The study presented here considers the relative efficiency of planting tobacco and maize in the tobacco-producing Tabora region of Tanzania. The study used a 2013 survey that was conducted among smallholder farmers in the Tabora region. The aim was to investigate whether farmers are better off planting tobacco or maize. The paper briefly reviews the importance of agriculture in general and tobacco planting in particular on the Tanzanian economy. The paper then reviews the methodology used in the analysis, The Frontier Production Function.

This article investigates the role of institutional isolation on the adoption of soil conservation technologies in Kenya. The study is based on the theory of induced technical and institutional innovations and on the literature on land tenure security and investment incentives. A multinomial logit model for adoption of various soil conservation investments (SCI) is estimated.

A revised application of Ostrom's (Ostrom, 2007) Social-Ecological System (SES) framework to Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, G. (1968), Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248) demonstrates that its institutional structure is more complex than either Hardin or Ostrom had imagined.

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This paper assesses rural households’ decision to use improved maize varieties in Malawi and examines its impact on household welfare using a three-year household panel data.

This study examines current land access and livelihood choices of rural youth in Southern Ethiopia. We found that youth in rural south have limited access to agricultural land because of land scarcity and land market restrictions.

Weather fluctuations tend to be as important as climate change in farmers’ decision making in countries such as Ethiopia that have virtually no weather insurance. This paper assesses the distinct impacts of weather and climate change measures on agricultural productivity of households, measured in terms of crop revenue, in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.

Implementing and complying with standards and certification often increases costs for supply chain actors. These increased costs are caused by upgrading production, logistics and marketing needed to achieve compliance, and can lead to the exclusion of actors from the supply chain.