This case study of technical change in maize production in Malawi seeks to answer the question of whether the diffusion of improved maize seed and fertilizer among Malawian smallholder farmers will create the sharp yield ...

Based on an extensive review of the literature on women farmers in Africa, this paper explores the potential reasons why women farmers have not adopted improved maize technologies and discusses the implications for ...

Soil infertility is a major constraint to food production in the communal areas of Zimbabwe. Smallholders in the region recognise the problems of low soil fertility and have devised ways of coping with them. This study ...

Soil infertility is a major constraint to food production in the communal areas of Zimbabwe. Smalholders in the region recognize the problems of low soil fertility and have devised ways of coping with them. This study ...

In 1990, economists of the Southern Africa Development Community/International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (SADC/ICRISAT) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) launched a ...

In sub-Saharan Africa, greater use of mineral fertilizers is crucial to increasing food production and slowing the rate of environmental degradation. Regional growth rates in fertilizer consumption have never been particularly ...

Factors related to the low use of fertilizers and the resulting low agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa are reviewed. The importance of inorganic fertilizers and agricultural research to improving soil fertility ...

This study records the use of hybrid maize seed and fertilizer by small-scale farmers in Malawi, as well as their opinions about these inputs, from 1989-90 through 1996-97. Its main purpose is to determine whether the ...

This paper examines the implications of declining soil fertility for the maize-based cropping systems in southern and eastern Africa. A review of the importance of maize in the region is followed by a description of the ...