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Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 4
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Book Description
Malawi is a food-insecure country, and although most households have access to arable land, many rural Malawians cannot reliably obtain enough food to meet their dietary needs. Rainfed, low-input subsistence production, particularly of the staple crop maize, has historically been the primary means of assuring household food security. Today, most of Malawi’s 4 million households continue to grow much of their own food. However, with increasing regularity, several hundred thousand households each year are vulnerable to acute food insecurity. Insufficient crop harvests resulting from poor seasonal growing conditions and limited use of inputs, coupled with reliance on shrinking landholdings as the population continues to grow and in the context of weak markets in which to sell crops and buy food, mean that subsistence farming cannot meet the dietary requirements of all Malawians.
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 4
Get Book Here
Book Description
Malawi is a food-insecure country, and although most households have access to arable land, many rural Malawians cannot reliably obtain enough food to meet their dietary needs. Rainfed, low-input subsistence production, particularly of the staple crop maize, has historically been the primary means of assuring household food security. Today, most of Malawi’s 4 million households continue to grow much of their own food. However, with increasing regularity, several hundred thousand households each year are vulnerable to acute food insecurity. Insufficient crop harvests resulting from poor seasonal growing conditions and limited use of inputs, coupled with reliance on shrinking landholdings as the population continues to grow and in the context of weak markets in which to sell crops and buy food, mean that subsistence farming cannot meet the dietary requirements of all Malawians.
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896294056
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Author: Benson, Todd
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 27
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Book Description
Malawi has been at the center of the debate on agricultural input subsidies in Africa ever since it significantly expanded its fertilizer subsidy program about two decades ago. When it did so, Malawi was a trailblazer, receiving international attention for seemingly leveraging the subsidy program to move the country from a situation characterized by food deficits and widespread hunger to crop production surpluses. In this paper we trace the history of Malawi’s subsidy program over the past 70 years, describing how the country arrived at that watershed moment earlier this century and how the subsidy program has developed since. We show how donor support for the program has wavered and how external pressure to remove the subsidy has repeatedly been unsuccessful. We also demonstrate how over the years the program’s total fiscal burden has fluctuated significantly. However, we find that since the expansion of the subsidy program in 2004, the fiscal costs of the program have shown little correlation with the maize harvest that same agricultural season. We show that the subsidy program has succeeded in raising awareness about the value of the fertilizer for increased crop productivity. However, despite its continued prominence in the country’s agricultural policy, most Malawian smallholder do not manage to grow sufficient maize to feed their households throughout the year, and every year millions depend on food assistance during the worst months of the lean season.
Author: Davis, Kristin
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 78
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Book Description
Primary agricultural cooperatives in Malawi, in contrast to other farmer-level organizations, have legal status and can own assets, borrow money for their operations, and sign contracts, making it easier for them to do business for the profit of their members. Conceptually, such cooperatives enable their member-farmers to achieve economies of scale for their commercial activities. By joining together in a cooperative, members can obtain commercial inputs at lower prices closer to wholesale prices than if they purchased the inputs as individuals. In selling their output, by aggregating their crops and other products into larger lots that the cooperative then negotiates to sell on their behalf, buyers can achieve greater efficiency in buying from them and can be expected to offer a premium over the prices that they would offer farmers selling those products individually. Cooperatives can also serve farmers in providing an important channel for obtaining information and advice to increase their productivity and the profitability of their farming. Moreover, by joining together to achieve common objectives in primary agricultural cooperatives, member-farmers can exercise greater influence on local and national policy issues of concern to them, while also building social cohesion, solidarity, and trust within their communities.
Author: David Amaglobeli
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 37
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Book Description
The objectives underlying agricultural output subsidies can have conflicting implications for the design of subsidy programs. As they tend to affect meaningful swaths of the electorate, subsidies can also be an attractive political instrument. By artificially lowering production costs or assuring higher output prices, direct support measures can result in resource misallocation in instances where they fail to address market failures, such as imperfect information about the returns to fertilizers. Subsidies can also contribute to fertilizer overuse, harming the environment and the agricultural sector in the long term. Furthermore, agricultural production subsidies are often fiscally costly and unfavorable compared to alternative uses of public funds—both within the agricultural sector and outside it—to achieve the same ends. Various design and implementation challenges amplify the shortcomings of producer subsidy programs.
Author: Daidone, S.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251377944
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 105
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Book Description
The project “Promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi)” aims to support poor and vulnerable households to strengthen their resilience to climate change and climate variability through social protection (SP) and the adoption of proven climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices blended with disaster risk reduction (DRR). FAO Malawi leads the implementation of the project in two targeted districts of Mwanza and Neno, targeting 2 400 farmers, some of them being beneficiaries of existing SP programmes. At community level, the project is implemented through the farmer field school (FFS) approach and delivered through 80 FFS groups located in 74 villages. To evaluate impacts of the project, we use a crossover design to compare the relative merits of its different components and combine various evaluation methods. This is a baseline report on the “Promoting coherence between disaster risk reduction, climate action and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi)” project.
