Recent cega_afd items

Contract Farming, Smallholders and Commercialization of Agriculture in Uganda: The Case of Sorghum, Sunflower, and Rice Contract Farming Schemes.

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Contract farming has expanded in Uganda due to the promotional efforts of various actors: private, public, and/or international aid agencies. While motives for promoting contract farming may vary by actor, it is argued in this study that contract farming is crucial in the commercialization of smallholder agriculture and hence, poverty reduction in Uganda. However, smallholder farmers in Uganda have reportedly experienced some contractual problems when dealing with large agribusiness firms, resulting in them giving up contract farming. Similarly, agribusinesses have also reportedly encountered some contractual problems when dealing with some smallholder farmers that could have led to the exclusion of the latter from contract farming. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to examine the role of contract farming in the commercialization of smallholder agriculture in Uganda by using sunflower, sorghum, and rice contract schemes as case studies. Specifically, the study...

Agricultural Technology Adoption: A Panel Analysis of Smallholder Farmers’ Fertilizer use in Kenya

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Africa is the only region where agricultural productivity has continued to decline over the last decades and poverty levels have increased. This has necessitated the need to increase agricultural productivity. One way of increasing agricultural productivity is through introduction and use of improved agricultural technologies. This paper applied a double-hurdle model on a ten-year panel household survey data for 1,275 households to examine determinants of fertilizer adoption and use intensity in Kenya.

Results show that the proportion of households using fertilizer dramatically rose in the last decade while fertilizer application rates increased marginally. Fertilizer use in the drier agro ecological zones is still way below that in the higher agro ecologically potential zones, indicating higher risk involved in and lower profitability of using fertilizer in the drier areas. Econometric estimation results show that age, education, credit, presence of a cash crop, distance...

The influence of collective property rights on grazing management in a semi-arid region

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The paper reports on a series of field experiments based on a non-standard common-pool resource model and carried out with communal farmers in southern Africa. We frame an experimental design used by Cardenas et al. (2008) in Thailand and Colombia according to the grazing situation in semi-arid regions. We analyse the efficiency of two simple, imperfectly enforced property-rights mechanisms that base on both, informal realworld arrangements practised in the communal areas as well as on the procedure pursued by the Namibian government, where mostly those farmers with big herd sizes get granted access to resettlement farms. Our results suggest that in the short run, the introduction of property rights increases the economic returns and has positive ecological effects, but that these effects diminish in the long-run if imperfectly enforced. It further seems that players’ propensity to co-operate is constant across the experiment: farmers who behave less co-operatively in an open...

What determines the price received by farmers? The case of cocoa in Cameroon

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Various works have demonstrated that small-scale agricultural producers from developing countries do not generally obtain the potential gains linked to marketing. What can be done to help them obtain better prices? In this article, we examine two different solutions: increasing the bargaining power of individual producers and collective marketing through producer organizations (POs). We use data on 2,487 cocoa transactions undertaken by producers in Cameroon during the 2005/2006 season (IITA survey 2006). We first of all explore bargaining theories to identify the determinants of the price received by producers who sell their produce individually, and the, analyse the effect of collective marketing. We show that when the bargaining situation is least favourable to the producers (because the prices are nonnegotiable and there is information asymmetry which favours the traders), the traders seize the entire surplus generated by the trade. In order to improve the prices received...

Transaction Costs and Smallholder Farmers’ Participation in Banana Markets in the Great Lakes Region

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyses the determinants of the discrete decision of a household on whether to participate in banana markets using the FIML bivariate probit method. The continuous decision on how much to sell or buy is analyzed by establishing the supply and demand functions while accounting for the selectivity bias.

Results indicate that buying and selling decisions are not statistically independent and the random disturbances in the buying and selling decisions are affected in opposite directions by random shocks. Transaction cost related factors such as geographical location of households, market information sources and travel time to the nearest urban centre do influence participation. Other factors such as labour availability, farming experience, gender of household head, off-farm income and the asset base of the household also affect the likelihood and intensity of participation.

