Challenges in implementing a small-scale farmers’ capacity-building program
Challenges in implementing a small-scale farmers’ capacity-building program

Author: Ragasa, Catherine

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-01-20

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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In 2011, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government launched the Food Production, Processing, and Marketing project—which aimed to raise incomes and improve food security in the target areas by improving agricultural productivity, market efficiency, and the capacity of producers to respond to market signals. In August–October 2013 and February–March 2014, halfway through the project’s implementation, a midline survey was conducted to assess progress with respect to intermediate outcomes. The present paper highlights the results of that assessment survey. We pay close attention to accurate attribution of observed changes to the project and employ a double-difference method that compares the changes in indicators before the project and at the time of the survey (project midline) between the beneficiaries and comparable control groups. Overall, the survey results suggest weak impact on most of the outcome indicators, and they highlight challenges in implementing small-scale farmers’ capacity building within the context of weak institutions and a fragile political context.

Innovation systems
Innovation systems

Author: Francis, J. (ed)

Publisher: CTA

Published: 2016-12-31

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 9290815612

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The result of an expert consultation, this publication examines ‘innovations systems’ – a concept suggested as underpinning industrial development – as a strategy for agricultural development. Innovation systems approaches conceptualise change as a long-term, socially-embedded process, and recognise the important role policy plays in shaping the parameters within which decisions are made. Providing a collection of papers and commentaries from the world’s top scholars and practitioners, this book looks at the strengths – but also the weaknesses and challenges –

Implementing Rural Development Projects
Implementing Rural Development Projects

Author: Elliott R Morss

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-20

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 0429716958

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This book deals with problems frequently encoun-tered by agencies, managers, and technicians who try to implement large-scale development projects. Specifically, it focuses on the implementation problems associated with projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and the World Bank in developing countries. Some historical background on how implementation problems became a focus of concern is presented below. Development assistance on a significant scale started with Marshall Plan aid to reconstruct Western Europe following World War II. [1] In that case, the donor (the United States) asked not to be part of the process that determined how the money was to be spent. Instead, the United States asked the West European countries to establish their own priorities for assistance (which they did after a considerable amount of inter-country negotiation).

The impact of conditional cash transfer programs on indigenous households in Latin America: Evidence from PROGRESA in Mexico
The impact of conditional cash transfer programs on indigenous households in Latin America: Evidence from PROGRESA in Mexico

Author: Quiñones, Esteban J.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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Conditional cash transfers(CCTs) are widely used antipoverty measuresin Latin America, and manysuch programs include indigenous beneficiaries.However, concerns have been raised that the indigenous poor,who have historically been marginalized,may not benefit from CCTsas much as the nonindigenouspopulation, owing to cultural as well as geographic factors. Even so, rigorous evidenceshowing this effect is limited. We assessedthis issue in the context of PROGRESA (Programa de Educación, Salud, y Alimenación), an integrated approach to poverty alleviation in Mexico, in which over one-thirdofbeneficiaries were indigenous at the program’s inceptionin 1998. A feature of the program’s initial targetingwasthat indigenous and nonindigenous beneficiaries were drawn from geographically similar areas, minimizing the potential for geographic factors to lead to differential impacts.Despite an extensive literatureshowing positive average impacts of PROGRESAon health and education outcomes, few studieshave disaggregatedthese effects by indigenous status. Using the randomized assignment of initial programrollout, we estimatedPROGRESA’simpactson a range of health and education indicators, distinctly for indigenous and nonindigenousbeneficiaries.We foundthat, as of November 2000, PROGRESA had significant impacts on many health and education indicators among both indigenous and nonindigenous households in our sample; in addition, in aggregateacross most indicators, these impacts werevery similar. Our results indicate thatif geographic disadvantage for indigenous households can be minimized(a nontrivial endeavor),cultural factors may not pose an intrinsic barrier to indigenous householdsbenefiting from CCTprograms, and as such, CCTs canpromote humancapital accumulation amongboth indigenous and nonindigenous households

Can information help reduce imbalanced application of fertilizers in India?
Can information help reduce imbalanced application of fertilizers in India?

