Farm Transition And Indigenous Growth

Author : Houssou, Nazaire
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Farm transition and indigenous growth written by Houssou, Nazaire and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper characterizes the transition from small-scale farming and the drivers of farm size growth among medium- and large-scale farmers in Ghana. The research was designed to better understand the dynamics of change in Ghana’s farm structure and contribute to the debate on whether Africa should pursue a smallholder-based or large-scale oriented agricultural development strategy. The results suggest a rising number of medium-scale farmers and a declining number of smallholder farmers in the country, a pattern that is consistent with a changing farm structure in the country’s agricultural sector. More important, findings show that the rise to medium- and large-scale farming is significantly associated with successful transition of small-scale farmers rather than entry of medium or large farms into agriculture, reflecting small-scale farmers successfully breaking through the barriers of subsistence agriculture into more commercialized production systems. The findings in this paper also suggest that some of the factors thought to be important for change in farm structure are no obstacle to farm size growth, even though they may foster transition. Notably, the results here diverge from the patterns observed in Zambia and Kenya, which indicate that the emergent farmers came mostly from the urban elite. Unfortunately, past and current policy discussions have not featured these emergent farmers sufficiently in the quest to transform agriculture in Ghana. Government should capitalize on these emergent farmers who have a demonstrated ability to graduate productively as it strives to address challenges in the smallholder sector.

Author : Quiñones, Esteban J.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book The impact of conditional cash transfer programs on indigenous households in Latin America: Evidence from PROGRESA in Mexico written by Quiñones, Esteban J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditional cash transfers(CCTs) are widely used antipoverty measuresin Latin America, and manysuch programs include indigenous beneficiaries.However, concerns have been raised that the indigenous poor,who have historically been marginalized,may not benefit from CCTsas much as the nonindigenouspopulation, owing to cultural as well as geographic factors. Even so, rigorous evidenceshowing this effect is limited. We assessedthis issue in the context of PROGRESA (Programa de Educación, Salud, y Alimenación), an integrated approach to poverty alleviation in Mexico, in which over one-thirdofbeneficiaries were indigenous at the program’s inceptionin 1998. A feature of the program’s initial targetingwasthat indigenous and nonindigenous beneficiaries were drawn from geographically similar areas, minimizing the potential for geographic factors to lead to differential impacts.Despite an extensive literatureshowing positive average impacts of PROGRESAon health and education outcomes, few studieshave disaggregatedthese effects by indigenous status. Using the randomized assignment of initial programrollout, we estimatedPROGRESA’simpactson a range of health and education indicators, distinctly for indigenous and nonindigenousbeneficiaries.We foundthat, as of November 2000, PROGRESA had significant impacts on many health and education indicators among both indigenous and nonindigenous households in our sample; in addition, in aggregateacross most indicators, these impacts werevery similar. Our results indicate thatif geographic disadvantage for indigenous households can be minimized(a nontrivial endeavor),cultural factors may not pose an intrinsic barrier to indigenous householdsbenefiting from CCTprograms, and as such, CCTs canpromote humancapital accumulation amongboth indigenous and nonindigenous households

Author : Ahmad, Nuzhat
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Measuring women’s disempowerment in agriculture in Pakistan written by Ahmad, Nuzhat and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pakistan performs poorly withrespect to gender equality, women’s empowerment, and other gender-related indicators. Few studies in Pakistan measure the multiple dimensions of empowerment along which women are marginalized or disenfranchised, particularly in the country’s rural areas. Even fewer studies address the gender gaps in empowerment levels of men and women. This paper calculates a Women’s Disempowerment Index to examine women’s control over production, resources, income, household decisions, and time burden. The index is based on a slightly modified methodology than that used for WEAI calculation by Alkire et al. (2012). The analysis is based on a sample of 2,090 households in the rural areas of Pakistan. Data used for the study werecollected in three rounds of the Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey from 2012–2014 by International Food Policy Research Institute/ Innovative Development Strategies for its Pakistan Strategy Support Program. The results show low empowerment levels of only 17 percent for women in the rural areas of Pakistan. The results also show very low empowerment of women in all indicators and domains except the time burden/workload indicator. We then analyze women’s disempowerment by subsamples based on individual and household characteristics. We also calculate disempowerment levels among men and compare it to disempowerment levels among women. Comparison within the household reveals large disparities in empowerment levels among men and women. In a comparative analysis, men are found to be more empowered in domains of production, income,and autonomy. Both men and women were found to be most disempowered in access to and control over resources. The paper provides a baseline for tracking women’s empowerment over time and identifies areas that need to be strengthened through policy interventions

Author : Bageant, Elizabeth
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Agriculture-nutrition linkages and child health in the presence of conflict in Nepal written by Bageant, Elizabeth and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-03-18 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much policy and research attention has focused on the relationship between agriculture and nutrition. We extend this analysis to the context of Nepal’s decade-long civil conflict. Understanding how conflict or similar stress mitigates the agriculture-nutrition linkage is essential to developing impactful agriculture and nutrition policy in potential conflict zones. To our knowledge, there is no prior empirical work on the link between agriculture and nutrition in the context of conflict. We find a robust relationship between milk consumption and anthropometric outcomes. We also show a positive link between milk production and milk consumption at the household level. We find significant negative relationships between conflict and milk consumption for households owning few livestock while such relationships do not exist for larger holders. We attribute these heterogeneous effects to conflict-related productivity declines and milk price increases, both of which disproportionately affect households with fewer livestock and lower milk-production capacity. Among rural households in Nepal, milk production could serve as a nutritional buffer in times of conflict or other stress, and thus, policies that promote households’ livestock production could be effective measures in improving resilience of the rural poor against shocks that negatively affect child health outcomes.

