Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether social and/or cultural obstacles faced by African female farmers diminish their accessibility to lending opportunities provided by a commercial microfinance institution; and affect their repayment performance. Design/methodology/approach The underlying data set is comprised of information regarding 9,710 farmers from Madagascar and was provided by the AccèsBanque Madagascar. Logit and Tobit models are applied to determine gender effects on loan accessibility and repayment performance, respectively. Findings Even though female farmers are associated with a lower repayment performance, they have a higher rate of loan application approval compared to male farmers. Research limitations/implications The results are limited to Madagascar and other African countries with similar socio-economic conditions. Social implications Commercial microfinance institutions still provide access to credit for disadvantaged groups, such as female farmers. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating gender-specific credit access and repayment performance of rural African farmers using a data set from a commercial microfinance institution without a social mission for females.

This study examines whether the decision of crop diversification for perennial crops is based on risk attitudes and time preferences. We conducted incentivised field experiments with farmers only cultivating rubber and those cultivating rubber and oil palm. We utilised Holt and Laury task and Coller and William task. We found that farmers who cultivate two crops are more risk‐averse, indicating that they see crop diversification as a safer option for their farms. However, the discount rates of the two groups are not significantly different. These results provide relevant information for policymakers who intend to either encourage or discourage oil palm cultivation. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Despite extensive efforts made by national and international certification agencies, Indonesian smallholder farmers’ participation in palm oil certification schemes adoption remains low. A fundamental obstacle is the smallholder practice of rainforest transformation into oil palm plantation which is forbidden by the agencies. In this context, we investigate three policies that could lead to a reduction in rainforest deforestation by smallholders: price premium on certified palm oil; the provision of environmental information; contributor recognition. In order to evaluate the influence of the policies ex‐ante, we conduct a social dilemma experiment involving rubber and oil palm smallholders in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The findings indicate that the price premium and provision of context‐specific environmental information could reduce rainforest transformation. However, a statistically significant effect of contributor recognition was not found.

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