Smallholders regularly devote shares of resources to low-yielding food crops than they do to cash crops that have higher market returns. In this paper, costly exchange is incorporated into an agricultural household model, and a numerical nonseparable version of the model is used to show that seemingly inefficient cropping choices of this type in Siaya District, Kenya, can be explained as rational food import substitution given high transport costs in product markets. Improved rural road networks that reduce these costs could abate motives to meet food needs through domestic production and promote specialization that raises farm incomes. Copyright 1998, Oxford University Press.

To cite this article: Steven Were Omamo (1998) Farm-to-market transaction costs and specialisation in small-scale agriculture: Explorations with a non-separable household model, The Journal of Development Studies, 35:2, 152-163,

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Technological innovation is vital to enhancing agricultural productivity and reducing poverty in many developing countries. Public investment in research and development has historically driven technological change in agriculture; however, recent trends suggest that the private sector may play a larger role in the future. Although there is optimism about the private sector's ability to generate new technologies relevant to developing-country agriculture, current levels of private investment remain low. The authors examine the determinants of private R&D investment in developing-country agriculture, the market, and institutional constraints that limit the growth of investment, and incentives that can promote more rapid investment growth. [EconLit classification: O300, Q160]. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.