Mapping natural resource-based poverty,with an application to rural Syria

This study presents advances in resource-based poverty mapping. It illustrates how agricultural income distribution maps can be generated at small pixel-level, providing an application of the approach in rural Syria. Census data on agriculture and population are disaggregated based on pixel-level agricultural productivity coefficients derived in a GIS environment. The approach, triangulated with survey results and compared with sub-national poverty maps, shows that the better-income areas of Syria are located in the irrigated and higher-rainfall areas, though lower-income pockets exist due to the presence of ecological and topographic factors or due to high population density. The method can be used for developing high-resolution, low cost maps for rapid detection of resource-driven poverty in low income countries where agriculture is a major source of rural income, and where poverty mapping is rarely undertaken due to the high costs involved.     

Foreign—domestic intersections in US food policy

This essay probes the major points. of intersection between US domestic and foreign policies in the realm of food and agriculture. Five issue areas are of specific interest: the farm income/consumer price/food supply matrix; international agricultural trade relations; economic, strategic, and diplomatic applications of food resources; LDC agricultural development and global food security; and food assistance.     

High rural population density Africa – What are the growth requirements and who participates?

A large and increasing proportion of agricultural growth in Africa must come from continuous gains in land productivity in areas of high population density and hence with already relatively high yields. What that requires is analogous to the green revolution in Asia. Several features differentiate the African situation. Those include greater diversity in cropping pattern including a historically larger and more widespread tropical commodity export sector. The physical infrastructure in rural Africa is far inferior to that of most Asian countries. While the greater diversity of agriculture calls for a larger and more diverse institutional structure the reality is that the research systems, the ancillary education systems to spread innovation and the rural financial systems are generally greatly inferior to those of Asia at the beginning of the green revolution. Ethiopia’s record of a steady six to seven percent growth for agriculture and nearly halving of rural poverty demonstrates that with the right policies and investments a very poor country starting with poor physical and institutional infrastructure can bring a major contribution from agriculture growth to increased GDP and reduced poverty. As in Asia, the bulk of accelerated agricultural growth will come from small commercial farmers. They have sufficient farm income to reach or exceed the poverty level. Those are farms with, depending on the country, as little as 0.75 hectares to a few tens of hectares of land. They comprise up to half the rural population and produce on the order of 70–80 percent of agricultural output. They are in general not poor. The poor have inadequate land to reach the poverty level, initially with much underemployment, and with substantial non-farm employment. The primary driver of poverty reduction is the small commercial farmer spending on the order of half of increased income on nontradable, employment intensive goods and services from the rural non-farm sector.     

农地流转中的非农化与非粮化风险及其规避

在加快农业经营体制转变的背景下,农地流转成为必然.但是,在当前农地流转中违背“三个不得”的现象时有发生,特别是农地流转中的非农化,以及虽然从事农业,但流转的土地却不是用来种粮的非粮化.农地流转中的非农化与非粮化,对我国的粮食安全构成潜在的风险.文章力图对农地流转中的非农化和非粮化及形成机理进行分析,并阐释其危害,进而从发展家庭农场、设置耕地保护金、加大对农业的扶持、提高粮食直补和设置永久性农田基本保护区等方面进行规避风险.     

Technical efficiency of alternative farming systems: the case of Greek organic and conventional olive-growing farms

Olive-growing is a major farming activity in Greek agriculture. This paper analyzes empirically the technical efficiency of organic and conventional olive-growing farms using a stochastic production frontier methodology and a translog functional specification. Findings indicate that the organic olive-growing farms examined exhibit a higher degree of technical efficiency (relative to their production frontier) than do conventional olive-growing farms. Reasons may include lower profit margins and restrictions on inputs permitted, thus forcing organic farmers to be more cautious with input use. However, both input- and output-oriented technical efficiency scores are still relatively low for both types of olive-farming. Thus there is considerable scope for cost reducing and farm income improvement in both farming modes. This could prove crucial for the long-run viability and the future course of the sector.     

How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Ethiopia

This study uses household-level panel data on smallholder farmers in Ethiopia to estimate how rural population density (RPD) affects agricultural intensification and productivity. Our results suggest that higher RPD is associated with smaller farm sizes, and has a positive effect on input demand, represented by increased fertilizer use per hectare. Overall, increased input use does not lead to a corresponding increase in staple crop yields, and thus farm income declines as population density increases. This suggests a situation where farmers in areas of high RPD may be stuck in place, unable to sustainably intensify in the face of rising RPD and declining farm sizes.     

