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The Government of Pakistan has allocated a substantial proportion of agricultural credit to subsistence farmers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze farmers’ access to credit and its adequacy in the light of current agricultural credit policy of Pakistan.

The study has used both secondary and primary data for analysis. Secondary data were collected from the annual reports of Pakistan Economic Survey and State Bank of Pakistan. Primary data were collected from 168 subsistence farmers through households’ survey. Farmers’ credit access and credit adequacy were measured using credit access ratio and credit adequacy ratio, respectively. The Student’s t-test and analysis of variance were used to assess the differences in credit access and adequacy among farmers’ groups (i.e. upper, medium and lower subsistence farmers). Tobit regression model was employed to determine the factors influencing credit adequacy among farmers.

The empirical results revealed that the amount of credit provided to subsistence farmers was less than stated in the national agricultural credit policy. Upper subsistence farmers had more access to credit than lower and medium subsistence farmers. Lower subsistence farmers had above average access to informal sources of credit, and had below average access to formal sources. The findings also revealed that lower subsistence and medium subsistence farmers had the highest credit inadequacy of funds for investment in agriculture. The results of the Tobit regression revealed that age, education, experience, household size, total landholding of farmer and proportion of own land influenced the agricultural credit adequacy.

Most of the credit was distributed among the upper subsistence farmers. Lower subsistence farmers were still largely dependent on informal credit for farm production activities. The Government of Pakistan performed poor in the implementation of agricultural credit policy, and has failed to help subsistence farmers in their access to formal credit. It is needed to revamp the agricultural credit policy and facilitate credit acquisition by subsistence farmers, particularly for tenant farmers. It is important that the Government may classify the subsistence farmers into subgroups, and reallocate the funds accordingly. This study has lessons and implications for agricultural finance initiatives in developing countries.

Previous studies have focused primarily on access to agricultural credit. However, this study has adopted a holistic approach by using secondary and primary data to assess the farmers’ access to credit and adequacy. In addition, limited literature is available to explore the farmers’ accessibility and adequacy of agricultural credit. Furthermore, this study has focused exclusively on the farmers who are living in the flood-prone areas of Pakistan.

In Nepal, not much is known about the adoption of improved vegetable varieties. Also, there are reasons to expect that the determinants of adoption may vary between subsistence and commercial farmers, given their different production/market orientations. Therefore, the paper aims to examine the adoption intentions of commercial and subsistence vegetable farmers.

A logistic regression model was used to empirically test the determinants of the intention to adopt and recommend improved vegetable varieties. The paper also uses propensity score matching (PSM) to assess the causal effects of production/market orientation on household dietary patterns. Cross-sectional data of 600 Nepalese vegetable farmers are analyzed.

Compared to subsistence farmers, commercial vegetable farmers obtain seeds mainly from formal sources and use hybrid seeds. The most consistent covariates of vegetable adoption intentions were risk preferences and experience growing vegetables. Overall, adoption intentions were higher among commercial farmers, and commercial vegetable households tend to consume more vegetables.

Considering that vegetable farming provides an important supplementary food production system for the household, adopting improved vegetable varieties is pivotal to increasing productivity and improving household level dietary diversity in developing countries. Actions to promote wider adoption of vegetable varieties and encourage healthier dietary patterns could be successful if these efforts also focus on subsistence farmers. The findings in this paper will be useful to policymakers to better prioritize dissemination strategies.

The paper highlights the differences in characteristics and adoption intention towards new vegetable varieties between subsistence and commercial farmers. The impact of commercial production on healthier household dietary patterns is accentuated.

This paper aims to describe the indigenous and innovative practices adopted by the small-scale farmers to cope with the impacts of climate change hazards on subsistence farming.

The data were collected through focus group discussions with 72 small-scale farmers from a rural community in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The discussions were analysed through verbatim transcripts and content analysis.

