Impact of HIV/AIDS-related Adult Mortality on Rural Households' Welfare in Zambia

This study estimates the impacts of prime-age (PA) adult morbidity and mortality on crop production and cropping patterns, household size, livestock and non-farm income in Zambia using nationally representative rural farm household longitudinal survey data. The findings provide important information to assist policy makers, donors, and development planners in designing interventions to mitigate the impacts of the AIDS on vulnerable households.food security, food policy, Zambia, HIV/AIDS mortality, Health Economics and Policy, Q18,

Emerging Structural Maize Deficits in Eastern and Southern Africa: Implications for National Agricultural Strategies

This note summarizes analysis of trends in net maize exports over the 1960-2005 period and examines whether these trends are being reflected in changing maize price levels in the region. The implications are highlighted of the findings for countries’ agricultural development strategies.food security, food policy, Zambia maize, Crop Production/Industries, Q18,

Security of Widows’ Access to Land in the Era of HIV/AIDS: Panel Survey Evidence from Zambia

1. The percentage of households that are headed by widows in rural Zambia increased from 9.4 % to 12.3% between 2001 and 2004. 2. Within 1 to 3 years after the death of their husbands, widow-headed households, on average, controlled 35 percent less land than what they had prior to their husband’s death. 3. To some extent, older widows are protected against loss of land compared to younger widows. 4. Women in relatively wealthy households are particularly vulnerable to losing land after the death of their husbands. 5. Widows whose family has kinship ties to the village authorities are less likely to face a severe decline in landholding size after the death of their husbands. 6. Widows in patrilineal and matrilineal villages are equally likely to lose their rights to land.food security, food policy, Zambia, HIV/AIDS, land, Health Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Q20,

Staple food prices in Zambia

Prepared for the COMESA policy seminar on “Variation in staple food prices: Causes, consequence, and policy options”, Maputo, Mozambique, 25-26 January 2010 under the Comesa-MSU-IFPRI African Agricultural Marketing Project (AAMP)Zambia, food security, food prices, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, International Relations/Trade, q11, q13, q18,

Conservation Agriculture: Gendered Impacts on Households\u27 Livelihoods

In response to climate change, new technologies resilient to climatic variability have been promoted among smallholder farmers. Conservation Agriculture (CA) has been promoted since the 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa. However, as with any new technology, various factors affect adoption and ultimately the impact of the technology. Gender is one such factor. Both female and male smallholder farmers are faced with numerous constraints to accessing productive resources. Female farmers face more problems in adopting new technology than do male farmers, resulting in few of them adopting them. This in turn reduces the impact that these technologies have on their livelihood. Using Zambian nationally representative data, the study examines the gendered impacts of CA on smallholder households’ livelihood outcomes – household income, crop income, crop diversification, and dietary diversity score. Results show that CA adoption improves a household’s level of dietary diversity and crop diversification. However, the impact of CA on these livelihood outcomes reduces if the household is female-headed or the farmer (male or female) is in a female-headed household. Therefore, promotion of CA should take into account the gender differences at household level and within the household, as well as female farmers’ access to productive resources

HIV/AIDS and Agrarian Livelihoods in Zambia: a Test of the New Variant Famine Hypothesis.

1. Consistent with the New Variant Famine (NVF) hypothesis, the negative impact of drought on crop output and output per hectare is further exacerbated where HIV prevalence rates are relatively high, particularly in the low- and medium rainfall zones of the country (agro-ecological regions I and II). 2. HIV prevalence rates and AIDS-related mortality rates in Zambia are highest in the lowest rainfall and most drought-prone zone of the country (agro-ecological region I). 3. Only for districts in agro-ecological region I do we find evidence of a robust negative effect of HIV/AIDS on agrarian livelihood indicators. Relatively stable food production zones and/or areas with relatively low HIV prevalence rates appear to be less vulnerable to the adverse effects predicted by the NVF hypothesis, which suggests that HIV/AIDS exacerbates the effects of drought and other shocks on agrarian communities. 4. HIV/AIDS reduces the crop production gains associated with fertilizer subsidy increases in the highest rainfall areas. 5. Increases in the percentage of female-headed households in a district are related to declines in agricultural production indicators, but these effects do not appear to worsen when the HIV/AIDS epidemic is severe. 6. Only in districts whose borders encompass both agro-ecological regions II and III do we consistently find weak evidence that HIV/AIDS reduces the contribution of productive assets to crop output and output per unit of land as would be expected under the NVF hypothesis.food security, food policy, Zambia, HIV/AIDS, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, Q20,

A Long History of Low Productivity in Zambia: Is it Time to Do Away with Blanket Recommendations?

Although there have been calls to ramp up efforts to design and implement a fertiliser programme that recognises the spatial variability of soil fertility and climatic conditions in the country, Zambia like most countries in Africa, continues to rely heavily on outdated general fertiliser recommendations, which are uniform across geographic locations and crops. This could be one of the main reasons why Zambia continues to record low crop productivity despite government fertilizer subsidy programmes. Using soil analysis and household data collected in rural Zambia, this study presents a comparative analysis of location-specific fertilizer application versus blanket recommendation to demonstrate why it is important for the Zambian government to invest in area-specific fertiliser recommendations in order to raise crop productivity. As expected, the results show that soil fertility varies across the country. This was observed in all the mapped soil properties with ranges of 2.7 to 7.8 for soil pH, 0.08% to 10.1% for soil organic carbon and 1.0 ppm to 333.6ppm for soil Phosphorus. These values belong to different classes in terms of acidities and levels of adequacy and deficiency. These results indicate that blanket fertiliser recommendations, or even liming, may not be well suited across the entire country. Instead, they support the need for Zambia to promote area-specific fertiliser recommendations. It is recommended that soil testing be promoted as part of extension messages, and that the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) should consider including soil testing as a requirement for the subsidy

Fostering Food Market Development in Zambia

This article assesses major features of the Zambian agricultural market that have led to the underdevelopment of the staple food marketing system, reviews existing empirical evidence explaining the variable performance of the maize sub-sector, and suggests potential corrective measures. As smallholder farmers in agricultural markets are considered to be vitally important to the attainment of food security, special attention is placed on how the current system affects these farmers, and on how to foster improved participation. The role and potential of new generation cooperatives is also considered.We identify seven major areas in need of serious and coordinated attention if the state of the agricultural sector and marketing functions is to improve