Author: Fishman, Ram

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13:

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The imbalanced application of chemical fertilizers in India is widely blamed for low yields, poor soil health, pollution of water resources, and large public expenditures on subsidies. To address the issue, the government of India is investing in a large-scale, expensive program of individualizedsoil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fertilizer mix. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in the Indian state of Bihar in what we believe to be the first evaluation of the effectiveness of the program as currently implemented. We found no evidence of any impact of soil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations on actual fertilizer use or the willingness to pay for lacking nutrients (elicited using aBecker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism). Several factors could be driving these results, including a lack of understanding, lack of confidence in the information’s reliability, or the costs of the recommended fertilizer mixes. We provide evidence that suggestslack of confidence is the main factor inhibiting farmers’ response

Why some are more equal than others
Why some are more equal than others

Author: Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13:

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Food (in)security conditions differ across countries, and those differences affect the discussion of potential policy approaches. This paper reviews several approaches to creating country typologies of food (in)security conditions and then updates Díaz-Bonilla et al.’s 2000 IFPRI paper Food Security and Trade Negotiations in the World Trade Organization. The exercise uses five variables: domestic food production per capita (constant dollars per capita); a combination of calories and protein per capita; the ratio of total exports to food imports; the ratio of the nonagricultural population to total population; and a variable based on the mortality rate for children under 5. The raw values are all transformed into z-scores. The paper explains how the variables relate to the traditional dimensions of availability, access, and utilization in the definition of food security. Data for the variables correspond to the period 2009–2011 (or the latest available) and cover 155 developed and developing countries. Two clustering methods are applied: hierarchical and k-means. The hierarchical approach is used first, to determine potential outliers and to explore what would be a reasonable number of clusters. That analysis suggests that the maximum number of relevant clusters for the analysis is 10 and identifies three countries as outliers. We then use the k-means method to classify all other countries in one of the 10 different clusters or groups. The paper analyzes the average profile of each one of those groups and divides them into three categories of food insecure, intermediate, and food secure. We highlight the different profiles of each of the food-insecure clusters (such as whether they were rural or urban, trade stressed or not, and so on). Limitations related to land and water availability (measured as arable land, hectares per person, and renewable internal freshwater resources in cubic meters per capita) are incorporated into the analysis as an additional dimension to be considered. The paper closes with some policy considerations for the different types of clusters of food-insecure countries.

Risk and sustainable crop intensification
Risk and sustainable crop intensification

Author: Van Campenhout, Bjorn

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13:

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To feed a growing and increasingly urbanized population, Uganda needs to increase crop production without further exhausting available resources. Therefore, smallholder farmers are encouraged to adopt sustainable crop intensification methods such as inorganic fertilizer or hybrid seeds. However, these farmers perceive these new technologies as risky hence adoption will depend on how well they can manage this additional risk. This paper documents patterns observed in socioeconomic data that suggest risk is an important barrier to sustainable crop intensification practices among Ugandan smallholder rice and potato farmers. In particular, we find that households that engage in risk management strategies, such as investing in risk-reducing technology or engaging in precautionary savings, are more likely to practice intensified cropping. However, our data also show only limited yield risk associated with the use of fertilizers or pesticides, suggesting part of the problem is related to perception. We also discuss the consequences for policy.

Effectiveness of food subsidies in raising healthy food consumption
Effectiveness of food subsidies in raising healthy food consumption

Author: Chakrabarti, Suman

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-04-20

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13:

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There is an increasing demand to add pulses to the basket of subsidized goods in the Public Distribution System (PDS) of India—the world’s largest food-based social safety-net program. Would subsidizing pulses through PDS lead to a significant increase in its consumption? We study the case of subsidy on pulses in select Indian states and its impact on consumption and ultimately nutrition (in terms of protein intake) by exploiting an exogenous variation in prices to answer this question. Between 2004/2005 and 2009/2010, four Indian states introduced subsidized pulses through the country’s PDS, while other states did not. We exploit exogenous price variations to examine whether the price subsidy on pulses achieves its goal of increasing pulse consumption, and by extension protein intake, among India’s poor. Using several rounds of consumption expenditure survey data and difference-in-difference estimation, we find that the change in consumption of pulses due to the PDS subsidy, though statistically significant, is of a small order, and not large enough to meet the goal of enhancing the nutrition of beneficiaries.