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Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets
No full textAddressing the urgent need for food systems to support sustainable healthy diets will require a major improvement in the availability of and access to affordable, nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in low- and middle-income countries, along with increased consumer demand for healthy diets. Plant-source foods are key components of sustainable healthy diets. This chapter examines food crops that could be leveraged to improve health outcomes, describes production systems and their role in providing populations access to highly nutritious crops, and presents examples of evidence-based technologies that improve the nutritional content of crops, especially for vulnerable populations.Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS); Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH
IFPRI Malawi maize market report, May 2024
No full textThe Monthly Maize Market Report was developed by researchers at IFPRI Malawi to provide clear and accurate information on the variation of maize prices in selected markets throughout Malawi. All prices are reported in Malawi Kwacha (K).MaSSPDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG
Oilseed farming in Myanmar: An analysis of practice, productivity, and profitability: Assessment of the 2023 monsoon
No full textWe have analyzed oilseed production patterns, productivity, and profitability for the 2023 monsoon season from the Myanmar Agriculture Performance Survey (MAPS), conducted at the beginning of 2024. This survey encompassed plots managed by 802 oilseed producers, distributed across all states/regions of the country.MyanmarSSPDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG
Household resilience and coping strategies to food insecurity: An empirical analysis from Tajikistan
No full textResilience Index Measurement Analysis (RIMA) is applied to panel household survey data from 2007, 2009, and 2011 in Tajikistan to investigate the causal impact of household resilience on food security in the presence of coping strategies. Key findings • Three significant factors define household resilience capacity: access to basic services, including affordable energy supply; assets; and social safety nets. The latter two factors underscore the importance of formal and informal transfers as effective responses when shocks intensify. • Coping strategies allow households to quickly adjust their behavior to adapt to shocks in the short-term, potentially enhancing their overall resilience in the long-term. • Resilience capacity at a given point in time enhances households’ future food security. Households with higher resilience capacity are likely to have a higher household food expenditure share (HFES) and less likely to face loss of food expenditure share, particularly due to the protective effect of resilience when shocks intensify. • While households with an older head have higher food expenditure share, households with a male head and/or located in rural areas are less likely to face a worsening household food expenditure share. • As household size increases, the household food expenditure share initially decreases but eventually increases at a gradual pace. Conversely, as size increases, households are initially less likely to experience loss of HFES, but this likelihood eventually increases.TEAADevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG
Barriers and facilitators to women’s participation in farmer producer organizations: A qualitative study exploring women’s empowerment and collective efficacy in Jharkhand, India
No full textOver the last decade in India, farmer producer organizations (FPOs) have emerged as a means of collectivizing smallholder farmers and providing them access to extension, innovation, and market services. FPOs that center women farmers, traditionally at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their male counterparts in access to resources and extension, can serve to enhance women’s agency and collective action in agricultural value chains. We used 59 key informant interviews and nine focus group discussions to examine the constraints to, and facilitators of, women’s and men’s participation in three women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, an eastern Indian state. Additionally, we study the gender and power dynamics in such FPOs and the potential of collective efficacy to enhance agricultural and empowerment outcomes. The FPO intervention we evaluated was supported by an NGO that provides FPO members with both agricultural and gender-based inputs to improve agronomic practices, market linkages, agricultural yields and profits, and the role of women both within the FPO and within their households and communities. In this paper, we provide contextual insights on ‘what works’ to empower women in this context. Women’s perceptions of the benefits from FPO membership were heterogeneous. Our qualitative analysis suggests a nuanced picture of women’s autonomy and decision-making within and outside their household, further shaped by women’s and men’s perception of shifts in women’s access to resources and services. The emerging lessons provide inputs for development implementers and policymakers to recognize diverse contextual barriers in designing FPO interventions to enable and enhance women empowerment outcomes. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge on local gender norms and understanding of empowerment.Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI
Impacts of Africa RISING in Mali
