Addressing global food security demands urgent improvement in agricultural productivity, particularly in developing economies where market imperfections are perverse and resource constraints prevail. While microcredit is widely acknowledged as a tool for economic empowerment, its role in facilitating agricultural technology adoption and improving agricultural incomes remains underexplored. This study examines the synergistic effects of microcredit access and agricultural technology adoption on the incomes of maize farmers in Kenya. Using household-level data, we employ an endogenous switching regression framework to control possible endogeneity in access to microcredit. Our findings shows that microcredit access positively influences the adoption of advanced agricultural technologies. Key determinants, including marital status, use of fertilizer application, access to extension services, and cooperative membership, are identified as significant determinants of microcredit access. Notably, the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) indicates a 40.52% increase in income among farmers who access microcredit, mainly driven by the timely adoption of high-quality seeds, improved agricultural technologies, and enhanced inputs. These results highlight microcredit’s role in promoting allocative efficiency and enhancing Total Factor Productivity (TFP) within agricultural systems. Robustness checks, including propensity score matching and sensitivity analyses, corroborate these findings. The study recommends the implementation of targeted financial policies and educational initiatives meant to promote credit access, encourage savings, and enhancing financial literacy, particularly for credit-constrained households. Integrating these measures could strengthen rural financial markets and drive sustainable agricultural development across the regions.

Climate variability intensifies weather risks across smallholder rainfed farming systems in Africa. Farmers often respond by minimizing the use of modern inputs and opting for low-cost traditional practices, a strategy that decreases average yields and perpetuates poverty. While crop insurance could incentivize greater adoption of inputs, indemnity-based programs face market failures. Weather index insurance (WII), which utilizes objective weather data to trigger payouts while addressing traditional crop insurance market failures, is a viable solution. However, empirical evidence on the impact of WII remains limited, with most studies relying on controlled experiments or hypothetical scenarios that overlook real-world adoption dynamics. This study analyzed observational data from 400 smallholder farmers across diverse agroecological zones in Njoro Sub-County, Kenya, using instrumental variable regression to evaluate the impact of weather index insurance (WII) on input adoption and intensity of use. Findings indicated that WII significantly increased the adoption and intensification of improved inputs while displacing traditional practices, with effects moderated by gender, financial access, and infrastructure. Specifically, active WII users applied 28.7 kg/acre more chemical fertilizer and used 2.6 kg/acre more hybrid maize seeds while reducing manure and traditional seed usage by 27 kg/acre and 2.9 kg/acre, respectively. However, the effectiveness of WII was context-dependent, varying under extreme drought conditions and in high-fertility soils, which directly affected resilience outcomes. These findings suggest that policies should combine insurance with targeted agroecological practices and complementary measures, such as improved access to credit and gender-sensitive extension programs tailored to the specific needs of women farmers, to support sustainable agricultural transformation.

Market-oriented agriculture functions as a critical mechanism by which rural farmers can alleviate poverty and enhance food security, and it is actively promoted in Côte d’Ivoire. However, household food security varies across commercialized farmers depending on context and region. This paper examines variations in food security between different market-oriented vegetable-farming households in rural northern Côte d’Ivoire. Using cross-sectional data from 200 vegetable farmers, this study employs an endogenous switching regression model to address potential selectivity bias. The results show that market-oriented farming is positively associated with higher food-consumption scores, greater dietary diversity, and increased caloric intake. Moreover, nonparticipants or semi-subsistence farmers are expected to achieve better food-security outcomes under market-oriented conditions. Key factors influencing the adoption of market-oriented farming include market proximity, access to extension services, and education level. This paper advocates for policies tailored to specific environments, such as rural smallholder farming communities, that support local markets and encourage entrepreneurship, especially among women and youth, and ensure the accessibility of improved inputs, thereby supporting market-oriented agriculture and enhancing food security.

Climate variability discourages smallholders from adopting yield-enhancing inputs, perpetuating low agricultural productivity. Weather Index Insurance (WII) could mitigate this, but empirical evidence remains inconsistent, with most insights drawn from controlled experiments lacking real-world scalability. Using observational data from Kenyan smallholders across diverse agroecological zones, this study employs instrumental variable regression to assess WII's influence on agricultural input adoption and use intensity. Results demonstrate that WII significantly increases adoption and intensification of improved inputs but displaces traditional practices, with effects mediated by gender, financial access, and infrastructure. However, WII's efficacy diminishes under extreme drought and in high-fertility soils, revealing threshold-dependent climate resilience shaped by local agroecological conditions. Our results demonstrate that WII's productivity benefits are context-dependent, urging policies that combine insurance with agroecological targeting and complementary interventions like credit access to achieve sustainable agricultural transformation.