Economywide Impact of Maize Export Bans on Agricultural Growth and Household Welfare in Tanzania
Economywide Impact of Maize Export Bans on Agricultural Growth and Household Welfare in Tanzania

Author: Xinshen Diao

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2013-09-03

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13:

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In recent years, the government of Tanzania, like other governments in Africa south of the Sahara, has periodically banned the export of staple crops (maize) in an attempt to ensure the domestic food supply and protect its citizens from international food price hikes. While this policy seems to be a common response to domestic production shortfalls or to high prices in international or neighboring countries’ markets, export bans not only have the potential to reduce producer prices locally but also, because the bans are often ad hoc, can cause significant market uncertainty for farmers and the private sector, ultimately making them less responsive in both supply and trade opportunities in the future. While complaints by farmers and traders regarding the export bans frequently appear in the newspapers in Tanzania, few rigorous analyses have been done to quantitatively measure the impacts of the policy. Given this knowledge gap and policy demand, we study the impact of export bans in Tanzania using a computable general equilibrium model. We find that although maize is an important food crop in Tanzania, its contribution to food price inflation is rather limited, and that banning cross-border maize exports lowers the national food price index by only 0.6–2.4 percent compared with the free-export scenario. The benefits of lower prices are captured primarily by urban households, but maize producer prices decrease by 7–26 percent, depending on the region. We also find that the export ban decreases the wage rate for low-skilled labor and the returns to land, while returns to nonagricultural capital and wage rate for the skilled labor increase, further hurting poor rural households and thus increasing poverty for the country as a whole.

Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition
Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition

Author: Mara van den Bold

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 80

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Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture
Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture

Author: Esha Sraboni

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 36

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Women’s low status and persistent gender gaps in health and education in South Asia contribute to chronic child malnutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even as other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, have improved. This is particularly relevant for Bangladesh, where chronic food insecurity continues to be an important issue despite steady advances in food production. To be able to leverage agriculture as an engine of inclusive growth, there is a need to develop indicators for measuring women’s empowerment, examine its relationship to various food-security outcomes, and monitor the impact of interventions to empower women. Using nationally representative survey data from Bangladesh, we examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and two measures of household food security: per adult equivalent calorie availability and dietary diversity. We use the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index to assess the extent of women’s empowerment in agriculture and instrumental variables techniques to correct for the potential endogeneity of empowerment. We find that the overall women’s empowerment score, the number of groups in which women actively participate, women’s control of assets, and a narrowing gap in empowerment between men and women within households are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity.

Welfare and Poverty Impacts of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
Welfare and Poverty Impacts of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

Author: Klaus Deininger

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 36

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India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is one of the largest public works programs globally. Understanding the impacts of NREGS and the pathway through which its impacts are realized thus has important policy implications. We use a three-round 4,000-household panel from Andhra Pradesh together with administrative data to explore short- and medium-term poverty and welfare effects of NREGS. Triple difference estimates suggest that participants significantly increase consumption (protein and energy intake) in the short run and accumulate more nonfinancial assets in the medium term. Direct benefits exceed program-related transfers and are most pronounced for scheduled castes and tribes and households supplying casual labor. Asset creation via program-induced land improvements is consistent with a medium-term increase in assets by nonparticipants and increases in wage income in excess of program cost.

Achieving food security and industrial development in Malawi
Achieving food security and industrial development in Malawi

Author: Aragie, Emerta

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 20

ISBN-13:

