Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.
This important collection of essays covers such subjects as the impact of changing global trade policies on India; the charting of a free trade area in South Asia; India’s informal trade with Bangladesh and Nepal; India-Bangladesh bilateral trade; a plan to strengthen regional trade cooperation in South Asia with special reference to India and Pakistan; a comparative analysis of the Chinese and Indian experience of multinational and expatriate foreign direct investment; foreign direct investment and economic integration in the SAARC region and health policy challenges for India.
South Asia has grown rapidly with significant reductions in poverty, but it has not been able to match the fast-growing working age population, leading to lingering concerns about jobless growth and poor job quality. Could export growth in South Asia result in better labor market outcomes? The answer is yes, according to our study, which rigorously estimates—using a new methodology—the potential impact from higher South Asian exports per worker on wages and employment over a 10-year period. Our study shows the positive side of trade. It finds that increasing exports per worker would result in higher wages—mainly for better-off groups, like more educated workers, males, and more-experienced workers—although less-skilled workers would see the largest reduction in informality. How can the benefits be spread more widely? Our study suggests that scaling up exports in labor-intensive industries could significantly lower informality for groups like rural and less-educated workers in the region. Also, increasing skills, and participation of women and young workers in the labor force could make an even bigger dent in informal employment. The region could achieve these gains by: (i) boosting and connecting exports to people (e.g., removing trade barriers and investment in infrastructure); (ii) eliminating distortions in production (e.g., by more efficient allocation of inputs); and (iii) protecting workers (e.g., by investing in education and skills).
Gain new insight on alleviating food insecurity in one of the poorest areas of the world! This book analyzes various facets of economic reforms in South Asia and their implications for attaining food security. It illuminates relevant issues regarding the constraints and challenges in achieving food security, focusing on South Asian countries where a large percentage of the world’s poor reside. This timely resource examines possible future courses of action involving trade and new technological advances to improve agriculture-led development in the region. Economic Reforms and Food Security: The Impact of Trade and Technology in South Asia focuses its attention on the economic reforms and experiences of six nations: Bangladesh Bhutan India Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Economic Reforms and Food Security: The Impact of Trade and Technology in South Asia includes the most relevant presentations made at the South Asia Regional Conference held in New Delhi in April of 2002. The book features experts who present lively, important debate on such significant issues as: current economic reforms—have they really enhanced food security? trade liberalization—can the WTO and new trade opportunities handle food security concerns? new technological options—how they contribute to agricultural production and food security the challenges of water—pricing, subsidies, and other issues in irrigation agricultural diversification and market reforms-how they increase food availability interventions in food and nutrition security—short-term solutions to reduce food insecurity and more! Economic Reforms and Food Security: The Impact of Trade and Technology in South Asia contains numerous tables and figures to demonstrate the current food situation in this area of the world and offers projections of where improvements can be made. Students and faculty of economics or South Asia will find this book extremely useful; it will also benefit development researchers, policymakers, and governmental officials who are searching for answers to poverty and starvation in developing countries. This text shows you how a concerted effort by governments, agencies, organizations, industries, and individuals—backed by adequate resources and changes in policies—can accelerate progress toward achieving sustainable food security for all.
Southeast Asia made considerable progress in building and strengthening its agricultural R&D capacity during 2000–2017. All of the region’s countries reported higher numbers of agricultural researchers, improvements in their average qualification levels, and higher shares of women participating in agricultural R&D. In contrast, regional agricultural research spending remained stagnant, despite considerable growth in agricultural output over time. As a result, Southeast Asia’s agricultural research intensity—that is, agricultural research spending as a share of agricultural GDP—steadily declined from 0.50 percent in 2000 to just 0.33 percent in 2017. Although the extent of underinvestment in agricultural research differs across countries, all Southeast Asian countries invested below the levels deemed attainable based on the analysis summarized in this report. The region will need to increase its agricultural research investment substantially in order to address future agricultural production challenges more effectively and ensure productivity growth. Southeast Asia’s least developed agricultural research systems (Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) are characterized by low scientific output and researcher productivity as a direct consequence of severe underfunding and lack of sufficient well-qualified research staff. While Malaysia and Thailand have significantly more developed agricultural research systems, they still report key inefficiencies and resource constraints that require attention. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam occupy intermediate positions between these two groups of high- and low-performing agricultural research systems. Growing national economies, higher disposable incomes, and changing consumption patterns will prompt considerable shifts in levels of agricultural production, consumption, imports, and exports across Southeast Asia over the next 20 to 30 years. The resource-allocation decisions that governments make today will affect agricultural productivity for decades to come. Governments therefore need to ensure the research they undertake is responsive to future challenges and opportunities, and aligned with strategic development and agricultural sector plans. ASTI’s projections reveal that prioritizing investment in staple crops will still trigger fastest agricultural productivity growth in Laos. However, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam could achieve faster growth over the next 30 years by prioritizing investment in research focused on fruit, vegetables, livestock, and aquaculture. In Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand, the choice between focusing on staple crops versus high-value commodities was less pronounced, but projections did indicate that prioritizing investments in oil crop research would trigger significantly lower growth in agricultural productivity.