Author: Van Capellen, Hanne
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
Rural labor markets in Africa are frequently characterized by underemployment, with farmers unable to fully deploy throughout the year one of their most important assets—their labor. Using a nine-year panel data set on 1,407 working-age adults from rural Malawi, we document changes in rural underemployment over this period and how they are associated with urbanization. Nearby urban growth results in increased hours worked in casual labor (ganyu) and in non-agricultural sectors, at the expense of work on the household farm. Improved urban access is also associated with a small increase in wage labor and, at the intensive mar gin, with hours supplied in household enterprises. We draw lessons from these results for policies, investments, and interventions to leverage urban growth for rural development.
Author: CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 81
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Book Description
PIM had a productive final year centered on synthesizing findings while continuing to respond to demand on the impacts of COVID-19 and preparing the transition to the new CGIAR portfolio. PIM findings and engagement contributed to Myanmar’s response to COVID-19, South Africa’s policies on resilience to climate change, Tunisia's policies for pastoral development, a reform of Nigeria’s national agricultural research system, Ghana’s fish seed and farm certification system, gender strategies for three agricultural value chains in Honduras, and genome editing guidelines for the agricultural sector in four African countries. PIM research informed policy documents of FAO, IFAD, One CGIAR, the UK Government, the World Bank and the World Food Programme. PIM tools enabled more equitable co-management of 76 protected areas in Peru and informed World Bank social protection projects. Books on food security in Bangladesh and Malawi, trade in Latin America, African agricultural value chains and gender were published. 42 PIM synthesis briefs and notes were issued, summarizing research results in key thematic areas. PIM contributed 181 journal articles, 8 journal issues (on demand driven seed systems, China’s response to COVID-19, agriculture and food security in China under COVID-19, food loss and waste, landscape restoration, multistakeholder fora in forestry and two issues on gender), 15 book chapters and about 500 non-peer-reviewed outputs. 16 PIM webinars were organized. PIM’s contributions to the United Nations Food Systems Summit covered agricultural extension, food system innovations and digital technologies, the future of small farms, the science-policy interface, the cost of ending hunger by 2030, food waste and loss, management of the commons and gender. Building on past PIM investments in economywide modeling tools and social accounting matrices, PIM teams continued to assess the impacts of COVID-19 and policy responses at country level. Lessons learned from PIM country-level analyses on COVID-19’s impacts on food systems, poverty and diets are summarized in a chapter of the IFPRI 2022 book “COVID19 and global food security: Two years later”. A paper in partnership with the CGIAR COVID19 Hub reviewed the literature on agri-food value chains for evidence of fractures and resilience in response to the pandemic. The results of coordinated studies on the impacts of COVID-19 on value chains in different countries were published. Several cross-CGIAR outputs initiated by PIM speak to the fulfillment of PIM’s convening role as an integrating program: the CGIAR Foresight Report and CGIAR foresight website; several outputs produced through the CGIAR Community of Excellence on Seed Systems Development, and the CGIAR book “Advancing gender equality through agricultural and environmental research: Past, present, and future” are examples. Other examples of PIM global public goods produced in 2021 are 27 innovations at various stages of uptake, a cross-cutting effort to distill PIM lessons on migration; new or updated social accounting matrices for 25 countries; and lessons and tools on stakeholder platforms for natural resource governance. Independent reviews assessed the effectiveness of PIM’s partnerships and the use by partners of PIM’s work on economywide modelling, agricultural insurance, tenure and governance, and the Ag-Incentives database.
Author: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896299791
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 4
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Book Description
The Global Food Policy Report is IFPRI’s flagship publication. This year’s annual report examines major food policy issues, global and regional developments, and commitments made in 2015, and presents data on key food policy indicators. The report also proposes key policy options for 2016 and beyond to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2015, the global community made major commitments on sustainable development and climate change. The global food system lies at the heart of these commitments—and we will only be able to meet the new goals if we work to transform our food system to be more inclusive, climate-smart, sustainable, efficient, nutrition- and health-driven, and business-friendly.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925134325X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
In recent years, several major drivers have put the world off track to ending world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. The challenges have grown with the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures. This report presents the first global assessment of food insecurity and malnutrition for 2020 and offers some indication of what hunger might look like by 2030 in a scenario further complicated by the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes new estimates of the cost and affordability of healthy diets, which provide an important link between the food security and nutrition indicators and the analysis of their trends. Altogether, the report highlights the need for a deeper reflection on how to better address the global food security and nutrition situation. To understand how hunger and malnutrition have reached these critical levels, this report draws on the analyses of the past four editions, which have produced a vast, evidence-based body of knowledge of the major drivers behind the recent changes in food security and nutrition. These drivers, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, include conflicts, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns – all exacerbated by the underlying causes of poverty and very high and persistent levels of inequality. In addition, millions of people around the world suffer from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. From a synthesized understanding of this knowledge, updates and additional analyses are generated to create a holistic view of the combined effects of these drivers, both on each other and on food systems, and how they negatively affect food security and nutrition around the world. In turn, the evidence informs an in-depth look at how to move from silo solutions to integrated food systems solutions. In this regard, the report proposes transformative pathways that specifically address the challenges posed by the major drivers, also highlighting the types of policy and investment portfolios required to transform food systems for food security, improved nutrition, and affordable healthy diets for all. The report observes that, while the pandemic has caused major setbacks, there is much to be learned from the vulnerabilities and inequalities it has laid bare. If taken to heart, these new insights and wisdom can help get the world back on track towards the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms.