Nutrition,agriculture and the global food system in low and middle income countries

The entire food value chain and diet of low and middle income countries (LMICs) are rapidly shifting. Many of the issues addressed by the nutrition community ignore some of the major underlying shifts in purchases of consumer packaged foods and beverages. At the same time, the drivers of the food system at the farm level might be changing. There is a need for the agriculture and nutrition communities to understand these changes and focus on some of their implications for health. This rapid growth of the retail sector will change the diets of the food insecure as much as that of the food secure across rural and urban LMIC’s. This short commentary contents that current research, programs and policies are ignoring these rapid dynamic shifts.     

Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria

While the poverty implications of off-farm income have been analyzed in different developing countries, much less is known about the impact of off-farm income on household food security and nutrition. Here, this research gap is addressed by using farm survey data from Nigeria. Econometric analyses are employed to examine the mechanisms through which off-farm income affects household calorie and micronutrient supply, dietary quality, and child anthropometry. We find that off-farm income has a positive net effect on food security and nutrition. The prevalence of child stunting, underweight, and wasting is lower in households with off-farm income than in households without. Using a structural model, we also show that off-farm income contributes to higher food production and farm income by easing capital constraints, thus improving household welfare in multiple ways.     

Farm structure and rural policy in Japan

Japanese agriculture, by US standards, is highly fragmented and inefficient. Not only is farm size small but also most farmers pursue non-farm employment and are engaged in farming only on a part-time basis. These structural factors, which are either static or changing slowly, inevitably influence the making and implementation of agricultural and rural policies in Japan. Due to the rapid transformation of Japanese society, from the agrarian basis of early years to a highly industrialized and post-industrial society, a new farm policy agenda has arisen along with the need for structural adjustment of agriculture to meet changing economic conditions.     

Supply chains and economic development: Insights from the Indian dairy sector

With almost three quarters of the labor force depending on agriculture in India, kick-starting agricultural growth is considered crucial for pro-poor development. More specifically, dairy production – which is labor-intensive but does not heavily rely on access to land – is generally expected to offer better prospects for income growth to the poorest among rural households. However, most policies aimed at increasing dairy production are based on ad hoc observations, with hardly any micro-level evidence. Using a unique primary dataset on 1000 rural households in Andhra Pradesh, this paper investigates the dairy production system, addressing three main research questions: First, we look at the typical profile of a dairy farmer and we find that both family traditions in dairy and owning (even a small piece of) land play a role in determining participation in dairy – while land size does not matter. Second, we show that dairy production is strongly and positively associated with improvement in rural livelihoods, in terms of income per capita, but that this positive relation only holds for larger dairy farms. In a third step, we look at the determinants of farm growth and we find that households having higher shares of graded dairy animals have grown more after 2005.     

Land constraints and agricultural intensification in Ethiopia: A village-level analysis of high-potential areas

Highland Ethiopia is one of the most densely populated regions of Africa and has long been associated with both Malthusian disasters and Boserupian agricultural intensification. This paper explores the race between these two countervailing forces, with the goal of inform two important policy questions. First, how do rural Ethiopians adapt to land constraints? And second, do land constraints significantly influence welfare outcomes in rural Ethiopia? To answer these questions we use a recent household survey of high-potential areas. We first show that farm sizes are generally very small in the Ethiopian highlands and declining over time, with young rural households facing particularly severe land constraints. We then ask whether smaller and declining farm sizes are inducing agricultural intensification, and if so, how. We find strong evidence in favor of the Boserupian hypothesis that land-constrained villages typically use significantly more purchased input costs per hectare and more family labor, and achieve higher maize and teff yields and higher gross income per hectare. However, although these higher inputs raise gross revenue, we find no substantial impact of greater land constraints on net farm income per hectare once family labor costs are accounted for. Moreover, farm sizes are strongly positively correlated with net farm income, suggesting that land constraints are an important cause of rural poverty. We conclude with some broad policy implications of our results.     

Rising real wages,mechanization and growing advantage of large farms: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines dynamic patterns of land use, capital investments and wages in agriculture using farm panel data from Indonesia. The empirical analysis shows that with an increase in real wages that prevailed in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in rural areas, relatively larger farmers increased the size of operational farm land by renting in land as well as used more hired-in machines through machine rental and/or service providers, which induces the substitution of labor by machines. Machines and land are complementary and, consistently, the inverse farm size-productivity relationship tends to be reversed among relatively large holders. The results support growing (diminishing) advantage of large (small) farms in the presence of rapidly rising real wages and have food security policy implications to many Asian countries where real wages are rapidly rising and small farms are predominant.     