The study results show the farmers’ understanding of climate change variability and its hazards in the form of rainfall scarcity and excessively increased temperature, which are responsible for a declining production of indigenous crops. It has also been found that in the face of these hazards, the farmers experience low crop yields, which cannot provide the household food requirements. However, the small-scale farmers use a combination of local and innovative knowledge and skills to improve their crop production. They have adopted the indigenous adaptation mechanisms, which include rainfall prediction, preparation of the gardens, change of crops and the planting season to ensure better crop yields. The farmers also adopted innovative adaptation practices such as the use of fertilisers, growing of exotic crops and use of extension officers’ guidance and skills to minimise the risks and maximise the chances of resilient crop production.

This paper describes the farmers’ ability to use the indigenous and innovative adaptation practices. It is only focused on the farmers’ knowledge and skills other than the extension officers’ skills.

The adaptation practices reported in the study fall within the adaptation and mitigation systems stipulated in the South African National Climate Change Strategy to assist the small-scale farmers grow and maintain the crops to improve production and minimise the risks, thus ensuring food security under observable harsh climate hazards.

Literature contends that not much is known about smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate variability and the impacts thereof on agricultural practices in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa in particular. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of smallholder farmers from Botlokwa (a semi-arid region in South Africa) on climate variability in relation to climatological evidence.

The study area is in proximity to a meteorological station and comprises mainly rural farmers, involved in rain-fed subsistence agriculture. Focus group discussions and closed-ended questionnaires covering demographics and perceptions were administered to 125 purposely sampled farmers. To assess farmers’ perceptions of climate variability, their responses were compared with linear trend and variability of historical temperature and rainfall data (1985-2015). Descriptive statistics were used to provide insights into respondents’ perceptions.

About 64% of the farmers perceived climate variability that was consistent with the meteorological data, whereas 36% either held contrary observations or were unable to discern. Age, level of education, farming experience and accessibility to information influenced the likelihood of farmers to correctly perceive climate variability. No significant differences in perception based on gender were observed. This study concludes that coping and adaption strategies of over one-third of the farmers could be negatively impacted by wrong perceptions of climate variability.

This study highlights discrepancies in perceptions among farmers with similar demographic characteristics. To guarantee sustainability of the sector, intervention by government and other key stakeholders to address underlying factors responsible for observed discrepancies is recommended.

This study was conducted to assess the socio-economic implications of climate change on the three ecological regions of Lesotho. In the view that climate change is affecting agriculture, subsistence communities are at risk. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two villages were randomly selected from three regions of Lesotho and at least 40 households in each region. The full range of economic activities undertaken was covered to understand how climate affects the communities, and how they are. A livelihood sensitivity matrix was used to determine which resources and livelihoods are most vulnerable to different types of climatic hazards and how the different livelihood activities are impacted by different climate hazards.

A large percentage of the community (>95 percent) was aware of the changing climate and the effects on land productivity. Food crops are the most vulnerable to weather, followed by soil and livestock. Climate variables of major concern were hail, drought and dry spells which reduced crop yields.

This research is important especially to policy makers to make informed decisions in as far as climate change response strategies in Lesotho are concerned. This research thus gives a baseline on these climate change impacts on subsistence communities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder agricultural financing in Ghana’s Northern region by identifying farmers’ preferred traditional and innovative financing methods and estimating the determinants of use of innovative financing methods.

This paper presented a list of documented traditional financing methods to farmers during in-depth interviews and employed descriptive statistics to summarize choice and amounts sourced from traditional methods. Two questions from the survey revealed a felt need for extra financing sources for credit-rationed farmers. Farmers with positive responses to either or both questions were classified as “users of innovative financing”. The authors then used a probit model to examine factors that influence decisions to use innovative financing method.

