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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether social and/or cultural obstacles faced by African female farmers diminish their accessibility to lending opportunities provided by a commercial microfinance institution; and affect their repayment performance.

The underlying data set is comprised of information regarding 9,710 farmers from Madagascar and was provided by the AccèsBanque Madagascar. Logit and Tobit models are applied to determine gender effects on loan accessibility and repayment performance, respectively.

Even though female farmers are associated with a lower repayment performance, they have a higher rate of loan application approval compared to male farmers.

The results are limited to Madagascar and other African countries with similar socio-economic conditions.

Commercial microfinance institutions still provide access to credit for disadvantaged groups, such as female farmers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating gender-specific credit access and repayment performance of rural African farmers using a data set from a commercial microfinance institution without a social mission for females.

This paper aims to examine barriers to finance experienced by female owner/managers of marginal farms in the Punjab region of India.

The article is based on the preliminary results of a survey conducted with 48 marginal farmers and 15 bank managers in Punjab, India.

Emergent results show that the relationship of female owner/mangers with their banks was affected by gender prejudices inherent in the male dominated banking sector in India. Loan rejection rates for female owner/managers were significantly greater than those of their male counterparts. The incidence of bank managers requiring collateral/referral letters was considerably higher for female owner/managers than for equivalent male applicants.

The research sample explored in this study is small and drawn exclusively from the Punjab region of India and it might not be representative of the wider population of farmers in India.

To enhance the competitiveness of the agricultural sector in India, policy makers and associated government agencies should develop support initiatives aimed specifically at marginal farmers in general and female owner/managers in particular.

Even though the research sample is small the results of the study could have implications for policy makers, bank managers and regional development agencies in India as well as other developing countries.

The results of this research contribute to better awareness and understanding of barriers to finance experienced by female owner/managers of marginal farms in Punjab, India.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the success of a scheme, supported by the Ugandan Agribusiness Initiative Trust, to fund gender and entrepreneurship training for women farmers in the north of Uganda (Gulu District and Lira District). Moreover, this paper reflects upon our experience of delivering training for women farmers and highlights key observations related to women’s entrepreneurship in Uganda.

A practitioner-based reflection which shares the experiences of the process of developing and delivering gender and entrepreneurship training for women in Uganda.

Through the experience of running gender and entrepreneurship training for women farmers in Uganda, a series of barriers to female rural entrepreneurs are highlighted: lack of access to credit, gender inequality, poor infrastructure, lack of access to knowledge and education, negative attitudes towards women and few initiatives to facilitate economic and business success.

This paper provides reflection of the experience gained from the delivery of training and interaction with women farmers and entrepreneurs in Uganda.

This study analyses climate change vulnerability and adaptation in a northern province in Vietnam from the gender perspective.

A survey questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. The Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) was calculated for 134 female and 239 male-headed households. Descriptive statistics were synthesized to investigate climate change adaptation from the gender perspective.

The results show that the LVI of female-headed households is higher than male-headed households, but the variation is negligible. In addition, female and male farmers in the study area use different methods to adapt to climate change. Female farmers have critically contributed to the family workforce and climate change adaptation. Nevertheless, female farmers have less accessibility to agricultural services such as training and credit.

The study suggests that gendered interventions for improvement of livelihood to adapt to climate change should be developed for each aspect of the livelihood. Furthermore, enhancement of services for women and recognition of women's roles in responding to climate change would contribute to more active adaptation to climate change.

Studies on climate change from the gender perspective in Vietnam have been conducted on a limited scale. Particularly, there are very limited studies on climate change in association with gender issue in North Vietnam. Thus, this study will provide more insights into the gender dimension of climate change vulnerability and adaptation so that gender-based adaptation strategies can be developed.

Focuses on crop farmers’ access to agricultural information in rural areas of Delta State, Nigeria. Data were gathered by questionnaire from ten villages. Farmers of both genders experienced obstacles to information use, although findings revealed that there were also differences between male and female crop farmers with respect to their information needs and sources of agricultural information. Female crop farmers experienced greater problems in accessing agricultural information. However, the major information problems suffered by farmers are not gender‐specific problems. Concludes with recommendations to enhance all crop farmers’ access to agricultural information.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the factors that drive gender income differences among farmers in Cambodia with a focus on the role of formal credit.

