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Author: Laia Domenech
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) is still largely rainfed. SSA also exhibits the lowest crop yields for major staples in the world, largely due to low use of irrigation and fertilizer. Rainfed agriculture poses growing production risks with increased climate variability and change. At the same time, smallholder irrigation in the region developed rapidly over the past decade, albeit starting from very low levels. In addition to largely demand-driven irrigation development by smallholders, there is a significant push by donors for large-scale irrigation development, as well as some push for smallholder irrigation. There has also been a long-standing debate about whether irrigation in SSA should be large scale or small scale to achieve its potential. However, given the potentially high rewards, but also high possibility of failure, the assessment of irrigation potential must go beyond large scale versus small scale to integrate concerns regarding environmental sustainability, resource use efficiency, nutrition and health impacts, and womens empowerment. The hypothesis underlying this review paper is that how irrigation gets deployed in SSA will be decisive not only for environmental sustainability (such as deciding remaining forest cover in the region) and poverty reduction, but also for health, nutrition, and gender outcomes in the region. The focus of this paper is on the health, nutrition, and gender linkage. We find that to date, few studies have analyzed the impact of irrigation interventions on nutrition, health, and womens empowerment, despite the large potential of irrigation to affect these important variables. Irrigation interventions may have differential effects on different members in the household and in the community, such as irrigators, non-irrigators, children, and women. Measuring and understanding such differences, followed by improving design and implementation to maximize gender, health, and nutrition outcomes, could transform irrigation programs from focusing solely on increased food production toward becoming an integral component of poverty-reduction strategies.
Author: Laia Domenech
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Get Book Here
Book Description
Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) is still largely rainfed. SSA also exhibits the lowest crop yields for major staples in the world, largely due to low use of irrigation and fertilizer. Rainfed agriculture poses growing production risks with increased climate variability and change. At the same time, smallholder irrigation in the region developed rapidly over the past decade, albeit starting from very low levels. In addition to largely demand-driven irrigation development by smallholders, there is a significant push by donors for large-scale irrigation development, as well as some push for smallholder irrigation. There has also been a long-standing debate about whether irrigation in SSA should be large scale or small scale to achieve its potential. However, given the potentially high rewards, but also high possibility of failure, the assessment of irrigation potential must go beyond large scale versus small scale to integrate concerns regarding environmental sustainability, resource use efficiency, nutrition and health impacts, and womens empowerment. The hypothesis underlying this review paper is that how irrigation gets deployed in SSA will be decisive not only for environmental sustainability (such as deciding remaining forest cover in the region) and poverty reduction, but also for health, nutrition, and gender outcomes in the region. The focus of this paper is on the health, nutrition, and gender linkage. We find that to date, few studies have analyzed the impact of irrigation interventions on nutrition, health, and womens empowerment, despite the large potential of irrigation to affect these important variables. Irrigation interventions may have differential effects on different members in the household and in the community, such as irrigators, non-irrigators, children, and women. Measuring and understanding such differences, followed by improving design and implementation to maximize gender, health, and nutrition outcomes, could transform irrigation programs from focusing solely on increased food production toward becoming an integral component of poverty-reduction strategies.
Author: Laia Domenech
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Interventions aimed at increasing water availability for livelihood and domestic activities have great potential to improve various determinants of undernutrition, such as the quantity and diversity of foods consumed within the household, income generation, and women's empowerment. However, current evidence on the topic is diluted across many different publications. This paper aims to connect the dots and review the literature available on the linkages between irrigation and food security, improved nutrition, and health. We conclude that the evidence remains insufficient to draw broad conclusions due to the low number of rigorous studies that can be used to assess the linkages. Based on the limited evidence, six factors that should be taken into account in irrigation development to address nutrition and gender gaps with a focus on Africa south of the Sahara are identified: (1) food security and nutrition gains should be stated goals of irrigation programs; (2) training programs and awareness campaigns should accompany irrigation interventions to promote nutrient-dense food production and consumption as well as minimization of health risks; (3) multiple uses of irrigation water should be recognized in order to improve access to water supply and sanitation and livestock and aquatic production; (4) women's empowerment and women's participation in irrigation programs should be promoted; (5) homestead food production should be encouraged; and (6) policy synergies between different sectors (agriculture, nutrition, health, water supply and sanitation, education) should be sought.
Author: Mariam A. T. J. Mapila
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
This study has been conducted in order to generate evidence of the visibility of exit from farm input subsidies in an African context. The study simulates the impact of alternative exit strategies from Malawis farm input subsidy program on maize markets. The simulation is conducted using a multiequation partial equilibrium model of the national maize market, which is sequentially linked via a price-linkage equation to local rural maize markets. The model accounts for market imperfections prevailing in the country that arise from government price interventions. Findings show that some alternative exit strategies have negative and sustained impacts on maize yields, production, and acreage allocated to maize over the simulation period. Market prices rise steadily as a result of the implementation of different exit strategies. Despite higher maize prices, domestic maize consumption remains fairly stable, with a slow but increasing trend over the simulation period. Results further suggest that exit strategies that are coupled with improvements in agricultural extension services have the potential to offset the negative impacts of the removal or scaling down of agricultural input subsidies. The study findings demonstrate the difficulty of feasibly removing farm input subsidies. Study recommendations are therefore relevant for policymakers and development partners debating removal or implementation of farm input subsidies.