Non-farm income,gender, and inequality: evidence from rural Ghana and Uganda

This paper examines how the distribution of earnings in rural Ghana and Uganda differs by income type and by gender. We find that non-farm earnings contribute to rising inequality, but that lower income groups also benefit due to strong overall growth in non-farm earnings. The inequality-inducing effect is driven by self-employment income; wage income, on the other hand, reduces inequality. The tendency of non-farm income to contribute to inequality is greater among female-headed households for whom self-employment is important and non-farm opportunities more constrained. Determinants of non-farm income are estimated and appear to be strongly related to location, education, age, and distance to market. Estimates of the linkages to agriculture in Ghana are weaker than expected, showing the non-farm sector to be functioning more as an alternative activity to agriculture than as a complement.     

Income diversification and entry barriers: evidence from the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia

Farm households diversify their income sources into off-farm wage employment motivated by low farm income and availability of surplus family labor, whereas they enter into off-farm self employment to earn an attractive return. Farm households have upward-sloping, although inelastic, off-farm labor supply curves. Therefore, increasing the availability of off-farm activities and improving the wage rate received by farm households can expand the economic activity of the Tigray Regional State. Due to entry barriers, relatively wealthy farm households may dominate the most lucrative rural non-farm activities such as masonry, carpentry and petty trade. Hence the underlying factors that hinder participation in non-farm activities such as credit constraints and lack of skill may have to be addressed through the provision of credit and technical training for the poor.     

Farmer training in off-season vegetables: Effects on income and pesticide use in Bangladesh

The cultivation of crops outside the regular cropping calendar when supply is low and prices are high can give farmers better profits and consumers more choice. However, off-season production may increase pesticide risk if crops are more affected by pests and diseases and farmers do not handle pesticides correctly. This study quantified the effect of training in off-season tomato production on the income and pesticide use of smallholder vegetable farmers in southwestern Bangladesh. The study uses farm-level data from 94 trained and 151 non-trained farm households and applies propensity score matching and inverse probability weighting to correct for selection bias. For the average smallholder vegetable farmer, training increased net household income by about 48%. We found that 31% of the trained farm households who had initially adopted the technology continued its use in the second year, but farm households who discontinued using the technology also experienced significant income gains from the training. There was a significant increase in pesticide use (+56%) and although there was an improvement in pesticide handling practices, trained farmers may have been more exposed to pesticide health risk. The policy implication is that while off-season vegetable production can create dramatic income improvements, it is important to emphasize safe and sustainable pest management methods as part of policies promoting it.     

Worker welfare on Kenyan export vegetable farms

The paper analyses farm worker welfare on three different types of farms in Kenya producing vegetables for export. The three types of farms differ by certification to international production standards as well as by size. A multidimensional approach measures welfare using human capital, income, physical and mental health, and life satisfaction. The findings suggest that GlobalGAP certification has a positive impact on worker welfare as farm workers are given more training. Workers on large certified farms earn more than those on small farms but also show more health problems. Certification on small farms is associated with higher satisfaction of workers with their life compared to workers on non-certified small farms. From a development policy perspective this paper does not support a clear cut policy on which types of farm to support as overall benefits of a support strategy will depend of the number of beneficiaries reached through the different farm types.     

Job creation and job destruction in EU agriculture

This is the first paper to study job creation and destruction in EU agriculture. We disaggregate gross employment patterns and net job flows into detailed intra-sectoral labour adjustment dynamics based on a unique EU-wide farm level panel dataset for 1990–2005. We find that: (1) job creation and destruction rates in EU agriculture are comparable to other sectors; (2) there is some evidence of ongoing substitution of family labour for hired labour; (3) there are important differences in job creation and destruction rates between different Member States; (4) these differences can be attributed to structural differences across countries, sectors and farm types; (5) time variation of job reallocation fluctuates countercyclically; and (6) idiosyncratic effects are the main driver of time variance in job reallocation.     

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.     

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.     

Impact of off-farm labor supply on food expenditures of the farm household

Farm households diversify their income sources by working off the farm. This is a risk management strategy that is used by farm households in both developed and developing countries. Income diversification via off-farm work is associated with higher incomes and food consumption. However, little is known about the association between off-farm work and farm household food expenditures. In an effort to bridge this gap, this study attempts to assess the impact of off-farm work decisions by the operator and/or the spouse on the food expenditures of the farm household. Using a nationwide farm household survey in the United States and new econometric method, we find that the decisions of the operator and/or the spouse to work off the farm are significantly interrelated (29%). However, these two decisions affect food expenditures in different ways. The operator’s off-farm work decision is positively related to food expenditures, while the spouse’s decision is negatively associated with expenditures on food by the farm household.