To decompose the gender income gap, this article employs the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique, while a two-stage least square (2SLS) regression is also employed to check the causal effect of formal credit usage on earnings.

Results show a positive effect of formal credit on farmers' earnings and the gender gap in formal credit usage is not found. Despite that, formal credit still contributes to the gender earnings gap with a higher return to credit usage for male farmers. This can be due to the difference in the level of education, financial literacy and other dimensions in favor of men, allowing them to use credit more effectively than women.

The findings underline the importance of boosting general and financial education among female farmers in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the expansion of access to financial services for women must be accompanied by policies addressing gender gaps in other economic and social dimensions, so that women are able to reap the potential benefit of using those financial services.

Lack of research focuses on the link between the gender gap in the use of financial services and the gender income gap. The significant gender gap in returns to formal credit usage found in this study demonstrates that the benefits of gender equity in access to and usage of financial services also depend on the effects of other indicators that policymakers must be aware of.

Rural farmers’ access to farm credit in Nigeria has been very low, which affects farm performance, and credit providers have blamed for the problem in the sector. While this general perception persists the fact may be the case of credit demand, rather than just the risk-averse attitudes of credit providers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate significant factors influencing farmers’ credit demand to ensure efficient credit provision.

The research adopted mixed methods for an in-depth investigation into the problem. There were 216 research participants split into equal halves of men and women from six local government areas of Nasarawa State. Data collection methods employed structured interviews, focus group discussions, close/open-ended and key informant interviews. Analytical tools involved descriptive statistics, the logit and multinomial logit models to determine participants’ socio-economic characteristics, sources of credit, access, factors influencing credit demand generally and from the various sources of credit identified.

Findings reveal only 47.6 per cent of the participants accessed credit, with fewer women accessing than men. The most accessed forms of credit are from the semi-formal sources, with more men accessing from formal sources and more women from non-formal sources. Factors having significant influence on credit demand generally are education, group membership and household size. And from formal, semi-formal and non-formal credit sources are education, information on sources of credit, deposits, household size and marital status; education, deposits, group membership, household size, flock size; and education, group membership, and gender from the non-formal credit providers, respectively.

Due to time constraint, this study data were collected concurrently with both quantitative and qualitative methods and did not allow for the interrogation of findings from one method with the other. In addition, the research categorised the agency of women based on marital status only as single or married and did not interrogate the agency of women further, this may be a limitation as some of the female participants are from polygamous homes.

Unlike the current concentration of Nigerian research of this kind with quantitative methods alone, this research contributes particularly to Nigerian research output and experience by triangulating both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore farmers sources of credit, access and factors determining access to credit in the study area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the population‐food crop production nexus, and within it assesses the differences between male‐ and female‐headed households.

The paper uses the demographic pressure, market price incentives theories and other mediating conditions, namely: environmental, techno‐managerial, political economic and institutional. In addition, information from a household survey undertaken in 2002 among 196 and 56 male‐ and female‐headed households, respectively, in 12 randomly selected localities. A multiple regression model is used to examine the role of population and other determinants in food crop production.

Population predicts food crop production in male‐headed households. In addition, contrary to some research findings that agricultural output remains low as a result of access to land, labour, farm equipment and information in female‐headed households, this paper shows otherwise.

Female‐headed households in the transitional agro‐ecological zone produced more maize, owned more land, earned more from sale of maize, allowed for more years of land to fallow, used more inorganic fertiliser on their farms, cropped more agricultural land and cropped maize on soils with better water absorption capacity, compared to male‐headed households. Future research is needed in the savannah and forest zones of Ghana, to ascertain whether these scenarios also pertain to those agro‐ecological zones.

Female subsistence farmers should be supported, since that could go a long way in helping Ghana achieve its goal of attaining a middle‐income status in the shortest possible time.

The paper contributes to the debate on the increasing role of women in agriculture.

This study analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on agricultural production in South India by evaluating the influence of market channels and socioeconomic conditions on the production decisions of farmers during two key cropping seasons. We base our analysis on primary data from 200 marginal, small and medium farmers, primarily focusing on the key seasonal crops, namely paddy and black gram.

We studied the downstream supply chains of paddy and black gram crops in the district of Villupuram, situated in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Using a Bi-Probit model, we analyzed the production decisions of marginal, small and medium farmers engaged in paddy and black gram cultivation. Various factors are considered, including farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics, gender, market channels accessed and the coping strategies employed.