Author: Cheryl Doss
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 22
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Book Description
To support gender analysis in agriculture, household surveys should be better designed to capture gender-specific control and ownership of agricultural resources such as male-owned, female-owned, and jointly owned assets. This paper offers guidelines on how to improve data collection efforts to ensure that women farmers are interviewed and that their voices are heard. Researchers need to clarify who should be interviewed, how to structure the interview, and how to identify which people are involved in various activities, as owners, managers, workers, and decisionmakers. It is important not simply to assume that one particular person does these activities based on social norms, but instead to ask the questions to allow for a range of answers that can demonstrate how the gender patterns in agriculture are changing. To assist in these efforts, the paper provides an overview of relevant questions to include, emphasizing that whenever questions are asked about ownership and access to resources, answers should be associated with individuals. Finally, collecting data on the institutions that are related to agricultural production and marketing allows analysis of the gender-based constraints and opportunities that they present.
Author: Yanyan Liu
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth on in the general equilibrium setting, we examine the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household outcomes using panel data from Indonesia. More specifically we explicitly highlight the importance of migration to urban sectors in the analysis. Empirical results show that human capital in the household determines the effect of increased population density on per capita household consumption expenditure. The effect of population density is positive if the average educational attainment is high (above junior high school), while it is negative otherwise. On the other hand, farmers with larger holdings maintain their advantage in farming regardless of population density. The paper concludes with some potential lessons for African countries from Indonesias more successful rural development experiences.
Author: Klaus Droppelmann
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
The sector-wide approach currently dominates as the strategy for developing the agricultural sector of many African countries. Although it is recognized that agricultural research plays a vital role in ensuring success of sectorwide agricultural development strategies, there has been little or no effort to explicitly link the research strategies of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in African countries to the research agenda that is articulated in sectorwide agricultural development strategies. This study fills that gap by analyzing the readiness of Malawis NARS to respond to the research needs of the national agricultural sector development strategy, namely the Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp) program. Results of a social network analysis demonstrate that public agricultural research departments play a central coordinating role in facilitating information sharing, with other actors remaining on the periphery. However, that analysis also shows the important role other actors play in relaying information to a wider network of stakeholders. These secondary information pathways can play a crucial role in ensuring successful implementation of the national agricultural research agenda. Policymakers and managers of public research programs are called upon to integrate other research actors into the mainstream national agricultural research information network. This is vital as other research actors are, at the global level, increasingly taking up a greater role in financing and disseminating research and research results, and in enhancing the scaling up and out of new agricultural technologies.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251099774
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
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Book Description
This report first provides an outlook for the agricultural and food market and highlights the challenges that population trends, rising global incomes and climate change present to agriculture and water. The following section focuses on two broad areas that require attention and presents recommendations on: (i) policies within the agricultural domain that apply specifically to the sector, such as water supply enhancement, water loss reduction, crop productivity, water re-allocation, and options for rainfed agriculture; and (ii) actions within the water domain that relate to water management for all sectors, not only agriculture.
Author: Hosaena Ghebru Hagos
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
While there are ample empirical studies that claim the potential disincentive effects of sharecropping arrangements, the existing literature is shallow in explaining why share tenancy contracts are prevalent and diffusing in many developing countries. Using a unique tenant-landlord matched dataset from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, we are able to show how the tenants strategic response to the varying economic and tenure-security status of the landlords can explain sharecroppers productivity differentials. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use tenantlandlord matched data that accounts for both the supply (landlord) and demand (tenant) side characteristics in analyzing sharecroppers level of effort and productivity. The study reveals that sharecroppers yields are significantly lower on plots leased from landlords who are non-kin, who are female, who have lower income-generating opportunity, and who are tenure insecure than on plots leased from landlords with the opposite characteristics. While, on aggregate, the results show no significant efficiency loss on kin-operated sharecropped plots, more decomposed analyses indicate strong evidence of Marshallian inefficiency on kin-operated plots leased from landlords with weaker bargaining power and higher tenure insecurity. This study thus shows how failure to control for the heterogeneity of landowners characteristics can explain the lack of clarity in the existing empirical literature on the extent of moral hazard problems in sharecropping contracts.
Author: Suresh Chandra Babu
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Addressing emerging global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition challenges requires prudent evidence-based policymaking at the country level. Capacity for generating evidence remains a major constraint in the policy process in developing countries. We surveyed 30 countries to measure the capacity of their individuals, organizations, and policy process system to undertake food and agricultural policy research. Our Food Policy Research Capacity Index, constructed using measures of human capacity (PhD full-time equivalent researchers per million rural residents), human capacity productivity (publications per PhD full-time equivalent researcher), and strength of institutions (the government effectiveness pillar of the Worldwide Governance Indicators), showed substantial variation across countries, with the Republic of South Africa, Colombia, and Ghana scored far higher than countries with similarly sized rural populations such as Liberia, Laos, Burundi, and Afghanistan. Initial analysis showed that the index is strongly positively correlated with the Global Food Security Index and negatively correlated with the Global Hunger Index. Further work is planned to refine the indicators, particularly with regard to the effects of country size (population) and quality of the underlying data.
Author: Li Gan
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Group lending has been widely adopted in the past thirty years by many microfinance institutions as a means to mitigate information asymmetries when delivering credit to the poor. This paper proposes an empirical method to address the potential omitted-variable problem resulting from unobserved group types when modeling the repayment behavior of group members. We estimate the model using a rich dataset from a group-lending program in India. The estimation results support our model specification and show the advantages of relying on a type-varying method when analyzing the probability of default of group members. In particular, our model helps to better understand the factors driving repayment behavior, which may differ across group types, and shows a higher predictive power than standard single-agent choice models.
