Impact of modern agricultural technologies on smallholder welfare: Evidence from Tanzania and Ethiopia

This paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households (700 in Ethiopia and 613 in Tanzania). The causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression. This helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions. Our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure (in per adult equivalent terms) in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty, higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk. An analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed, access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption.     

Technology empowerment: A path to poverty alleviation for Chinese women from the perspective of development communication

By 2020, China had won a comprehensive victory in poverty alleviation, having completed the largest poverty alleviation task in human history and provided a Chinese solution to poverty alleviation worldwide. From the perspective of development communication and through the case study approach, this paper focuses on the practice of poverty alleviation conducted by Chinese rural left-behind women with the help of Internet technology. Furthermore, the paper summarizes three main forms of women's poverty alleviation, including the model of Internet celebrities using social media to sell local products; the model of the government taking the lead in building an online learning, training and sales platform; and the model combining government guidance, enterprise empowerment and media promotion. This paper explores the paths to poverty alleviation and the sustainable development of poor Chinese women in rural areas. It also provides a reference for the future practice of women's poverty alleviation for developing countries and regions.     

Asian development and poverty reduction strategies: Integrating fisheries into the development discourse

Asia is the world’s foremost capture fishery and aquaculture producer. It is also home to the majority of the world’s fishers and marine fleet (decked and undecked). Consequently, there is every reason to expect that this importance is reflected in national development discourses. This article identifies the socio-economic importance of fisheries in the region in terms of its contribution to primary exports, domestic protein consumption, employment and poverty alleviation. We then analyse national development and poverty reduction strategy documents using a content analysis methodology previously applied to measure the extent to which environmental or forestry issues had been mainstreamed into national policy documents. This enables us to identify those countries that have currently integrated fisheries into the national development discourse – and those that have not. We conclude by proposing two strategies to enable the more effective integration of fisheries into the development agenda.     

The positive effects of relationship learning and absorptive capacity on innovation performance and competitive advantage in industrial markets

This study utilized structural equations modeling (SEM) to explore the positive effects of relationship learning and absorptive capacity on competitive advantages of companies through their innovation performances in Taiwanese manufacturing industry. The results of this study showed that relationship learning and absorptive capacity positively influence upon innovation performances of companies, and further have positive effects on competitive advantages of companies. In addition, this study divided the sample into three groups by the levels of relationship learning and absorptive capacity and found that there was a significant difference of innovation performance among these three groups: ‘Highly Capable Companies’, ‘Medially Capable Companies’, and ‘Lowly Capable Companies’. It is important for ‘Lowly Capable Companies’ to increase both of their relationship learning and absorptive capacity to enhance their innovation performances.     

Smallholder income and land distribution in Africa: implications for poverty reduction strategies

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of land allocation and its relation to income poverty within the smallholder sectors of Eastern and Southern Africa. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys between 1990 and 2000 in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper shows that farm sizes are declining over time; that roughly a quarter of the agricultural households in each country are virtually landless, controlling less than 0.10 hectares per capita, including rented land; that non-farm income shares are below 40% even for the households in the bottom land quartile; and that because of this, there is a strong relationship between access to land and household income, particularly for farm sizes below 1.0 hectares per capita. Land distribution within these small-farm sectors appears to be becoming more concentrated over time, and their Gini coefficients are comparable to those of many Asian countries at the time of their green revolutions. Lastly, the largest part of the variation in per capita farm sizes within the small-farm sectors is, in every country, predominantly within-village rather than between-village. Realistic discussions of poverty alleviation strategies in Africa need to be grounded in the context of these land distribution patterns and trends.     

