Studies on the role of agriculture on the improvement of livelihood of farmers have primarily focused on staple crops. Increased awareness on the importance of vegetables in urban and rural areas in Nigeria has led to a rise in demand of vegetables. In both rural and urban communities, smallholder farmers are responding to this demand by increasing vegetable production and thereby creating economic opportunity for themselves. The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of vegetable farming on rural farmers’ ...

Households in developing countries employ a wide range of mechanisms for making cash and in-kind (goods and services) savings which are either formal or informal. Yet, literature on how choices about appropriate savings instruments are made remains scanty. We examine the patterns and choice of these saving instruments using household data from women farmers in eastern Uganda. In particular, the paper focuses on the choice between formal cash saving instruments like commercial banks, village savings and loans associations ...

Increasing population pressure, coupled with the effects of climate change manifested by longer dry seasons, wildfires, and conflicts, threatens the food systems of minority communities. In the case of the Mbororo minority community of Northwest Region of Cameroon, these threats are exacerbated by already existing problems of marginalisation. This study assesses agricultural risks in the global context of food distribution and gross domestic product that also poses a specific threat to the food system of the Mbororo ...

This study seeks to assess gender inequality in and correlates of time poverty among 360 rural households in Southwest, Nigeria. A person is deemed to be time poor if (s)he works more than 10.5 hours per day, the internationally accepted threshold. Using the time allocation domain of the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, the study found that on the average, rural women and men spent about 10.3 hours and 8 hours, respectively, on work activities on a daily basis. Work activities for women were found ...

The Royal Government of Bhutan has been promoting agricultural cooperatives (ACs) in the country; however, the number of people joining ACs is small. This study was conducted to identify the factors influencing households' decision to join ACs in Central Bhutan. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 384 households (192 AC members and 192 non-AC members). Trained enumerators collected data in June and July 2018 using structured questionnaires. The binary logistic regression showed that households ...

In sub-Saharan Africa, the long-awaited fuelwood gap, resulting of the unbalance between a declining supply of firewood and the increasing demand of households, remains a latent social-ecological challenge. As its quantitative basis remains elusive, we have assessed agroforestry parklands, assumedly main providers of firewood, and firewood consumption in Dassari, Benin and Dano, Burkina Faso, both in the West African savannah. Data collected included botanical inventories, tree biomass estimations, householders’ ...

In Kenya, dairy goat farming has highly been practiced for food provision and as an income-generating enterprise. However, there is scanty information on the contribution of dairy goat farming to the quality of diets consumed at household level especially among rural smallholder farmers. This study therefore analysed the contribution of dairy goat farming to household dietary diversity of the smallholder farmers. Data was collected at the end of the wet season (April-May) from a sample of 385 households in Kirinyaga ...

Vulnerable and marginalised groups (VMGs) who comprise widows, orphans, people living with disability and HIV, have not been given sufficient attention in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by policy makers, development partners, research, and extension, yet they comprise nearly one-quarter of all smallholder farmers. This study explored inclusion of VMGs in cassava value chain in the Lake Region of Kenya. Formal survey, focus group discussions (FGD), and key informant interviews (KIIs) were used to collect data ...

Despite the crucial contributions of women to agriculture and food security, female farmers in the Galapagos Islands face persistent challenges that hinder the recognition and valuation of their work. Furthermore, the lack of gender-disaggregated data tailored to their local and contextual realities presents an ongoing challenge for evidence-based policy formulation, hampering the response to their specific needs and challenges. Taking a departure from the dominant quantitative approach in agricultural research, this ...