Maize in Eastern and Southern Africa: 'seeds' of success in retrospect

This synthesis revisits the “maize success story” in Sub-Saharan Africa, drawing selectively from an extensive published literature about maize seed technical change and related policies. The review focuses on the countries of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, where maize is most important in the food economy, and refers to the period when maize became a dominant food crop through the 1990s. The term “success” is equivocal in this case, both because of the difficult of establishing the appropriate counterfactual and because some of the policies that contributed to success in one period later led to decline. While the “seeds” themselves were the result of innovative, successful maize breeding, boom periods in maize production were episodic and the public investments in the controlled markets that bolstered them were not fiscally sustainable. Since maize will remain a crucial part of the food security equation even while the agricultural economies of the region diversify, continued investments in both maize research and market institutions, some of which must be public, are essential. The most vital question, however, is where the domestic political pressure to support these investments will originate an issue related to governance.Maize Africa, Southern., Seeds Technological innovations Africa., Food crops Africa, Eastern Marketing., Markets Prices., Food security Africa., Plant breeding Research., Investment of public funds.,

Maize in Eastern and Southern Africa: Seeds of Success in Retrospect

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Small Grain Export Potential and Government Objectives in Zimbabwe: A Means-ends Inconsistency?

AEE Working Paper.The potential for Zimbabwe to develop viable small grain export markets within the SADCC region will depend crucially on: 1. Zimbabwe's ability to produce reliable marketed sorghum and millet surpluses at a cost low enough to be competitive with C.I.F. import prices of coarse grains in other SADCC countries: and 2. the development of reliable and effective import demand for small grains among other SADCC countries. Inherent within conditions (1) are questions related to the incidence of response to increased small grain production incentives, the strong random influence of weather as a determinant of small grain export supplies, transport constraints and other marketing problems. Within conditions (2) are issued concerning the reliability of weather-induced import demand within the region, the enthusiasm of donors to finance triangular transactions over the long run, and the scope for other SADCC countries to translate their stated food self-sufficiency goal in reality. This paper examines the potential for these two fundamental conditions to be met, and more broadly considers whether their achievement would actually be consistent with Zimbabwe's agricultural policy objectives

Land pressures, the evolution of farming systems, and development strategies in Africa: A synthesis

AbstractEvidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study synthesizes how people, markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in Africa, drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this special issue. The papers herein revisit the issue of Boserupian agricultural intensification as an important response to land constraints, but they also go further than Boserup and her followers to explore broader responses to land constraints, including non-farm diversification, migration, and reduced fertility rates. Agricultural and rural development strategies in the region will need to more fully anticipate the implications of Africa’s rapidly changing land and demographic situation, and the immense challenges that mounting land pressures pose in the context of current evidence of unsustainable agricultural intensification, a rapidly rising labor force associated with the region’s current demographic conditions, and limited nonfarm job creation. These challenges are manageable but will require explicit policy actions to address the unique development challenges in densely populated rural areas

Trends shaping Africa's agricultural landscape

International audienc

Zimbabwe’s food insecurity paradox: hunger amid potential

A research paper on the paradox of poverty in a situation of great potential agricultural yields in Zimbabwe's quest for food security.Food security is one of the primary goals for human and sustainable development the world over. At the global level, one of the millennium development goals is halving the number of undernourished people in the world by 2015. In Zimbabwe, food security has been at the centre of development goals and strategies since independence in 1980. Zimbabwe has also ratified all the conventions regarding sustainable development, including the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. In the 1980s, Zimbabwe received international acclaim for its agricultural policies and grain surpluses212 but many households in the rural areas faced chronic food insecurity. Although Zimbabwe has the potential to achieve food security, it has experienced food shortages since the 1990s at both the national and household levels. Food self sufficiency in Zimbabwe could be achieved primarily through production and then distribution to the population through appropriate marketing policies and channels. In 1985, grain self-sufficiency was 212 per cent and Zimbabwe was regarded as the grain basket of the Southern African Development Community." However, production of the main staple food crops has been declining over the years. Whilst low production can be attributed to poor and erratic rainfall, low soil fertility and other institutional and policy factors have been responsible for lagging production from the 1999/2000 season onwards

Revisiting the Farm Size-Productivity Relationship Based on a Relatively Wide Range of Farm Sizes: Evidence from Kenya

This paper revisits the inverse farm size-productivity relationship in Kenya. The study makes two contributions. First, the relationship is examined over a much wider range of farm sizes than most studies, which is particularly relevant in Africa given the recent rise of medium- and large-scale farms. Second, we test the inverse relationship hypothesis using three different measures of productivity including profits per hectare and total factor productivity, which are arguably more meaningful than standard measures of productivity such as yield or gross output per hectare. We find a U-shaped relationship between farm size and all three measures of farm productivity. The inverse relationship hypothesis holds on farms between zero and 3 hectares. The relationship between farm size and productivity is relatively flat between 3 and 5 hectares. A strong positive relationship between farm size and productivity emerges within the 5 to 70 hectare range of farm sizes. Across virtually all measures of productivity, farms between 20 and 70 hectares are found to be substantially more productive than farms under 5 hectares. When the analysis is confined to fields cultivated to maize (Kenya's main food crop) the productivity advantage of relatively large farms stems at least partially from differences in technical choice related to mechanization, which substantially reduces labor input per hectare, and from input use intensity

Factors associated with farm households' movement into and out of poverty in Kenya: The rising importance of livestock

This study explores the dynamics of poverty in Kenya. The study specifically examines how initial conditions, household decisions, and other factors that may change over time affect poverty. Dynamic relationships are identified between behavioral variables, exogenous shocks at one point in time, and indicators of household welfare in subsequent years. The study uses longitudinal data collected from 1,324 households which participated in three nationwide surveys conducted over seven years, in 1997, 2000, and 2004, to identify salient household-level and community-level correlates of poverty in rural Kenya. Next, dynamic relationships are identified between time-invariant initial conditions, lagged household resource allocation, technology adoption decisions, and current income and wealth outcomes. Last, the paper draws implications for designing policies and programs for alleviating rural poverty and promoting income growth