Simulation models have been used successfully to forecast productivity of cropping systems under various weather, management and policy scenarios. These models have helped farmers make efficient resource allocation decisions. However, in Kenya simulation models have not been used extensively and...

The improvement in income in developing countries has led to emergence of middle and high income consumers in urban centers. Improvement in income usually causes the shift to consumption of non-staples including leafy vegetables. Thus in major developing country urban centers there has been...

Smallholder farmer access to agricultural finance has been a major constraint to agricultural commercialization in developing countries. The ICT revolution in Africa has however brought an opportunity to ease this constraint. The mobile phone-based banking services that started in Kenya urban...

The world recently experienced the food and financial crisis. The food crisis was an indicator of the challenges towards sufficiently feeding an increasing world population. Food production through rainfed and irrigated agriculture account for the bulk of the freshwater used globally but the...

The rising world prices for major tradable staples such as maize have been a concern for sub- Saharan countries such as Kenya which are maize deficit countries. Maize is a major staple food for over 80 percent of Kenya’s population. Kenya relies on maize for up to 40 percent of its dietary...

Price transmission between the South African market and other regional markets is not as straightforward, despite South Africa’s role of a surplus producer for the region. There appears to be a host of local factors that must be taken into account in order to anticipate the likely level of...

The fertilizer sector in Zimbabwe has evolved over the years in response to different policy changes based on the government’s priorities on agricultural development. The industry grew from the 1930s that targeted primarily large scale commercial farmers, through the liberalization period of...

Interspatial and intertemporal grain distribution in Ghana is a private sector activity carried out mainly by traders. These traders sometimes collude to maximize their joint profits. By so doing they influence the conduct of the grains market. To examine the effect of their actions on the...

We assess market integration and price transmission of perishable agricultural produce in Sub-Saharan Africa by studying Ghanaian tomato markets which are characterized by pronounced seasonality in production and trade flows. We analyse the tomato markets of Ghana by simultaneously regarding its...

This paper seeks to describe and discuss the impact that climate changes, and other challenges in terms of sustainability, have had on Africa and particularly on South Africa. It seeks to discuss the extent to which these changes directly and indirectly impact agriculture and the measures that...