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Restrictions on exports of staples or cash crops are frequently imposed in developing countries to promote food security or industrial development goals. By diverting production to the local market, these policies aim to reduce prices and increase the supply of food or intermediate inputs to the benefit of consumers or downstream industrial users. Although export restrictions reduce aggregate welfare, they are attractive to policymakers: Governments gain support when they are seen to keep consumer prices low; likewise, politicians are swayed by industrial lobbyists who promise increased value-addition in exchange for access to cheaper inputs. This study weighs in on the debate around the desirability of export restrictions by simulating the economy-wide effects of Malawi’s longstanding maize export ban as well as a pro-posed oilseed export levy intended to raise value-addition in processing sectors. Our results show that, while export restrictions may have the desired outcome in the short run, producers respond to weakening market prospects in the longer run by restricting supply, often to the extent that the policies become self-defeating. Specifically, maize export bans only benefit the urban non-poor, while poor farm households experience income losses and reduced maize consumption in the long run. The oilseed export levy is equally ineffective: Even when export tax revenues are used to subsidize processors, gains in industrial value-addition are outweighed by declining agricultural value-addition as production in the fledgling oilseed sector is effectively decimated. The policy is further associated with welfare losses among rural households, while urban non-poor households benefit marginally.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of the African Risk Capacity Facility
Cost-Benefit Analysis of the African Risk Capacity Facility

Author: Daniel J. Clarke

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 64

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Governments play a key role in supporting populations affected by natural disasters, including rebuilding infrastructure to ensure continued services and scaling-up public safety nets to prevent widespread hunger and poverty. However, the traditional approach of limiting greater spending to the aftermath of a disaster has many drawbacks. External support from bilateral or multilateral donors can be slow and unreliable. Private sector reinsurance can be prohibitively expensive. And reallocating budgets toward recovery and reconstruction is typically a slow process that can even hurt long-term development by drawing resources away from effective programs. Some countries are trying to mitigate this liability by banding together and creating sovereign catastrophe risk pools that allow governments to coordinate with one another to insure their uncertain fiscal liabilities at lower cost. Countries contribute to the pool, which then provides payments if an insured natural disaster strikes. The African Risk Capacity (ARC), has been proposed as a pan-Africa drought risk pool to insure against drought risk in Africa south of the Sahara. If fully operationalized, the ARC will mark a major change in how donors fund emergency support to countries in Africa during times of need. In this paper, we undertake a cost-benefit analysis of the ARC pool and discuss how lessons can inform the design of the ARC.

Prospects for the sectoral transformation of the rural economy in Tanzania: A review of the evidence
Prospects for the sectoral transformation of the rural economy in Tanzania: A review of the evidence

Author: Benson, Todd

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2018-01-10

Total Pages: 32

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To guide economy-wide modeling efforts to identify specific public investments under Tanzania’s second Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDP II), this report provides an analysis of the performance of the rural economy of mainland Tanzania over the period 2008 through 2015, with a focus on the agriculture sector. More broadly, we seek to assess the nature and extent of any structural transformation in the rural economy by understanding trends in various components of it. The insights gained will then be used in the economy-wide modeling work to propose portfolios of public investments to foster both agricultural development in the short term—in alignment with the ASDP-II—and, in the longer-term, a sectoral transformation of the rural economy in which far fewer households rely solely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

A critical review of Malawi’s Special Crops Act and Agriculture (General Purposes) Act
A critical review of Malawi’s Special Crops Act and Agriculture (General Purposes) Act

Author: Comstock, Andrew

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2019-01-03

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13:

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This report is a critical review of two of the principal agricultural laws in Malawi, the Special Crops Act and the Agriculture (General Purposes) Act. Both are frequently used to justify interventions by government in agricultural marketing and trade activities. The review is to assess whether this legislation is effective in promoting the goals of the country around agricultural commercialization, and if not, to provide recommendations for revisions to the laws. As a secondary task, the review considers whether either law could be used as an appropriate legal framework for contract farming regulation and oversight. The review was based on a thorough desk review of the legislation and interviews with over 230 key informants involved in agricultural production, marketing, and trade. The interviews focused on the laws and how their application by government has affected the commercial activities of the informants for better or for worse.

Agricultural Input Subsidies
Agricultural Input Subsidies

Author: Ephraim Chirwa

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-09-26

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0199683522

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This book takes forward our understanding of agricultural input subsidies in low income countries.