February 2010

Stimulating rural employment and income for cassava (Manihot sp.) processing farming households in Oyo State, Nigeria through policy initiatives

Smallholder agriculture is characterized by underemployment during off seasons, low-income earnings and severe post harvest losses. The study thus analyzed the economics of cassava processing by rural farm households to establish the socio-economic and policy strategies required to stimulate rural enterprise. Multistage sampling technique was used to collect data from 150 respondents using structured questionnaire....

Author(s): Oluwemimo Oluwasola

February 2010

Linkage between rural poverty and agricultural productivity across the districts of Uttar Pradesh in India

Improvement in agricultural productivity can reduce rural poverty in a major way. In India, various studies inferred that rural poverty is inversely related to the agricultural productivity and argued that agricultural productivity growth reduces rural poverty effectively as it generates income for poor farmers. Indian states are characterized by high variations in rural poverty levels, particularly, in Uttar Pradesh...

Author(s): Prabha, Kishor Goswami and Bani Chatterjee

February 2010

Poverty-environmental links: The impact of soil and water conservation and tenure security on household welfare in Kenya

This paper investigated the impact of investment in soil and water conservation strategies and tenure security on household welfare in Kenya. The paper used survey data collected from a sample of about 450 households in 2004. The paper estimated reduced form models to test the hypothesis that investments in soil and water conservation affect household welfare. The results showed that strong land rights are directly...

Author(s): Jane Kabubo-Mariara, Vincent Linderhof, Gideon Kruseman, Rosemary Atieno and Germano Mwabu

February 2010

Price and non-price determinants of farm household demand for purchased inputs: Evidence from Northern Ghana

The study examined the factors that influence the use of purchased inputs (fertilizer, hired labour, seed and ploughing services) by smallholders in Northern Ghana. The seemingly unrelated regression technique was used to estimate a system of cost share equations of the factor inputs. The elasticities of substitution and factor demand have been estimated. The estimated results suggested that higher amount of remittance...

Author(s): Akwasi Mensah-Bonsu