Employing a multilevel model, this paper demonstrates the importance of contextual effects, over and above the compositional effects, in shaping the geographical pattern of agricultural diversification towards high value crops. The results reveal that, besides household-level differences, the contextual effects of higher geographical levels, especially states and villages, explain significant variation in land-use under high value crops, but these do not apply to all types of crops and farm classes in a similar manner.

Drought is an important downside risk in Indian agriculture; and the spatial differences in its intensity and probability of occurrence are considerable. To develop strategies to manage the risk of drought, and to coordinate and implement these strategies, it is essential to understand the variation in drought risk across geographical or administrative levels. This paper, using a multilevel modeling approach, decomposes the variation in drought risk across states, regions, districts, villages and households, and finds it disproportionately distributed.

Involvement of youth in horticulture agribusiness has become a vital approach to create employment opportunities among the youth in Tanzania.

Reduction of post-harvest loss (PHL) can play an important role in complementing efforts to address food security challenges. This paper used data from 390 small-scale maize farmers in Kilosa, Tanzania to analyse the impact of post-harvest management training and the supply of hermetic bags on food insecurity status in a framed field experiment setting with two treatments.

The adoption of Soil Conservation Technologies (SCTs) in Tanzania is very low compared to other countries in Africa with related situation. Interventions were taken by introducing soil conservation practices. However, the adoption of these practices is far below the expectation. The objective of this study was to examine the determinants of SCTs among maize small-scale farmers in Tanzania. Secondary data from the National Panel Survey was used in this study. A binary probit regression model was employed to analyse the data.

Key findings

Smallholder farmers often face prohibitive transaction costs in agricultural commodity markets in developing countries. Consequently, they are only partly integrated into these markets.

Agricultural commodity markets in developing countries often operate in a constrained environment of prohibitive transaction costs. Consequently, smallholder farmers are only partly integrated into these markets, a situation that keeps them in a lower level of development equilibrium (poverty trap). Although cooperative institutional alternatives such as Farmers’ Organizations (FOs) may reduce transaction costs and revitalize agricultural production and commercialization, they rarely have been successful in fully delivering on these promises.