Farmers’ own savings, reinvesting past season’s profits and financing maize production with income from other commercial crops were the most popular traditional methods. The authors found complementary relations between formal and informal lending systems in the rural financial market. Smallholders also took farm and non-farm “by-day” jobs to raise income for farm investment and/or joined Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) specifically to take advantage of possible credit opportunities. These two latter methods were operationalized in this study as innovative agricultural financing. The results show that access to credit, social capital and market participation increased the likelihood of using innovative financing methods. Alternatively, farmer group membership, diversity in crop production and being a household head diminished the likelihood of innovative financing use.

The activities of VSLAs can be regulated and expanded to spread its benefits to more farmers. Also, creating avenues for dry season labour market participation in the region could enable farmers raise capital for farm investment.

This study explores existing practices and farmer innovations to agricultural financing and, by so doing, deviates from the vast literature focussing mainly on microcredit provisioning as the main model of smallholder agricultural financing in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore enterprise diversification amongst wetland farmers in Zambia as a way of reducing poverty and improving sustainability. This paper identifies ways in which such entrepreneurial activities can be supported and applied more widely.

A qualitative study of Zambian farmers, based on a series of workshops and interviews held in Zambia with farmers and farm business advisers.

Despite adopting new technologies most farmers are restricted to the local market where their increased production holds down prices. However, a very small number of farmers are able to progress to production and marketing for markets in major urban centres hundreds of kilometres away, and considerably more are able to use the capital accumulated from wetland farming to diversify their household enterprises to reduce poverty and improve the sustainability and resilience of their livelihoods.

No work has previously been undertaken in diversification strategies of small-scale farmers in Zambia.

Purpose – Chapter 3 analyses if Russia's current problems in agriculture, particularly the slow growth of labour productivity are due primarily to the weak property rights of shareholders stemming from the privatisation and therefore attributed to Russia's failure to implement the family farm project as supposed by the World Bank and many other international institution.

Methodology – To compare the development of labour productivity and farm structure in Russia and the Baltic countries after decollectivisation.

Findings – The comparisons show that the outcomes in Latvia and Lithuania are not in fact any better than in Russia, even though large-scale farms here have largely been replaced by individual farms. They also show that the most likely explanation for the extremely poor results in Lithuania lies in the overly strong property rights of shareholders. Estonia's success compared to Russia's failure cannot be explained away by stronger property rights or family farming, but the reasons lie in the country's more successful application of Soviet farming traditions, the capability of the middle class of former Soviet farms to maintain and modernise large-scale production in capitalist conditions.

Originality/value of chapter – It calls into question one of the basic interpretations presented by World Bank, IMF, OECD and EBRD.

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.

The nexus between sustainable agri-food production and food security outcomes of farm households in sub-Saharan Africa is attracting policy attention. This study analyzes the effects of crop diversity on the incidence of food scarcity, dietary diversity, and the sale and consumption of own crops.

The study uses panel data collected in 2015 and 2018 on a randomly selected sample of 2553 households from 49 villages in northern Ghana. The study employed a fixed effects modeling approach in the empirical analysis.

The study finds that crop diversity is positively associated with better dietary diversity, reduced hunger, lower food expenditure, and higher consumption of own produce. The results show positive effects of crop diversity on the total harvested output and sale of agricultural production. Whilst sales improved sustainable food and nutrition security by providing purchasing power to buy nutritional inputs in the market, consumption of own produce rather improved food availability by reducing food scarcity and malnutrition.

Crop diversity is one of the pathways for promoting sustainable agri-food production systems to ensure the food and nutritional security of vulnerable populations and promote biodiversity to achieve environmental goals in sub-Saharan Africa. Crop diversity reduces food expenditure and raises rural incomes through improved outputs and sales, which empowers farm households to diversify their dietary options to be able to overcome incidences of hunger and malnutrition in periods of food scarcity.

The present study improves the understanding of sustainable agri-food production through crop diversity and its implications on food and nutrition security outcomes. The panel data and fixed effects modelling approach address the endogeneity problem between crop diversity and household tastes and preferences.