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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Smallholder Dairying under Transactions Costs in East Africa |
Authors: | Staal, Steven Delgado, Christopher Nicholson, Charles |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | World Development |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 5 |
Period: | May |
Pages: | 779-794 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ethiopia Kenya |
Subjects: | pastoralists marketing dairy industry small farms Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(96)00138-6 |
Abstract: | This paper investigates a key issue of public policy for African countries, which are searching for ways to promote the inclusion of large numbers of smallholder farmers in the benefits offered by structural adjustment policies. The paper first argues that in periurban areas of Africa where cattle already are kept, dairy offers high potential as a smallholder diversification activity. Second, the paper hypothesizes that growth in smallholder dairying is limited by especially high transactions costs for both production and marketing of dairy products by smallholder farmers in Africa. In African economies that are only partly commercialized, smallholder farmers are likely to face higher transactions costs than larger producers. Third, the paper hypothesizes that differential levels of transactions costs across producers in what appears on the surface to be a single 'market' explains why producers habitually accept widely different prices for a seemingly homogenous good in the same location and time period. Fourth, the paper argues that producer-level institutions such as cooperatives and contracts with buyers play a central role in reducing transactions costs where market dairy activity is observed. These assertions are investigated in case studies for Kenya (Central Province, 1996) and Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 1992, 1993). Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |