Agriculture

With more inputs, improved crop varieties can yield more. But do Ethiopian maize farmers know enough about their seeds to optimise fertiliser use?

A participant-centred planning intervention, that prompted farmers to think through all potential income and expenditures using categorisation and labelling, leads to smoother consumption across seasons, more savings and higher farm yields for Zambian farmers.

The misallocation of women’s talent, due to barriers to entering non-agricultural work, leads to sizable productivity losses

How can policymakers promote technological progress in African agriculture?

Video aids tailored to their context and shown repeatedly can improve outcomes for hard to reach female farmers in India

Bundling technology and services enabled the soybean boom in the Brazilian savanna - migrant farmers in low-quality land gained the most from bundled contracting

Crop theft is an understudied risk faced by smallholder farmers that may impose pervasive costs on farmers. New evidence from Kenya reveals the different ways that theft, and the fear of theft, constrain agricultural development.

Agricultural markets in developing countries might be insufficiently competitive. A case study of cigarette manufacturer reforms in China casts new light on the adverse consequences of imperfect competition on rural poverty and economic growth.

Local social structures, such as the jati-caste system in India, can play an important role in the extent of diffusion of new and beneficial agricultural technologies