ABSTRACT Maize is the main staple food crop in Kenya and the government policy objective is to increase maize production in order to achieve food self-sufficiency and security. The government has been applying import tariffs on maize, procuring maize at support prices, and imposing non-tariff barriers on maize imports as measures aimed at motivating farmers to produce more maize. Maize production has not, however, substantially improved in the last 13 years, and consumption demand has remain...
ABSTRACT Evidence has shown that Time Allocation (TA) to various activities by gender has implications for the poverty status of households. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on the influence of TA on household poverty in rural Nigeria. Hence, the influence of gender TA on the poverty status of rural farming households in Southwestern Nigeria (SWN) was investigated. Oyo and Osun states were randomly selected from SWN. Two rural Local Government Areas (LGAs) were randomly chosen from eac...
ABSTRACT Rural development has been erroneously equated to agricultural development. The former works to diversify income through non-farm activities to complement proceeds of the latter. However, the actual role of non-farm income in poverty alleviation is not yet known among rural households. There is therefore the need to critically explore the roles of non-farm income diversification in rural poverty alleviation. The patterns and contributions of nonfarm income diversification to poverty...
ABSTRACT East Africa region has imbalances in the supply and demand of common bean. This can be offset by improving marketing infrastructure. The objectives of the study were to determine the characteristics of common bean traders, to determine the constraints to the observed trade in common bean varieties and finally to assess the extent to which markets have integrated in key selected markets. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to obtain a sample of 240 respondents (120 traders from th...
ABSTRACT With increasing population in the main consumption regions of Zambia, there is a persistent shortage in the supply of groundnuts especially in Lusaka and the Copperbelt regions. This is despite the major producing areas of Eastern and Northern regions having significant surpluses. This is a clear indication of market failure to stimulate groundnut production and distribution in addition to excessive price volatility, information asymmetry, and lack of organized and consistent markets...
ABSTRACT In Southern Mali, small-scale farmers face multiple constraints such as low soil fertility that lead to low agricultural productivity and income. Crop-Livestock Integration System (CLIS) among small-scale farmers has been promoted by extension services to tackle these challenges in order to improve farmers’ livelihoods. Some small-scale farmers have embraced the integrated crop livestock production system and adopted innovations that have been promoted by extension services provide...
ABSTRACT Over the last decade Kenyan government has been supporting rabbit research and development activities. The efforts were aimed at raising the productivity of the small holders rabbit producers as a cheap and ease source of animal protein in the rural areas of Kenya despite presence of pulses. But inspite of the efforts rabbit production in Buuri Sub county stands at 1.2 Metric tons of meat against a potential of 8.4 Metric tons per year. This productivity gap is wide and indicative of...
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...
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...