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Author: Fishman, Ram
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
The imbalanced application of chemical fertilizers in India is widely blamed for low yields, poor soil health, pollution of water resources, and large public expenditures on subsidies. To address the issue, the government of India is investing in a large-scale, expensive program of individualizedsoil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fertilizer mix. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in the Indian state of Bihar in what we believe to be the first evaluation of the effectiveness of the program as currently implemented. We found no evidence of any impact of soil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations on actual fertilizer use or the willingness to pay for lacking nutrients (elicited using aBecker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism). Several factors could be driving these results, including a lack of understanding, lack of confidence in the information’s reliability, or the costs of the recommended fertilizer mixes. We provide evidence that suggestslack of confidence is the main factor inhibiting farmers’ response
Author: Fishman, Ram
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Get Book Here
Book Description
The imbalanced application of chemical fertilizers in India is widely blamed for low yields, poor soil health, pollution of water resources, and large public expenditures on subsidies. To address the issue, the government of India is investing in a large-scale, expensive program of individualizedsoil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fertilizer mix. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in the Indian state of Bihar in what we believe to be the first evaluation of the effectiveness of the program as currently implemented. We found no evidence of any impact of soil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations on actual fertilizer use or the willingness to pay for lacking nutrients (elicited using aBecker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism). Several factors could be driving these results, including a lack of understanding, lack of confidence in the information’s reliability, or the costs of the recommended fertilizer mixes. We provide evidence that suggestslack of confidence is the main factor inhibiting farmers’ response
Author: Ward, Patrick S.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Land degradation and soil erosion have emerged as serious challenges to smallholder farmers throughout southern Africa. To combat these challenges, conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted as a sustainable package of agricultural practices. Despite the many potential benefits of CA, however, adoption remains low. Yet relatively little is known about the decision-making process in choosing to adopt CA. This article attempts to fill this important knowledge gap by studying CA adoption in southern Malawi. Unlike what is implicitly assumed when these packages of practices are introduced, farmers view adoption as a series of independent decisions rather than a single decision. Yet the adoption decisions are not wholly independent. We find strong evidence of interrelated decisions, particularly among mulching crop residues and practicing zero tillage, suggesting that mulching residues and intercropping or rotating with legumes introduces a multiplier effect on the adoption of zero tillage.
Author: Abay, Kibrom A.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
Lack of accurate information about soil nutrient requirements coupled with limited access to appropriate fertilizers could lead to mismatch between soil nutrient requirements and fertilizer applications. Such anomalies and mismatches are likely to have important implications for agricultural productivity. In this paper we use experimental (spectral soil analysis) data from Ethiopia to examine farmers’ response to soil nutrient deficiencies and its implications for yield responses. We find that farmers’ response to macronutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) deficiencies is not always consistent with agronomic recommendations. For instance, we find that farmers in our sample are applying nitrogen fertilizers to soils lacking phosphorus, potentially due to lack of information on soil nutrient deficiencies or lack of access to appropriate fertilizers in rural markets. On the other hand, farmers respond to perceivably poor-quality soils and acidic soils by applying higher amount of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers per unit of land. We further show that such mismatches between fertilizer applications and soil macronutrient requirements are potentially yield-reducing. Those farmers matching their soil nutrient requirements and fertilizer application are likely to enjoy additional yield gains and the vice versa. Marginal yield responses associated with nitrogen (phosphorus) application increases with soil nitrogen (phosphorus) deficiency. Similarly, we find that farmers’ response to acidic soils is not yield-enhancing. These findings suggest that such mismatches may explain heterogeneities in marginal returns to chemical fertilizers and the observed low adoption rates of chemical fertilizers in sub-Saharan Africa. As such, these findings have important implications for improving input management practices and fertilizer diffusion strategies.
Author: Chakrabarti, Suman
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
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Book Description
There is an increasing demand to add pulses to the basket of subsidized goods in the Public Distribution System (PDS) of India—the world’s largest food-based social safety-net program. Would subsidizing pulses through PDS lead to a significant increase in its consumption? We study the case of subsidy on pulses in select Indian states and its impact on consumption and ultimately nutrition (in terms of protein intake) by exploiting an exogenous variation in prices to answer this question. Between 2004/2005 and 2009/2010, four Indian states introduced subsidized pulses through the country’s PDS, while other states did not. We exploit exogenous price variations to examine whether the price subsidy on pulses achieves its goal of increasing pulse consumption, and by extension protein intake, among India’s poor. Using several rounds of consumption expenditure survey data and difference-in-difference estimation, we find that the change in consumption of pulses due to the PDS subsidy, though statistically significant, is of a small order, and not large enough to meet the goal of enhancing the nutrition of beneficiaries.
Author: Cossar, Frances
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
The adoption of machinery in agricultural production in Africa south of the Sahara has been far behind the level of mechanization found in Asia and Latin America. However, recent survey data have revealed high levels of machinery use in localized areas of cereal production in northern Ghana. A survey conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, in partnership with the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute, found that in some areas more than 80 percent of farmers were using machinery for at least one operation. This paper considers the theoretical drivers of agricultural intensification, as outlined by Boserup, Pingali, and Binswanger, and the extent to which they are able to explain the spatial variation in machinery use found in northern Ghana. Population pressure, market access, and agroecological conditions are considered key drivers that cause farmers to find ways to increase productivity and adopt new technologies. Combining survey data with geospatial datasets, the empirical analysis finds that population growth and travel time to the local urban center explain a significant and large proportion of the variation in machinery use by farmers.