International trade related food miles – The case of Canada

At the beginning of the 21st century imports of agricultural and food commodities have become a major part of many nations’ food baskets. Indeed the global food system has several merits for nations, businesses and individual consumers’ well-being. However, as increasing evidence suggests that we are approaching an era of climate change and scarcity of cheap energy sources the sustainability of that system must be examined. One part of any food commodity chain is its ‘food miles’ – the distance the commodity travels from point of production to point of consumption, the required energy and resulting emissions. This paper presents a 1 year ‘snapshot’ of Canada’s total import related food miles. It presents an analysis of the distance imported foods traveled from around the world to major points of consumption in Canada and documents the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions related to those imports. It presents both a macro scale picture of the equivalent emissions related to transportation of imported food and a micro scale picture which focuses on specific commodities consumed in various parts of the country. It then discusses policy implications for food sustainability. Overall the research highlights that about 30% of the agricultural and food commodities consumed in Canada are imported, resulting in ‘food miles’ of over 61 billion tonnes km, leading to annual emissions of 3.3 million metric tonnes of CO₂. Of the various agriculture and food commodities studied, fruits and vegetables had the highest food miles related emissions.     

A resource-advantage perspective of product-market strategy performance & strategic capital in high technology firms

Contrary to common misconceptions, firms tend generally to remain constant in their strategic approach to markets and rarely deviate from their prevailing strategic archetype. Consequently, the effectiveness of a firm's product-market strategy is as important as its persistence in achieving overall strategic performance. Adopting a resource-advantage perspective, we examine the extent to which resource bundles differ among firms within a product-market strategy performance typology. Analyzing data generated from high-technology industrial manufacturers, we find that successful strategists are endowed with significantly greater levels of resources-that include ‘strategy championing’, ‘strategy commitment’, ‘implementation support’, ‘implementation effectiveness’, ‘learning’, and ‘memory’-in contrast with unsuccessful strategists, hopeful strategists, and fortunate strategists. Further, important inter-group differences are identified and discussed, along with the implications of this study for researchers and marketing managers.     

‘Good’ case research in industrial marketing: Insights from research practice

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the emerging debate about the use of the case methodology in industrial marketing. We conducted a content analysis of the 145 case studies published in three key journals (Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing and Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing) over a 10-year period (1997-2006). The findings highlight the dominance of case research in qualitative industrial marketing research. They also lead us to distinguish between three different practices that influence perceptions of ‘good’ case research in this scholarly domain: ‘common’ practice, ‘best practice’ and ‘innovative’ practice. Our contribution lies in problematising what ‘good’ case research is, and showing how research practice - not just methodological literature - has a role in generating methodological conventions in a disciplinary field.     

Heterogeneous incentives for innovation adoption: The price effect on segmented markets

It is now commonly accepted that poverty alleviation and the development of agricultural value chains in low income countries require farmers to innovate. However numerous constraints to innovation adoption have been identified. In the literature, the market structures on which producers sell their output have received remarkably little attention. In this article, I argue that these can impact a producer’s choices with respect to the level of effort invested in changing agricultural practices. More specifically, due to transaction costs, contract farming and other market imperfections, output prices and production levels in rural areas are often jointly determined, leading to market segmentation. I develop a simple model to discuss how market segmentation induces non-trivial effects on incentives to innovate. Next, I rely on farm-level panel data from an extension project in the Peruvian highlands to test the empirical implications of the model. Producers that were not included in the formal market but close to it, performed better in improving agricultural practices. The indirect consequence of this investment is a higher price increase than the rest of the population, creating heterogeneous impacts of the programme, opportunities for economic mobility and a reduction in inequality. The evidence indicates how considering the effects of market structures leads to a more nuanced understanding of the process of agricultural innovation adoption in low and middle income countries.     

Toward a food secure future: Ensuring food security for sustainable human development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Food security remains a top development priority and global concern. It is enshrined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Sustainable Development Goal two. Food security is also a core component of the human development and capability paradigm, since food access and entitlements are critical for reinforcing essential human capabilities. In introducing this special issue, this paper argues that agriculture is central to improving food security and reducing poverty in Africa. It suggests that realizing the potential of agriculture in Africa requires rapid increases in land productivity and increases in agricultural yields. A science-based approach that integrates gender and sustainability is critical to meet this goal, through the design and implementation of policies that improve the availability farm inputs and farm technology. The paper concludes by introducing the papers in this special issue.     

