Income Poverty Effects of Expansion and Policies in Cash Cropping Economies in Rural Mozambique: An Economy-wide Approach

Duncan H. Boughton () and Rui M.S. Benfica

No MZ-MINAG-RR-64e, International Development Collaborative Working Papers from Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University

Abstract: Poverty is widespread in Mozambique, particularly in rural areas where the highest proportion of the population lives and work. Livelihood strategies among rural HHs in the Zambezi Valley are predominantly based on agricultural activities, but income diversification is increasingly important. Cash income from agriculture comes predominantly from tobacco and cotton production. Due to cash constraints and poor access to input and credit by farmers, and high demand from buyers to meet quality and volume requirements, contract faming is the dominant form in the organization of transactions in those cash cropping sectors. The selective nature of CF implies that not all HHs may have the chance to directly participate in these schemes; some HHs are excluded. A key question, then, is how large and widespread the indirect income effects of these schemes are, compared to the direct effects. The answer to these questions has a lot to say about the poverty reduction effects of such crops, and may generate insights about policies and programs to enhance these effects.

Keywords: food security; food policy; Mozambique; marketing; cash crop (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-dev
Date: 2007
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/mozambique/wps64.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:msu:icpwrk:mz-minag-rr-64e

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/papers/order.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in International Development Collaborative Working Papers from Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Steve Longabaugh ().