ABSTRACT
Seasonal patterns of farm households’ economic activities and wellbeing have been studied since the 1970s, with most research focusing on tropical agriculture in countries from Africa and South Asia (Chambers et al., 1981; Devereux, 2008, 2009). It has been generally recognized over the last four decades that seasonal variations in household agricultural activities and other types of economic activities explain, to a large extent, rural poverty in low-income countries in general (Harris and Todaro, 1970; Paxson, 1993; Stark and Fan, 1993; De Haan, 1999; Stark, 2007) and in tropical countries in particular, and that there are several negative factors that make the lives of poor households worse during the pre-harvest months every year. Furthermore, the backgrounds or contexts of agricultural development in most developing countries have been changing rapidly over recent decades, and these changes need to be taken into account when designing policy interventions to reduce the negative effects of seasonality in developing countries’ agricultural and rural development.
