Cash cropping and food crop productivity: synergies or trade-offs?

By J. Govereh, T. Jayne. 2003

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The case for promoting export-oriented cash crops in Africa has generally been based on their direct potential contribution to agricultural productivity and small farmer incomes. A relatively neglected avenue of research concerns the synergistic effects that cash cropping can have on other household activities, including food production. The conventional view that cash crops compete with food crops for land and labour neglects the potential for cash crop schemes to make available inputs on credit, management training, and other resources that can contribute to food crop productivity, which might otherwise not be accessible to farmers if they did not participate in cash crop programs. This article builds on previous research by hypothesising key pathways by which cash crops may affect food crop activities and empirically measuring these effects using the case of cotton in Gokwe North District in Zimbabwe. Analysis is based on instrumental variable analysis of survey data on 430 rural households in 1996. Results indicate that_.after controlling for household assets, education and locational differences-households engaging intensively in cotton production obtain higher grain yields than non-cotton and marginal cotton producers. We also find evidence of regional spill-over effects whereby commercialisation schemes induce second round investments in a particular area that provide benefits to all farmers in that region, regardless of whether they engage in that commercialisation scheme. The study suggests that the potential spill-over benefits for food crops through participation in cash crop programs are important to consider in the development of strategies designed to intensify African food crop production. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f92bf044e54aeffe370507baf7b89892eaffeab

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. A. Dorward
2. C. Poulton
3. Renato A. Villano
4. J. Kydd
5. I. Patrick
6. O. Masakure
7. S. Henson
8. G. Battese

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. C. Poulton
2. A. Dorward
3. J. Kydd
4. M. Jaleta
5. I. Patrick
6. O. Masakure
7. S. Henson
8. G. Battese

In Soil Science

1. A. Dorward
2. M. Jaleta
3. C. Poulton
4. J. Kydd
5. I. Patrick
6. O. Masakure
7. S. Henson
8. G. Battese

Citations in the corpus

• Smallholder market participation: Concepts and evidence from eastern and southern Africa (2008, background): “Grains 1996 27 Govereh and Jayne (2003)”
• To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia (2017, unknown): “Cash crops are often promoted to alleviate poverty through welfare gains as part of a strategy based on comparative advantage (Govereh & Jayne, 2003) while a diverse crop portfolio is promoted as part of a strategy to manage production risk (Rosenzweig, 1988).”
• The Future of Small Farms: New Directions for Services, Institutions and Intermediation (2010, background): “…make a significant contribution to initial mass poverty reduction where there is broad based participation by small farmers in poor rural areas, production processes are labour intensive and there are potential positive linkages to staple crop production (see for example Govereh and Jayne 2003).”
• Determinants of farm diversification in integrated crop–livestock farming systems in Ghana (2017, background): “Farm households in developing countries strive to achieve food security by consuming and then selling surplus household produce (Govereh and Jayne, 2003).”
• Agricultural Productivity and Poverty Reduction: Linkages and Pathways (2011, unknown): “Household-level spillover effects can result when production of a commercialized crop enables the farm household to acquire new resources that would not otherwise be accessible (Govereh and Jayne 2003, Minten, Randrianarison, and Swinnen 2009).”
• Why do small-scale producers choose to produce under contract? Lessons from nontraditional vegetable exports from Zimbabwe (2005, background): “…poverty (see e.g., McCulloch & Ota, 2002) and potential wider effects, which illustrates how the performance of con- 172 tracts in the contexts of small-scale producers is highly variable (see e.g., Govereh & Jayne, 2003; Warning & Key, 2002), making it difficult to draw broad policy conclusions.”
• Smallholder commercialization: processes, determinants and impact (2009, background): “…of higher market transaction costs also limits household involvement in cash crop production by discouraging participation in food markets and prompting them to give priority to subsistence food production (Fafchamps 1992; Omamo 1998b; Key et al. 2000; Govereh and Jayne 2003; Pingali et al. 2005).”