Innovative Extension Projects for Part-Time Farmers: There is No Funding

If we can heLp the big guys survive, grow rich and at some future date try to gobbLe up the farming operations of these 'family producing units'-why can't we heLp ... the part-time farm .. . organize and operate a successfuL farming enterprise? (Cochrane in CHOICES, Second Quarter 1987

Gendered impacts of fertilizer subsidy removal programs in Malawi and Cameroon

Since the early 1980s, development experts and donor agencies have agreed on the importance of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) aimed at 'getting prices right'. Adoption of reforms were made preconditions for new loans or grants in many sub-Saharan African countries. In both Malawi and Cameroon, one such required reform was government's eliminating fertilizer subsidies to the small farm sector, previously used to increase the profitability of intensive agriculture while keeping food prices artificially low. The aim of this ,:>aper is to review fertilizer subsidy removal programs for their impact on farmers, who in sub-Saharan Africa are women. In theory, SAP programs should benefit women producers, because much emphasis is placed on renewing agricultural production and aligning farmgate prices with world prices. But in practice, will they benefit? Are SAPs gender-neutral and affect men and women equally, or merely gender-blind

Utilisation des instruments ethnoscientifiques dans la compréhension des plans, des objectifs et des processus décisionnels des agriculteurs

Réunion: Colloque sur la participation des paysans au développement et à l'évaluation des technologies agricoles, 20-25 sept. 1983, Ouagadougou, BFDans IDL-688

Using ethnoscientific tools to understand farmers' plans, goals, decisions

In IDL-622

DETERMINANTS OF FOOD SECURITY IN SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

The study investigates the relative importance of supply-side and demand-side factors of household food security through a logistic regression analysis applied to data collected from 247 sample households in Southern Ethiopia. Among the nine factors included in the model, seven were identified as statistically significant determinants of household food security: technological adoption, farming system, farm size, land quality, household size, per capita aggregate production and access to market. Among these, technological adoption, farming system, farm size, and land quality are supply-side factors. Household size, per capita aggregate production, and access to market are demand-side factors. Based on the magnitude of their partial effects on the probability of food security, supply-side factors are more powerful than the demand-side factors in determining household food security, implying that interventions focused on these factors need to get priority attention by policy, research and extension

Determinants of food security in Southern Ethiopia at the household level

In the early 1980s, a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security, following Amartya Sens (1981) claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern, affecting the poor's access to food, than a supply concern, affecting availability of food at the national level. Despite the wide acceptance of Sen's thinking, many controversies including the relative importance of supply-side versus demand-side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles. This study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following Singh et al. (1986), and parses out the relative importance of supply-side versus demand-side variables in determining household food security in southern Ethiopia. Based on results of a test of full/reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security, we conclude that the supply-side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand-side variables. Copyright 2005 International Association of Agricultural Economics.