnutrition...