We find that organic certification improves coffee growers’ environmental performance. It significantly reduces chemical input use and increases adoption of some environmentally friendly management practices.

While Africa has contributed marginally to climate change, the continent will be disproportionately affected by it, particularly the agricultural sector. Climate change demands policy action to address mitigation and adaptation needs, and it poses opportunities in implementation of international instruments.

We evaluated the impacts of the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on rural households' holdings of livestock and forest assets/trees. We found no indication that participation in PSNP induces households to disinvest in livestock or trees. In fact, households that participated in the program increased the number of trees planted, but there was no increase in their livestock holdings.

Devoting time to off-farm activities, while complementing agricultural incomes, may be constrained by labor availability and financial capacity. This paper assesses the importance of rainfall patterns, which condition the availability of agricultural labor, and financial constraints on off-farm employment decisions.

Dependency of urban Ethiopian households on rural areas for about 85 percent of their fuel needs is a significant cause of deforestation and forest degradation, resulting in growing fuel scarcity and higher firewood prices.

In this paper we use farmers' actual experiences with changes in rainfall levels and their responses to these changes to assess if patterns of fertilizer use are responsive to changes in rainfall patterns.

Organic certification in Costa Rica improves coffee growers’ environmental performance

This article uses data from household- and plot-level surveys conducted in the highlands of the Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia. We examine the contribution of sustainable land management (SLM) practices to net value of agricultural production in areas with low vs. high agricultural potential.

From 1997 to 2005, an astonishing 5200 million USD was invested to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main cocaine producer. However, little is known about the effectiveness of policies targeting coca cultivation. This paper uses a survey-based experiment to evaluate the effects of the two main policies: eradication and alternative development programs.