Author : Takeshima, Hiroyuki
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Is access to tractor service a binding constraint for Nepali Terai farmers? written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using results from the three rounds of Nepal Living Standard Surveys (conducted in 1995, 2003, and 2010), this study empirically assesses whether access to rented tractors or custom hiring services is a binding constraint on the income growth of farm households in Nepal. Because four-wheel tractors of medium horsepower are still the primary suppliers of these tractor services, access to these services can be restricted. First, we investigated the determinants of the adoption of hired tractors as well as the intensity of their use (measured by real annual expenditures on renting tractors). Results suggest that the adoption and the intensity patterns are generally consistent with the conventional theory of the demand for agricultural mechanization, indicating that the supply of these services may be relatively efficient in meeting the demand. However, adoption is still affected by the presence of tractor owners within the same village district committee, indicating that the proximity to tractor service providers may still partly determine accessibility. This second point was more formally tested using matching estimators within the Terai region of Nepal. It was found that, on average, the supply of tractor services might have evolved to a relatively efficient level in the Terai so that those who benefited from renting in tractors generally had access to such services. However, for at least certain segments of farm households in the Terai, insufficient access to tractor services was still a binding constraint on the growth of farm household incomes. The policy implications of these findings are briefly discussed in the last section.

Author : Houssou, Nazaire
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 4 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Agricultural intensification, technology adoption, and institutions in Ghana written by Houssou, Nazaire and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural intensification has only taken off to a very limited extent in Ghana. Adoption of land productivity-enhancing technology is low, even in areas with proximity to urban markets. Rather, farmers have increasingly been adopting labor-saving technologies such as herbicides and mechanization, for which vibrant private supply channels are emerging. Further efforts to strengthen the private mechanization supply chain would help meet the rising demand for tractor services. Furthermore, mechanization could also help free up agricultural labor to perform other more labor intensive tasks.

Author : Ragasa, Catherine
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Challenges in implementing a small-scale farmers’ capacity-building program written by Ragasa, Catherine and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-01-20 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government launched the Food Production, Processing, and Marketing project—which aimed to raise incomes and improve food security in the target areas by improving agricultural productivity, market efficiency, and the capacity of producers to respond to market signals. In August–October 2013 and February–March 2014, halfway through the project’s implementation, a midline survey was conducted to assess progress with respect to intermediate outcomes. The present paper highlights the results of that assessment survey. We pay close attention to accurate attribution of observed changes to the project and employ a double-difference method that compares the changes in indicators before the project and at the time of the survey (project midline) between the beneficiaries and comparable control groups. Overall, the survey results suggest weak impact on most of the outcome indicators, and they highlight challenges in implementing small-scale farmers’ capacity building within the context of weak institutions and a fragile political context.

Author : Birthal, Pratap S.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Formal versus informal written by Birthal, Pratap S. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite a growing dairy industry in India, farmers’ lack of access to organized markets and institutional credit remains one of the major hindrances in improving the scale and productivity of dairying. Using data from a survey of 612 households from the state of Punjab, India, this paper evaluates farmers’ choices of dairy value chains and their financing mechanisms. The study finds that 62 percent of the sample farmers representing 69 percent of the total milk sales are connected with formal value chains driven by cooperatives, multinational companies and private domestic processors. Small dairy farmers are associated more with informal value chains but they are not excluded from the formal value chains. The performance of different value chains in terms of productivity and profitability of dairying is almost on par. Also, there is hardly any difference in the milk price offered by formal and informal buyers pointing towards milk market being competitive. More than half of the farmers borrow credit both from within and outside the chain for dairying related activities. Chain-based financing is restricted to only one-fourth of the borrowers and mostly to those associated with informal value chains. Financing by commercial banks and other financial institutions is limited to only 9 percent of the borrowers, mainly larger farmers. The socially-disadvantaged and smallholder farmers are often neglected in institutional lending because of their lack of physical assets to use as collateral against loans. Value chain approach, due to its product market orientation, can serve as an entry point for financial institutions to improve their outreach to smallholders. The innovative financial products, such as ‘dairy credit card’ and ‘contract as collateral’ would enable them to adopt yield-enhancing technology and inputs and also to scale up their dairy activity.

Author : Lambrecht, Isabel
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book "As a husband I will love, lead, and provide" written by Lambrecht, Isabel and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improving women’s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non-governmental agencies. Yet, the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood. This paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households. It explains the importance of social norms, perceptions, and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels: (1) the household/family, (2) the community, (3) the state, and (4) the market. The framework is applied to Ghana. Norms on household and family organization and on men’s and women’s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources. However, these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land. Theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised, and extrahousehold factors should be included. From a policy perspective, laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender-equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women’s property rights. Yet, their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender.

Author : Ali, Mubarik
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pakistan’s fertilizer sector written by Ali, Mubarik and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fertilizer industry in Pakistan, with US$3.74 billion per year in sales, now stands at a crossroads where, after an initial substantial contribution in boosting crop productivity, its future potential is being challenged. Fertilizer-responsive crop varieties, supplementary irrigation water, and a favorable policy environment in Pakistan have induced fast growth in fertilizer demand. On the supply side, the availability of gas at low prices along with a favorable investment environment resulted in the buildup of excessive manufacturing capacity. But recently, a shortage of gas and monopolistic behavior has led to underutilization and greater imports. Restrictive laws put fertilizer processing and marketing in a few hands, which has also affected its efficiency. Moreover, the yield response of fertilizer has tapered off and per hectare use is fast reaching its optimal level. The existing policy environment leads to higher costs, inefficient use, and a heavy burden on the government as it charges one-fourth of the market price for feedstock gas used in fertilizer manufacturing. In addition, the government imports urea and absorbs the difference in international and domestic prices.