After the easing of lockdown measures in June 2020, our research revealed substantial disruptions in agricultural production during the critical Kharif and Rabi seasons. Most farmers refrained from returning to their fields during the Kharif season; those who did produced millet as the main crop. Factors such as choice of market channels in previous seasons, economic status, access to all-weather roads, labor availability, gender and coping strategies played an important role in the return to production in the subsequent Kharif and Rabi seasons.

Our data revealed several interesting threads related to price volatility, irrigation and access to markets and their impact on food security. The role of intermediaries and market channels in providing liquidity emerges as an important aspect of farmers' choice of markets. The pandemic impacted all these factors, but a detailed analysis was beyond the scope of this study.

We also find that resilience to economic shocks varies not only by economic status but also by gender and social groups. Farmers with female members are more likely to be resilient, and marginal and small farmers primarily belong to social groups that are economically less developed.

This study contributes to the literature on factors influencing farmer choice and decision-making and provides nuances to discussions by analyzing crop-specific supply chains, highlighting the critical role of socioeconomic factors. It also highlights the role of demographics and infrastructural factors like access to all-weather roads and access to markets that influence farmers’ production decisions.

Farmers all over the country have been exposed to various adaptation strategies to climate change. The adaptation options however focus too closely on technical skills and technologies and fail to address critical social factors such as culture, beliefs and values that influence the adoption and effective implementation of new adaptation technologies, skills and capacity. This paper aims to assess the socioeconomic factors influencing farmers’ specific adaptive strategies to climate change in Pwalugu and Balungu communities in the Talensi district of the Upper East Region of Ghana. This study used purposive sampling technique to select the study communities, whereas simple random sampling technique was used to select a total of 100 respondents from the selected communities. Questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussions were used in collecting data from respondents. This study used detailed statistical test to analyze the data, and the results are presented in the form of figures and tables. This study highlights the legal and institutional context which must be adopted for effective response to climate change impacts in rural communities in Northern Ghana. It also recommends that government and relevant stakeholders should collaborate with financial institutions to ensure that funds are readily available to farmers to enable them to effectively adapt to climate change as well as provide training/workshop programs to farmers to enhance their capacity in planning and implementing effective strategies to climate change.

This study used the integrated methodological approach where quantitative methods were combined with appropriate qualitative methods. According to Sandelowski (2000), this method ensures reliability (the extents to which results are consistent over time) and validity (the means of which measurements are accurate) of the research. A combination of participatory methods, including key informant interviews, household questionnaire surveys and focus-group discussions were used, allowing local people the opportunity to participate by sharing their experiences and knowledge to outline possible solutions to the problem at hand. Multiple methods (Yeasmin and Rahman, 2012) are good at reducing the inadequacies of a single method. Cross-sectional study was used in designing the research. Variables were measured or determined at the same period in a given population. This method allowed the assessment of practices, attitudes, knowledge and beliefs of a population in relation to a particular event or phenomenon (Olsen and George, 2014).

The findings of this study revealed farming as the major occupation in the two communities with males being dominant. Diverse livelihood activities such as fishing, animal/poultry rearing, firewood/charcoal production, hunting and driving were other activities respondents engaged to earn a living. In terms of institutional arrangements, avoidance of bush burning and tree felling were the norms influencing decision-making in the two communities. Fear of being punished, animals feeding on some of the grasses, trees inducing rainfall as well as benefits respondents get from trees were the reasons these norms were adhered to in the study area. Access to land, gender dynamics and finance were identified as the socioeconomic factors in the study area. High demands by landowners, last minute change of mind by landowners, limited fertile lands, lack of money to acquire lands, behavior of tenants, number of acres required and lands far from water bodies were the challenges associated with acquiring land in the communities. Access to finance influenced respondents’ ability to acquire fertile lands, lands closer to water bodies and any number of acres of their choice. Gender however impeded women adaptation strategies to climate change. Women were not allowed to own land and other property in the form of animals simply because they are seen as migrants and they do not know the history of the land.

This is a master’s thesis project. This paper shows the socioeconomic factors, which are influencing farmers’ specific adaptation to climate change in the Talensi district of Ghana.