This book is a pivotal publication that seeks to improve food security in the conditions of escalating protectionism in global agricultural trade. The authors argue that global trade systems have been increasingly distorted by emerging trade tensions between major actors such as the US, China, the EU, and Russia, as well as trade policies in many other countries. In view of the most recent disruption of global food supply chains due to the outbreak of the COVID-19, the book examines the effects of administrative restrictions, tariff escalations, and other forms of protectionism on food security. Over the decades, food security concerns have been emerging, along with the growth of the world population. More than two billion most impoverished people in the world spent up to 70% of their disposable income on food. In 2020, the running pandemic has unraveled accumulated problems. As many countries rely on agricultural imports, lockdowns and disrupted food production and supply chains tremendously threaten food security of those nations. Agricultural trade was already slowing in 2019 before the virus struck, weighed down by trade tensions, and decelerating economic growth. The spread of the virus and strict quarantine measures trigger economic decline that results in food prices rises and volatilities. Due to the pandemic, nearly all regions will suffer double-digit decline in trade volumes 2020. The virus will be defeated, but the effects of the protectionism outbreak would have a much longer-lasting impact on agricultural production, international supply chains, and food security worldwide. In this publication, the authors probe into many of the choices that link national, regional, and global policies extensively with the provision of food security for all in the new era of post-virus global trade. Since studying global agricultural trade has a multinational application, its outcomes might be shared with a broad international network of stakeholders, including research institutions, universities, and individual researches. The book is appropriate for government officials, policymakers, and businesses of many countries. Adaptation of research outcomes and solutions to the situation in particular countries and various collaboration formats will let to increase the visibility of the publication and to elaborate new practices and solutions in the sphere of establishing sustainable food security.
Like many other regional groups, the member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lankahave taken steps toward forming a regional free trade area. Will the SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) offer the substantial economic benefits, including food security, that South Asian leaders expect? This quantitative analysis compares the economic results of SAPTAwith two other trade liberalization schemes, (1) more liberal trade between SAARCand the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries, and (2) more liberal trade between SAARC and the world.
This volume foregrounds the importance of regional cooperation in the context of food security challenges in South Asia. South Asia holds the key to global achievement of SDG targets of ending hunger and malnutrition – it accounts for nearly one-third of food-insecure people on the planet, with every third child suffering from stunting due to malnutrition. Similar food preferences, production systems, and the transboundary nature of agrarian ecosystems call for coordinated action by South Asian countries, complementing national actions dealing with food security challenges. In this volume, leading experts discuss the perspectives of key South Asian countries in leveraging regional cooperation for addressing food security challenges and reflect on the potential of cooperative actions in different areas. The book proposes a ten-point regional policy agenda covering cooperation for combatting climate change, regional trade liberalization, operationalization of regional food reserves, leveraging technology, sharing of good practices, regional institution building, coordinated positions in multilateral trade negotiations, addressing trans-boundary outbreak of livestock diseases, strengthening food safety standards, and the management of shared natural resources. A key volume on accomplishing SDGs in the South Asian context, this book will be of immense interest to policy makers, researchers, and development practitioners. It is also essential reading for scholars and researchers in the areas of development studies, South Asia studies, food security, environment and sustainability.
