Work

Transport Costs and Smallholder Cropping Choices: An Application to Siaya District, Kenya

Year: 1998

Type: article

Abstract: Smallholders regularly devote shares of resources to low‐yielding food crops than they do to cash crops that have higher market returns. In this paper, costly exchange is incorporated into an agricultural household model, and a numerical nonseparable version of the model is used to show that seemingly inefficient cropping choices of this type in Siaya District, Kenya, can be explained as rational food import substitution given high transport costs in product markets. Improved rural road networks that reduce these costs could abate motives to meet food needs through domestic production and promote specialization that raises farm incomes.

Source: American Journal of Agricultural Economics

DOI: 10.2307/3180274

Author: Steven Were Omamo

Language: English

Topic: Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Zero hunger, No poverty, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2013995008

FWCI: 16.02

Cites: 13

Cited by: 281

Related to: 10