ABSTRACT Agriculture plays a vital role in the Kenyan economy. It helps in poverty mitigation and ensuring food security. In agriculture, women constitute the majority of small-scale farmers in Kenya, providing 89% of subsistence farming labor force and 70% of the cash crop labor force. However, they have limited access to land which hinders them from making the most constructive use of their time and energy in the agricultural sector and thus affecting household nutritional outcomes. Therefo...
ABSTRACT Vegetable production is of great importance in terms of nutrition improvement, income generation and food security. Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISNG) action research project actively integrates vegetable farming and marketing practices in order to reduce the vulnerability of indigenous populations of Babati district located in the Manyara region of Tanzania. In Tanzania smallholder vegetable famers receive asymmetrical and inc...
ABSTRACT Over the years, Njoro Sub-County in Kenya has become increasingly urbanized, transforming from a transcendently rustic, horticultural territory, to dominatingly urban non-agrarian locale; driven mainly by growth of population. Agriculture being the main source of livelihood for the rural and semi-urban residents is being acutely jeopardized by rapid urbanization. Despite extensive studies on agricultural land conversion, there exists a knowledge gap on the extent of agricultural land...
ABSTRACT Rice productivity is low in Nigeria, and NERICA was introduced by West Africa Rice Development Agency (WARDA) to solve this problem. This study focused on NERICA productivity and efficiency in Kaduna State. A three-stage sampling technique was used with Kaduna State being purposively selected. Igabi and Soba Local Government Areas (LGAs) were randomly selected. Five villages were randomly selected from each LGA, with a total of 129 NERICA farmers selected and used for the analysis. ...
ABSTRACT This study presents the empirical analysis of the effects of oil exploitation on the efficiency of artisanal fishing households in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria. The selection of respondents was multi-staged and involved purposive sampling as well as random sampling methods. A structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used to elicit information from a randomly selected sample of 160 artisanal households from Delta and Bayelsa States, Nigeria. Descriptive statistics, sto...
ABSTRACT Rice has become a staple food, just like yam, garri and beans. As a result, the marketing of rice has become very important due to increasing demand of the product. The study examined the economics of farm-gate rice marketing in Enugu State, Nigeria. Five objectives and one hypothesis guided the study. The study covered all the communities in the local government areas in the three Agricultural Zones that produce rice in the study area. The population of the study consisted of rice ...
Despite the pertinence of Agriculture to the economy, its potential has not been realized. To address this shortfall, research and training institutions have designed and generated knowledge and technologies. However, the innovations generated have hardly reached the end users. In response, Egerton University established Farm Attachment Programme (FAP) to innovatively engage small-scale farmers in 2014. Despite FAP being in operation since 2014, little is known about its effectiveness an...
ABSTRACT Nature provides ecosystem services (ESs) which benefit humans for socio-economic development. However, ecosystems degradation has impacted negatively on people’s livelihood leading to increasing global concern to rethink on sustainable conservation-livelihood mechanisms. Lake Naivasha basin has been undergoing ecosystem degradation threatening ecological functional capacity to provide ESs. As a result, it has increased food insecurity, poverty levels, decreased income and destabili...
ABSTRACT Market access is a major constraint facing agricultural commercialization in Kenya. The pressure on arable land and market changes are mainly felt by the smallholder farmers who are faced with high transaction costs such as information access and transport costs. In addition, these farmers face a number of institutional and technical factors putting their market survival at stake. To curb these challenges, formation of farmer groups and organizations has become important in bringing ...
Smallholder farmers in Southern Mali mainly in the cotton production zone are facing decreasing income over time. This constraint makes producers resort to alternative sources of income to supplement agricultural activities to sustain and secure their livelihoods situation. However, the diversified crops and having multiple sources of agricultural income constitute the significant opportunity for smallholder farmers to ensure food security and reduce over dependency on income from cotton...
Developing countries, Kenya included are mostly affected by food problems and poverty as a result of high dependence on agriculture. Agriculture in Kenya is dominated by smallholder farmers, whose production is hampered by climate variability, declining land sizes and low agricultural technologies. Agricultural intensification is aimed at solving the problem of low agricultural productivity and poverty through increasing farm output per unit land area. However it is still not clear the e...
ABSTRACT Food security is a major concern of the world, especially among the poor in developing countries. Pulses, including dry beans, play a crucial role in ensuring food security, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where over 200 million people depend on beans as part of their main diet. In Rwanda, dry beans are an important staple food and constitute the primary source of protein for about 90% of Rwandan households. Unfortunately, dry beans are a slow-cooking food, requiring a lot of time...
ABSTRACT Botswana is classified as an upper middle income country and despite having attained such economic growth, the country still faces socio-economic challenges such as poverty. The current poverty rate is 20.7% while rural poverty is 24.7% which is relatively higher for an upper middle income country. In order to address this problem, the government introduced the Poverty Eradication Programme. This study therefore, sought to assess the income, expenditure and consumption dimensions of ...
ABSTRACT The agriculture sector supports the livelihoods of the majority of the population in Rwanda. Currently, the sector is dominated by smallholder farmers most of whom are women. In order to modernize and transform agriculture to market orientation, the government has put in place agriculture sector development programs for instance the Crop Intensification Program. One of the targeted crops in the program is the common bean. Nearly all households in Rwanda produce the common bean. Thoug...
Agricultural production plays an important role in food security in many African countries. The main challenge of policy makers in these countries is how to attain food self sufficiency, and increased farm productivity and incomes. In Kenya, greenhouse production is among technologies promoted to improve farm output and income among smallholder farmers. Greenhouse production technology in Kenya has, until recently, been the confine of large scale export-oriented flower farmers. The techn...