One reason of the modest adoption of improved technologies by smallholder farmers is that the majority of them are resource constrained. Structural constraints at the households level and institutional weaknesses have often prevented most of the farmers from joining the economic development process. This study analyses the production resources in relation with the income and the needs for improved technologies of the peri-urban farm households in The Gambia. The results are compelling. The majority of the production resources are owned by small fraction of the smallholders. As a consequence, their income is higher and mostly derived from agriculture, while the poor-resource households rely on a relatively wide variety of activities to compensate their low income. The poor-resource households have also the greatest need for improved technologies, although many would also need some kind of subsidies to uptake them. There is a clear need for more agricultural research, expertise and policy-making to transcend the traditional global understanding of smallholder farmers, and consider their heterogeneity in terms of production resources
