All governments require accurate information on how the economy functions in order to formulate and implement sound agricultural policies. Policies to ensure food security are no different. Efforts to keep food prices at tolerable levels require information about the competitiveness of the...

Input subsidy programs that provide inorganic fertilizer and improved maize seed to small farmers below market rates are currently receiving a great deal of support as a sustainable strategy to foster an African Green Revolution. In recent years numerous countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)...

This paper contributes to literature on agricultural technology adoption by using a novel data set that combines data from two large-scale household surveys with historical rainfall data to understand the determinants and the intensity of adoption of Conservation Farming (CF)practices in Zambia....

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...

There has been increased demand for food not only on the African continent but globally. This has been largely attributed to the high population growth with changing food preferences. This calls for the transformation of Africa’s agriculture and food systems through transforming agricultural...

The advancement of South America’s agro-pastoral frontier has been widely linked to losses in biodiversity and tropical forests, with particular impacts on the Brazilian cerrado, the Atlantic Forest, and the Amazon. Here I consider an important, yet largely overlooked, driver of South...

Smallholder farmers in many areas of the semiarid tropics are planting exotic tree species that provide alternative income sources, fuel, and building materials. While providing other benefits, these trees often occupy land that could produce annual food crops. This study uses a polyperiod,...

Over the past 20 years the agribusiness industry has been subject to a number of transformations and shocks that have altered its business environment and management practices. This thesis sets out to try to understand how the Michigan industry has changed in this period, and to understand if...

School feeding program as a social safety net has been popular in developing countries as an instrument for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. These programs are frequently targeted towards populations that are food insecure and reside in areas with high concentrations of families from...