Peasant farmer behavior and cereal technologies: stochastic programming analysis in Niger

Peasant farmers in Sahelian West Africa adjust to rainfall uncertainties in the agricultural season by making decisions sequentially as a function of the evolving rainfall patterns. Understanding such flexibilities in farmer decision-making is central to technology introduction. This paper determines how sequential decision making under weather uncertainty affects the adoption and farm-level effects of cereal technologies in Niger. The study also draws policy implications for a price floor to arrest the substantial fall in cereal prices in good rainfall years when farmers have more grains to sell. The methodology used is discrete stochastic programming. The paper shows that the ability of peasant farmers to adapt cropping and resource management strategies to the rainfall patterns is the basis for their survival in this high-risk environment. Model results show that by (a) carrying a portfolio mix of varieties of varying maturities, and (b) making sequential decisions based upon rainfall expectations, farmers can adapt to the production uncertainties. Breeding programmes should therefore be diversified to develop not only early-maturing cultivars, but also improved intermediate and long-season varietie

A test of whether millet acreage in Niger is determined by official or private market prices

Niger has two separate marketing channels for grain: one is the official system operated by the government; the other is a parallel channel of private traders. Researchers or policy-makers wanting to study effects of price policies on producers are faced with two sets of prices. This paper seeks to answer the question, which prices matter? Non-nested hypothesis tests are conducted for millet-acreage response equations. The results show that prices from the larger private market are the prices that matter