ICT-based market information and adoption of agricultural seed technologies: Insights from Uganda

Access to ICT-based market information is crucial to the adoption of agricultural seed technologies for maize, beans and groundnut and to improve smallholder farmer yields and income. This ICT-based market information is provided by FM radio stations and by market information centers through media such as mobile phones and internet facilities, etc. Factors that positively affect the probability of access to ICT-based market information include access to microfinance loans, membership in a farmer association, government awareness campaigns, and wealth. Distance to the trading centers or district capital negatively affects this access. The likelihood of access to ICT-based market information declines with female-headed households. Access to market information has a positive and significant impact on the intensity of adopting improved seed for all crops. Adoption of improved seed has a positive and significant effect on farm yields and gross farm returns. This research shows that in order to generate meaningful improvements in food security and farm incomes, there must be commensurate efforts to promote ICT-based market information along with yield-augmenting agricultural seed technologies.     

Traceability adoption at the farm level: An empirical analysis of the Portuguese pear industry

Traceability is becoming a condition to operate in European food markets. Retailers impose more stringent standards than what is mandatory. An example is EurepGAP, a quality standard for good agricultural practices that imposes traceability as a main obligation. This research investigates the choice of traceability at the farm level in the Portuguese pear industry. Results suggest that in this industry farm-level adoption of EurepGAP traceability is best explained by the choice to sell to the United Kingdom (UK). For farmers selling to the UK, the odds of choosing the EurepGAP traceability level are significantly linked to membership in particular producer organizations, farm productivity, producing products under a protected designation of origin (PDO), and farmer’s age. While retailers and farmer organizations seem to drive traceability, policy adjustments may be required to reduce adoption costs upstream and extend compliance among producers that sell directly to consumers and market independently.     

For whom? – The governance of organic food and farming in the UK

The challenge of organic agriculture – that it might provide new forms of participation around food – has been hard to encapsulate in the conventional circuits of democracy. One answer to this ‘offer’ has been for consumers to purchase organic items as a way of demonstrating support for the organic sector. This paper argues that although this strategy may have been successful in the past, there is increasing evidence that there is a convergence between sections of the organic movement and the dominant multiple retailers. Through a wide range of evidence, including an analysis of how organic products are promoted and of how organic farm businesses are configured, this paper suggests that the potential of the organic movement is increasingly being circumscribed.     

A sensemaking perspective on network pictures

This paper examines the concept of network pictures through the lens of the organizational sensemaking perspective. Essentially it develops the concept of network pictures by suggesting we think of them as exercises in sensemaking. It does so by providing an introduction to organizational sensemaking before establishing a degree of commensurability between network pictures and sensemaking. It suggests that what we may then see more clearly is that the concept of network pictures needlessly gets involved in reification when talking of ‘the’ network picture whereas a more dynamic approach leads to ideas of network picturing in which the complete discrediting or collapse of extant sensemaking and network pictures provides a research opportunity that could be jointly explored by both perspectives. The paper concludes that paradoxically ‘finding’ this new sense or new network picture appropriate to radically changed times is facilitated by a process that involves first ‘becoming lost’.     

Agriculture reform and food crisis in Syria: Impacts on poverty and inequality

The paper pursues a twofold objective. From a methodological viewpoint it shows how to carry out an impacts evaluation of exogenous shocks on poverty and inequality in a context characterised by out-of-equilibrium, poorly-adjusting markets, as it is the case in many developing countries, using a social accounting matrix framework. From an empirical viewpoint it provides an assessment of how the cereal price spikes of 2007–2008 and the global recession of 2008–2009 have impacted the welfare of Syrian households and how did they compound with the on-going agricultural sector liberalisation implemented by the Government of Syria since mid 1990s. This will contribute to shed some lights on the economic background behind the spreading of unrest across the country over the last couple of years or so.The results show that liberalisation impacts are very different and largely affected by the adopted budget closure rules. While reforms aiming at reducing agricultural market distortions (such as production subsidies and price support for strategic crops) could generally have a positive effect on growth, poverty and inequality, the elimination of food security interventions (such as food stamp schemes) determines an adverse distributional impact against rural household and an increase of poverty. The recent macroeconomic shocks (food price crisis and the global recession) determined a generalised poverty increase and showed an income distribution bias against rural households.Three fundamental policy implications can be drawn by this study. First, the liberalisation of agricultural sector shows a significant growth potential and is likely to determine positive effects on poverty through a generalised increase of incomes as well as public budget savings that could be used for pursuing other policy goals. Second, in the short-run there is a structural trade-off between equity improvements and poverty alleviation: the policy options that will more likely reduce absolute poverty show undesirable distributive biases (both on overall inequality and on rural households vis-à-vis urban households). Third, the reform should include a careful design of the use of budget savings, mainly to address equity goals that are likely to be generated, in the short-run, by liberalisation.     

