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Credit is central in labour allocation decisions in smallholder agriculture in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of credit constraints on farm households’ labour allocation decisions in rural Burkina Faso.

The study used a direct elicitation approach of credit constraints and applied a farm household model to categorize households into four labour market participation regimes. A joint estimation of both the multinomial logit model and probit model was applied on survey data from Burkina Faso to assess the effect of credit constraint on the probability of choosing one of the four alternatives.

The results of the probit model showed that households’ endowment of livestock, access to news, and membership to an farmer-based organization were factors lowering the probability of being credit constrained in rural Burkina Faso. The multinomial logit model results showed that credit constraints negatively influenced the likelihood of a farm household to use hired labour in agricultural production and perhaps more importantly it induces farm households to hire out labour off farm. The results also showed that the other components of household characteristics and farm attributes are important factors determining the relative probability of selecting a particular labour market participation regime.

Facilitating access to credit in rural Burkina Faso can encourage farm households to use hired labour in agricultural production and thereby positively impacting farm productivity and relieving unemployment pressures.

In order to identify the effect of credit constraints on farm households’ labour decisions, this study examined farm households’ decisions of hiring on-farm labour, supplying labour off-farm or simultaneously hiring on-farm labour and supplying family labour off-farm under credit constraints using the direct elicitation approach of credit constraints. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine this problem in Burkina Faso.

The paper aims to examine fall armyworm's (FAW) effect on Ghana's farming households' income and food security status.

A sample of 225 farmers, including FAW-infested households and non-FAW-infested households, were interviewed. Gross margin (GM) analysis was used to estimate farmers' farm revenues, and the Household Food Insecurity Access Scores (HFIAS) was employed to measure the food security status of the households. The seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) was adopted to investigate the effect of FAW infestation on gross income and food security.

From the study, FAW attack is predominant during the vegetative stage of the maize plant. The empirical results revealed that FAW-infested farms incur loss, whereas non-FAW-infested farmers gained profit. Also, FAW-infested households were mildly food insecure, while non-FAW-infested households were food secured. The results of SUR analysis reveal that FAW infestation decreased farmers' income from maize production and rendered them food insecure.

One limitation of this study is that it largely depended on a survey; however, future studies can combine both survey and experimental data from the farmers' fields during minor and major growing seasons of maize.

Given the negative consequences of FAW, studies have been conducted across Africa and globally. However, most of these studies concentrated on using geographic information system (GIS) and descriptive statistics without necessarily quantifying the effect of FAW on food security and the profit margins of farming households. Therefore, this study adds to the little literature on the effect of FAW on food security and GM from maize production, which has received less attention in Ghana to the authors' best knowledge.