Integrating the conservation of biodiversity by smallholder farmers with agricultural intensification is increasingly recognized as a leading priority of sustainability and food security amid global environmental and socioeconomic change. An international research project investigated the smallholder agrobiodiversity of maize (corn) in a global hotspot (Bolivia) undergoing significant intensifi...

Agroforestry supports food and nutritional security through: (1) the direct provision of tree foods such as fruits and leafy vegetables and by supporting staple crop production; (2) by raising farmers’ incomes through the sale of tree products and surplus staples; (3) by providing fuels for cooking; and (4) by supporting various ecosystem services such as pollination that are essential for the ...

Rubber is the most widespread smallholder tree crop in South-East Asia. Although initially large estates planted the bulk of the region’s rubber, smallholders soon captured most of the production. Currently, Indonesia’s rubber plantations cover 3.4 million ha, of which smallholders account for more than 75% (BPS, 1999). In peninsular Malaysia, the area in rubber has declined since the 1970s, bu...

Cotton production in the Francophone African Countries (FACs) derives exclusively from smallholders whose holding size is less than 5 ha on average. From the 1990s, the FACs are globally ranking third to second in exporting cotton to the world market. Such an achievement could be regarded as the result of an institutional construction which took place for four decades in dealing with the smallh...

This paper studies nonmarket institutions that facilitate exports. In Malawi, as in many other developing countries, farmers face numerous constraints that disconnect them from export markets. We explore the role of a local institution, the burley tobacco clubs, in bridging smallholders to exports. Burley clubs potentially enable farmers to increase their tobacco farming productivity by providi...

Bt cotton is spreading very rapidly in China, in response to demand from farmers for technology that will reduce both the cost of pesticide applications and exposure to pesticides, and will free up time for other tasks. Based on surveys of hundreds of farmers in the Yellow River cotton-growing region in northern China in 1999, 2000 and 2001, over 4 million smallholders have been able to increas...

Agriculture in Myanmar has substantial development potential given the abundance of land, water, and labor resources country. Despite this, agricultural productivity is low farm incomes are amongst lowest Asia. The underperformance crops yield widely reported to be due fertilizer use by smallholders. This study investigated perceptions smallholders about for cereal considering their motives dec...

This paper examines the impacts of access to extension services and cooperative membership on technology adoption, asset ownership and poverty using household-level data from rural Nigeria. Using different matching techniques and endogenous switching regression approach, we find that both extension access and cooperative membership have a positive and statistically significant effect on technol...

This paper suggests that a new approach is required to link smallholders with agribusiness in developing countries. This approach combines the use of the new institutional economics, a case study methodology and the lessons of history, to develop some suggestions for the design of a viable and sustainable contract farming model. A case study methodology in the Southern African sugar industry is...

This paper discusses a methodology to model precipitation indices and premium prices for index-based drought insurance for smallholders. Spatial basis risk, which is borne by the insured, is a problem, especially in variable topography. Also, site-specific drought risk needs to be estimated accurately in order to offer effective insurance cover and ensure financial sustainability of the insuran...