Analysis of agricultural research investment priorities for sustainable poverty reduction in Southeast Asia

Underinvestment in agricultural research remains rife across Southeast Asia, despite the remaining importance of the subregion’s agricultural sector and ample evidence of agricultural technology impact to date. To help identify specific areas where additional investment is most needed, this study compares the impact potential for the poor of alternative agricultural research foci, taking changes in production patterns, consumption patterns and environmental sustainability into account. New spatial data on the distribution of poverty and the expenditure patterns of households below international poverty lines are used to offer more detailed assessment of the poverty relevance of alternative foci than possible previously. Patterns of impact potential are evaluated against evidence of impact to date to discern probabilities of success in achieving potential impacts. Impact patterns discerned are contrasted with current relative funding allocations across research areas in the subregion by National Agricultural Research Systems (NARSs) and International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) to identify key funding gaps.     

Genes to feed the world: The weakest link?

The new science of genomics has an important contribution to make to the development of agriculture in the ‘Third World’ and thus to improving the livelihoods of many of the poorest people on earth. The persistence of poverty demonstrates, however, that this contribution is not yet being made. We therefore examine the web of connections between the two and enquire whether they could be strengthened in some way, perhaps by the addition of some vital ‘missing link’, so that the contribution from genomics can be maximised. Since the use of molecular markers to help develop improved crop varieties (marker-assisted selection) constitutes one of the main ways in which genomic knowledge could be used to improve rural livelihoods, we review this technology and discuss the ways in which it could contribute to plant breeding. We argue that marker-assisted selection (MAS) is likely to be most effective when it is both (i) linked to the farmers who are expected to cultivate the new crop varieties that will eventually be developed; and (ii) integrated with plant breeding and with a range of complementary disciplines. Such integration necessarily involves the formation of effective trans-disciplinary teams, an undertaking that is often problematic, and so the final part of this article considers the processes that this involves and suggests ways in which they may be managed effectively.     

Impact of tissue culture banana technology on farm household income and food security in Kenya

While tissue culture (TC) technology for vegetative plant propagation is gradually gaining in importance in Africa, rigorous assessment of broader welfare effects for adopting smallholder farm households is lacking. Using survey data and accounting for selection bias in technology adoption, we analyze the impact of TC banana technology on household income and food security in Kenya. To assess food security outcomes, we employ the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) – a tool that has not been used for impact assessment before. Estimates of treatment-effects models show that TC banana adoption, combined with improved crop management, causes considerable increases in farm and household income. Technology adoption also reduces relative food insecurity in a significant way. These results indicate that TC technology can be welfare enhancing for adopting farm households. Adoption should be further promoted through upscaling appropriate technology delivery systems.     

Can off farm employment affect the privatization of social safety net? The case of self-employed farm households

This study uses a two-stage econometric framework with farm household level data to investigate whether off-farm work of operators and spouses influences healthcare expenditures and retirement savings. Results indicate that agricultural policy discourages off-farm work by farm operators and spouses. However, off-farm work decisions of farm couples significantly decrease healthcare expenditures and increase retirement savings of farm households in the US. The effect of farm spouse’s off-farm employment on household retirement saving is more pronounced. These conclusions can extend to middle-income countries where off-farm work may enable farmers to afford better healthcare and retirement pension plans.