African Smallholder Farmers on the Move: Farm and Non-Farm Trends for Six Sub-Saharan African Countries, 2002–15

This chapter provides a broad descriptive background of central aspects of smallholder agriculture in six countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It offers an up-to-date picture of the current trends of crop production, area productivity, levels of commercialization, and sources of cash incomes among 2,500 farming households. Structured around smallholder production, commercialization, and diversification in the period 2002–15, the chapter points on the one hand at persistent challenges such as low crop yields, low levels of output per farm, and a high degree of subsistence farming, and on the other hand at positive change over time in terms of growth in crop production and increasing levels of commercialization. It points at large variations not only between countries and time periods but also at the village levels, where gaps in crop productivity between farms remain large. Implicitly it points at the potential yet to be exploited in the SSA smallholder sector.