Author: Deininger, Klaus
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
To understand whether and how inverse relationship between farm size and productivity changes when labor market performance improves, we use large national farm panel from India covering a quarter-century (1982, 1999, 2008) to show that the inverserelationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. A key reason was the substitution of capital for labor in response to nonagricultural labor demand. In addition, family labor wasmore efficient than hired labor in the 1982–1999 period, but not during the 1999–2008period.In line with labor market imperfections as a key factor, separability of labor supply and demand decisions cannot be rejected in the second period,except in villages with very low nonagricultural labor demand.
Author: Saak, Alexander E.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
When an outbreak of an infectious disease is suspected, a local health agency may notify a state or federal agency and request additional resources to investigate and, if necessary, contain it. However, due to capacity constraints, state and federal health agencies may not be able to grant all such requests, which may give an incentive to local agencies to request help strategically. We study a model of detection and control of an infectious disease by local health agencies in the presence of imperfect information about the likelihood of an outbreak and limited diagnostic capacity. When diagnostic capacity is rationed based on reports of symptoms, the decision to report symptoms or not creates a trade-off. On the one hand, rigorous testing allows one to make an informed disease control decision. On the other hand, it also increases the probability that the disease will spread from an untested area where fewer precautionary measures are taken. Symptoms are overreported (respectively, reported truthfully, or underreported) when the cost of disease control is sufficiently small (respectively, in some intermediate range, or sufficiently large). If the disease incidence decreases or infectiousness increases, symptoms are reported less frequently. If the precision of private signals increases, the extent of overreporting of symptoms may increase. For different values of the parameters it can be socially optimal to subsidize or tax requests for additional investigations and confirmatory testing.
Author: Saak, Alexander E.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
This paper studies the decision of a firm that sells an experience good to delegate quality control to an independent monitor. In an infinitely repeated game consumers’ trust provides incentives to (1) acquire information about whether the good is defective and (2) withhold the good from sale if it is defective. If third-party reports are observable to consumers, delegation of monitoring lessens the first and dispenses with the second moral hazard concern but also creates agency costs due to either limited liability or lack of commitment. In equilibrium the firm controls quality without an independent monitor only if trades are sufficiently frequent and consumer information about quality is sufficiently precise. This result holds under different assumptions about feasible contracts, collusion, verifiability of reports, joint inspections, and the number of firms that hire the third-party monitor. If third-party reports are not publicly observed, delegation can be optimal only if two or more firms hire the third-party monitor because then both moral hazard concerns are present under delegation.
Author: Temina Madon
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030860655
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 655
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Book Description
This open access textbook introduces the emerging field of Development Engineering and its constituent theories, methods, and applications. It is both a teaching text for students and a resource for researchers and practitioners engaged in the design and scaling of technologies for low-resource communities. The scope is broad, ranging from the development of mobile applications for low-literacy users to hardware and software solutions for providing electricity and water in remote settings. It is also highly interdisciplinary, drawing on methods and theory from the social sciences as well as engineering and the natural sciences. The opening section reviews the history of “technology-for-development” research, and presents a framework that formalizes this body of work and begins its transformation into an academic discipline. It identifies common challenges in development and explains the book’s iterative approach of “innovation, implementation, evaluation, adaptation.” Each of the next six thematic sections focuses on a different sector: energy and environment; market performance; education and labor; water, sanitation and health; digital governance; and connectivity. These thematic sections contain case studies from landmark research that directly integrates engineering innovation with technically rigorous methods from the social sciences. Each case study describes the design, evaluation, and/or scaling of a technology in the field and follows a single form, with common elements and discussion questions, to create continuity and pedagogical consistency. Together, they highlight successful solutions to development challenges, while also analyzing the rarely discussed failures. The book concludes by reiterating the core principles of development engineering illustrated in the case studies, highlighting common challenges that engineers and scientists will face in designing technology interventions that sustainably accelerate economic development. Development Engineering provides, for the first time, a coherent intellectual framework for attacking the challenges of poverty and global climate change through the design of better technologies. It offers the rigorous discipline needed to channel the energy of a new generation of scientists and engineers toward advancing social justice and improved living conditions in low-resource communities around the world.
Author: Laborde Debucquet, David
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
The 2015 Global Hunger Index suggests that despite progress in reducing hunger worldwide, hunger levels in 52 of 117 countries in the 2015 Global Hunger Index remain “serious” or “alarming.” Since achieving and maintaining food and nutrition security (FNS) remains a goal for all countries, it is important to understand the individual, national, and global factors that affect FNS. This paper proposes an analytical framework to identify and analyze the respective roles of key long-term drivers of FNS. We start by identifying what the key variables affecting FNS are at the household and country level, and then we continue by defining what the main exogenous or endogenous drivers affecting these variables are. We discuss the key drivers of both aggregated food supply and demand and therefore their impact on prices. Specifically, for aggregated food demand, we discuss demographic factors, income growth, changes in dietary preferences, aggregated domestic distortions, and overall quality of the food system. With respect to the drivers of aggregated food supply, we discuss land available for food products and the drivers behind land availability, the share of waste/losses generated by the food system, and the normalized average yield. We define yield as the amount of nutrients produced by unit of land. It depends both on the physical yield of the crop or the livestock and on the quality of the food produced. It also can be affected by the changes in production patterns linked to the different dietary patterns of the consumers and by climate change. We emphasize the fact that in many cases, key drivers may have ambiguous effects on the FNS situation of different agents. For instance, more liberal trade policies will affect real income, terms of trade, demand and supply, returns of factors, foreign direct investments, and food prices and thus may lead to the improvement of the global-level FNS, that is, the FNS of the majority of the population. At the same time, more liberal trade policies may bring food insecurity to some households. Therefore, careful quantitative assessment is needed for each policy option. Finally, we propose a typology of variables that will help modelers adapt their models to study the different drivers through both direct and indirect effects.
