Wheat is fundamental to human civilization and has played an outstanding role in feeding a hungry world and improving global food security. The crop contributes about 20 % of the total dietary calories and proteins worldwide. Food demand in the developing regions is growing by 1 % annually and varies from 170 kg in Central Asia to 27 kg in East and South Africa. The developing regions (including China and Central Asia) account for roughly 53 % of the total harvested area and 50 % of the production. Unprecedented productivity growth from the Green Revolution (GR) since the 1960s dramatically transformed world wheat production, benefitting both producers and consumers through low production costs and low food prices. Modern wheat varieties were adopted more rapidly than any other technological innovation in the history of agriculture, recently reaching about 90 % of the area in developing regions. One of the key challenges today is to replace these varieties with new ones for better sustainability. While the GR "spared" essential ecosystems from conversion to agriculture, it also generated its own environmental problems. Also productivity increase is now slow or static. Achieving the productivity gains needed to ensure food security will therefore require more than a repeat performance of the GR of the past. Future demand will need to be achieved through sustainable intensification that combines better crop resistance to diseases and pests, adaptation to warmer climates, and reduced use of water, fertilizer, labor and fuel. Meeting these challenges will require concerted efforts in research and innovation to develop and deploy viable solutions. Substantive investment will be required to realize sustainable productivity growth through better technologies and policy and institutional innovations that facilitate farmer adoption and adaptation. The enduring lessons from the GR and the recent efforts for sustainable intensification of cereal systems in South Asia and other regions provide useful insights for the future.

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The history of producer organizations in subSaharan Africa (SSA) is a mixed one. In the past, producer organizations often failed to provide desired services due to dependence on government support, which led to heavy political interference as well as internal leadership and managerial problems. However, the hasty retreat of the state following adjustment and market liberalization reforms left an institutional void that the private sector has failed to fill. This study reviews the role that producer organizations can play, and the challenges they face in improving access to markets and technologies for enhancing productivity of smallholder agriculture in SSA in the post-adjustment era. The paper critically examines the evidence for improving access to markets, information and technologies, and the conditions that facilitate the success of producer organizations in providing such services. Emphasis is on the characteristics of user groups, institutional arrangements, governance mechanisms, types of products (staples, perishables and other commodities), and the role of the public and private sector service providers. We conclude that while recent experiences are mixed, good governance, more homogeneous and optimal group size, transparency and market orientation can enhance the role of producer organizations in improving access to markets. However, ideally these organizations need to prioritise agribusiness opportunities over social welfare objectives even though this may mean that some households are unable to take advantage of them. Donors and governments have important roles to play in stimulating the emergence and development of economically viable and self-sustaining producer organizations. The private sector is also critical in terms of providing producer organizations with financial and business development services.

This paper documents a positive relationship between maize productivity in western Kenya and women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using indicators derived from the abbreviated version of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Applying a cross-sectional instrumental-variable regression method to a data set of 707 maize farm households from western Kenya, we find that women’s empowerment in agriculture significantly increases maize productivity. Although all indicators of women’s empowerment significantly increase productivity, there is no significant association between the women’s workload (amount of time spent working) and maize productivity. Furthermore, the results show heterogenous effects with respect to women’s empowerment on maize productivity for farm plots managed jointly by a male and female and plots managed individually by only a male or female. More specifically, the results suggest that female- and male-managed plots experience significant improvements in productivity when the women who tend them are empowered. These findings provide evidence that women’s empowerment contributes not only to reducing the gender gap in agricultural productivity, but also to improving, specifically, productivity from farms managed by women. Thus, rural development interventions in Kenya that aim to increase agricultural productivity—and, by extension, improve food security and reduce poverty—could achieve greater impact by integrating women’s empowerment into existing and future projects.

Many countries in sub‐Saharan Africa have liberalized markets to improve efficiency and enhance market linkages for smallholder farmers. The expected positive response by the private sector in areas with limited market infrastructure has however been very limited. The functioning of markets is constrained by high transaction costs and coordination problems along the production‐to‐consumption value chain. New kinds of institutional arrangements are needed to reduce these costs and fill the vacuum left when governments withdrew from markets in the era of structural adjustments. One of these institutional innovations has been the strengthening of producer organizations and formation of collective marketing groups as instruments to remedy pervasive market failures in rural economies. The analysis presented here with a case study from eastern Kenya has shown that marketing groups pay 20–25% higher prices than other buyers to farmers while participation was also positively correlated with adoption of improved dryland legume varieties, crops not targeted by the formal extension system. However the effectiveness of marketing groups is undermined by external shocks and structural constraints that limit the volume of trade and access to capital and information, and require investments in complementary institutions and coordination mechanisms to exploit scale economies. Successful groups have shown high levels of collective action in the form of increased participatory decision making, member contributions and initial start‐up capital. Failure to pay on delivery, resulting from lack of capital credit, is a major constraint that stifles competitiveness of marketing groups relative to other buyers. These findings call for interventions that improve governance and participation; mechanisms for improving access to operating capital; and effective strategies for risk management and enhancing the business skills of farmer marketing groups.