Policies guiding central and local governments towards increased investment in...

Technological Change in Smallholder Agriculture: Bridging the Adoption Gap by Understanding its Source.

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the informational origin of the low adoption rates of modern agricultural technologies frequently observed in smallholder agriculture in Sub-Sahran Africa. The paper argues that a large part of these observed low adoption rates can be explained by a simple fact: The lack of awareness of the existence of the technology by a large proportion of the smallholder farming population. The paper analyzes the structure of the adoption gap resulting from this lack of awareness and presents a methodology for estimating that gap and truly informative adoption rates and their determinants. This methodology is then used to provide estimates of the New Rice for Africa (NERICA)

population potential adoption rates and gaps as well as estimates of the determinants of NERICA exposure and adoption in four West African Countries: Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Benin and Gambia.

The implied estimated adoption gaps of 21% in Cote-d’Ivoire, 41% in Guinea, 28% in Benin and 47%...

Inequality, Agricultural Production and Poverty: With Focus on Large-scale / Small-scale Sugarcane Farms in South Africa.

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

International development agencies have renewed interest over agriculture’s pro-poor potentials. South Africa’s agriculture though contributes less than 3% to GDP, has the highest employment per unit of GDP. The sector is sharply divided into small and large farms. Data reveals an increasing land productivity gap between both types of farms. Using data from various sources1, this paper assesses the agricultural production impacts of inequality and land redistribution, first in the whole agricultural sector, then the sugarcane sub-sector, comparing small-scale and largescale farm performances and considering the causes of the productivity gap. It also analyses the comparative poverty effects of both farm-types. Time series are corrected for unit roots and estimated using robust estimation, which corrects for heteroskedasticity and outliers. Specification tests help to determine the right panel model for sugarcane. The results suggest that inequality (land redistribution) is...

Networks, Local Institutions and Agriculture

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Networks, Local Institutions and Agriculture

Agricultural Productivity and Mortality: Evidence from Kagera, Tanzania

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We ask whether prime-age adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS decreases the endowment of knowledge for agricultural production in Kagera, Tanzania, reducing total factor productivity. We also quantify how much this negative effect contributes to the decrease in long-term household agricultural income growth compared to the contribution of decreased accumulation of productive assets; household members, land, and livestock. We find that prime-age adult mortality decreases the accumulation of knowledge stock as total factor productivity and the contribution of this negative effect to the decrease in agricultural income growth is larger than the contribution of decreased accumulation of each productive asset.

Vulnerability, Risk Management, and Agricultural Development

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

For many poor farmers in developing countries, vulnerability to risk is a dominant feature of their livelihoods. Households' desires to protect themselves against shocks is thought to affect their production and savings decisions. Farmers who are fearful of future loss of earnings may be reluctant to adopt technological innovations with a variable or unknown return. This paper examines the relationship between agricultural development, vulnerability to shocks, and the risk management practices of small farmers in developing countries. It finds that adoption of new agricultural inputs and practices is a combination of both rational and behavioral motives, with peer effects appearing more important through studies of social networks and reinforcement and diffusion effects.

A Market for all Farmers: Market Institutions and Smallholder Participation

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture, often referred to as the commercialization of agriculture, has long been considered an important part of the agrarian transformation of low income economies and a means of ensuring food security, enhanced nutrition, and enhanced incomes. However, in the face of imperfect markets and high transaction costs, smallholders are rarely able to exploit all the potential gains from commercialization. With the objective of better understanding smallholder participation in markets, the paper proceeds in Section 1 to examine the impact of early reforms on smallholder market participation. In Section 2, we characterize the dimensions of smallholder agriculture that constrain market participation. In Section 3, a conceptual framework for understanding market participation through the lens of market institutions is proposed, followed by an exposition to recent efforts to promote market development in Section 4 and an overview of...

Recurrent Shocks, Poverty Traps and the Degradation of the Social Capital Base of Pastoralism: A Case Study from Southern Ethiopia

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The long-term effects of shocks are examined in the context of a traditional pastoral community. The impacts are empirically examined in connection with the micro-level poverty trap hypothesis and the associated minimum poverty threshold estimates reported in previous studies. We argue that these estimates cannot be taken as definitive and the core explanations behind them are incongruent with the institutional realities of the pastoral community for which they are reported. The reality is that shocks have implied long-term community-wide deprivation with a lasting effect of deterioration in the indigenous capacity to cushion those who slide into permanent destitution. This is evident in the empirically identified increasing loss of confidence in the indigenous social support structures. The findings rather highlight the need for policy interventions to focus on system level community-wide development issues rather than the commonly emphasized individual targeting implied by...

AERC Conference on Agriculture for Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Introduction.

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The objective of this introduction is to put the May 2009 conference "on Agriculture for Development" in perspective of current and expected changes in the broad process of using agriculture for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is to help the conference achieve its two main purposes: assess the frontiers of research in economics applied to agricultural development and smallholder competitiveness; and establish research priorities for future efforts in that direction. It uses the WDR 2008 as a starting point for this task.

Impact of Public Market Information System (PMIS) on Farmers Food Marketing Decisions: Case of Benin

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

To sell their surpluses of maize, the main staple in Benin, farmers may choose among three modes of transaction: they may sell under a contract with itinerant traders, or they may sell without a contract at the farmgate or on distant markets. It has been postulated that farmers may choose a profitable mode of transaction if they have good access to information on the prevailing market conditions. Using detailed farm household survey data from Benin, this paper applies the Nested Logit model to test this hypothesis. The results show that farmers are likely to opt for selling at the farmgate without a contract if they have good access to information. However, such a decision may not be related to access to information through the government supported 'Public Market Information System' but rather it is likely to be induced by access to information through farmers' own social networks.

Seasonality, precautionary savings and health uncertainty: Evidence from farm households in Central Kenya

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The high prevalence of risks in low income economies implies that people’s ability to manage uncertainty is critical for both productivity and their mere survival. This paper analyses seasonal changes in per capita consumption and saving behaviour of farm households in response to health and weather shocks. The notion that people save most of there transitory income, as postulated by the permanent income hypothesis, and precautionary saving motives are tested using a sample of 196 households examined over three consecutive cropping seasons in Central Kenya. The results show that, while people exhibit some level of prudence, the marginal propensity to save out of transitory income is about 33 percent — about a third of what the permanent income hypothesis postulates. This proportion saved is an indication of the extent of incompleteness of credit and insurance markets in the study area. This shows substantial scope for remedial public action in social protection programmes....

Assessing the impact of improved agricultural technologies in rural Mozambique.

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyzes the use of improved agricultural technologies, and implications for food security and poverty reduction in rural Mozambique. The results are drawn from a nationally representative household survey covering the agricultural season of 2004/05. As a robustness check, the paper uses three econometric approaches: the doubly robust estimator, regression and matching, and sub-classification and regression. The results show that the impact of improved technologies is positive, conditional on irrigation use. Additionally, the results attest to the importance of increasing agricultural productivity in tandem with improvements on farmers’ ability to store food.

Moving towards pro-poor systems of land administration: Challenges for land and asset distribution in Africa

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

There are three reasons why land policies in Africa are attracting greater amounts of attention. First, it is recognized that enhancing smallholder productivity is critical for sustainable and broad-based growth as well as poverty reduction (World Bank 2007). However, land-related investment, technology adoption, establishment of processing, markets, and value chains, all are unlikely to come about unless land tenure is secure. Moreover, increased productivity will be capitalized in land values and unless explicit attention is devoted to traditional land rights and land access by weaker groups, in particular women, interventions aiming to increase agricultural productivity may have negative social consequences. This is particularly relevant in contexts where current interpretations of customary systems define women's rights only through their relationship with men and women are often unable to inherit land which is considered the property of their husband's lineage. Negative...