No full textThis study evaluates the impact of Africa RISING, a sustainable intensification (SI) program, implemented in Bougouni, Yanfolila, and Koutiala cercles in southern Mali beginning in 2012. Using a participatory action research framework, the program validated and promoted alternative SI options including fertilized groundnut and sorghum, crop-legume intercropping, intercropping of two compatible legumes, access to extension services, and fertilizer microdosing, while preserving ecosystem services in the face of projected population growth and climatic changes. Impact is estimated on several SI indicators and domains using two rounds of quasi-experimental panel data (surveys conducted in 2014 and 2022) and difference-in-differences techniques. The unique study design allows us to estimate the impact of Africa RISING by comparing outcomes among program beneficiaries with two different counterfactual groups—one located inside program villages (within-village comparison) and another in non-program (control) villages (out-of-village comparison) on several indicators across five SI domains—environment, productivity, economic, human, and social. We also conduct a placebo test comparing non-beneficiaries in the two counterfactual groups. We find few statistically significant differences in the averages of the characteristics in the environmental and productivity domain among households in the within-village and out-of-village comparisons, most likely because of misreporting of program participation. Overall comparisons between households in target and non-target villages show a positive impact of AR on environmental variables such as access to extension services, and adoption of improved crops; on productivity variables such as green bean, cotton and okra yield; and on economic variables such as an increase in the non-agricultural wealth index; but no statistically significant effect on human and social indicators, namely household dietary diversity, food consumption scores, and nutritional indicators for children 0–59 months old and women 15–49 years old. Estimates based on within-village, out-of-village, and placebo comparisons suggest important insights about the challenges in assessing the impact of agricultural programs in general and, specifically, participatory multi-intervention programs in the presence of sample (self-)selection and spillovers. Our study highlights useful empirical lessons learned to inform future program design and impact assessments.Africa RisingInnovation Policy and Scaling (IPS
Two decades after Maputo, What’s in the CAADP ten percent? Determinants and effects of the composition of government agriculture expenditure in Africa
No full textThis paper analyzes the determinants of the composition of government agriculture expenditure (GAE) in Africa and estimates the effect of the composition on agricultural productivity using cross-country annual data from 2014 to 2020 and structural equations modeling methods. It includes different specifications of the explanatory variables to assess the sensitivity of the results to different assumptions of the conceptual variables that are hypothesized to affect the composition and pathways of impact of government expenditure. The results show that there is a wide variation in GAE across African countries, and few have achieved the 10 percent CAADP agriculture expenditure target. Most African countries spend much smaller proportions of the national budget on agriculture than the sector’s share in the economy, and total agriculture expenditure seems to be allocated across subsectors according to their relative contribution to the sector’s output, with forestry and fisheries being slightly favored compared with crops and livestock, which dominate the sector. The allocation is also affected by several factors, such as past output and size of the subsector, official development assistance, education, irrigation, and state of agricultural transformation, although there are cross-subsector differences in their influence. There are also subsector differences in the estimated effect of GAE on land productivity: 0.06 to 0.08 for expenditure on the total sector, 0.02 for research, 0 to 0.09 for crops, 0 to 0.08 for livestock, and 0 to 0.07 for fisheries. The lower bound of zero means that the estimated effect is not statistically significant in some of the model specifications, such as whether cross-subsector expenditure effects are considered. We discuss implications of the results and suggestions for future research.Development Strategies and Governance (DSG
Harnessing digital innovations for climate action and market access: Opportunities and constraints in the CWANA region
No full textThere is growing optimism about the potential of digital innovations to support climate action and transform agricultural markets. We review and characterize the landscape of digital innovations in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region. We highlight major success stories associated with the potential of digital innovations to facilitate rural market transformation and support climate action, including adaptation and mitigation. Our desk and landscape review identifies various digital innovations used in Egypt, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. We then create a typology of digital innovations based on seven broad service categorizations: weather and climate; agricultural finance; energy and early warning systems; data and crowdsourcing; market information and market place; extension and advisory information; and supply chain coordination. Three technical and validation workshops supplement this review. Our review shows that digital innovations have the potential to build resilience to climate change and increase market access, but their adoption remains low and varying across contexts. Significant heterogeneity and differences exist across these countries, possibly due to different institutional and regulatory frameworks that guide demand and capacity. We identify several supply and demand-side constraints facing the digital ecosystem in the region. There is the existence of a significant digital divide fueled by gender, literacy gaps, and related socioeconomic and psychosocial constraints. A seeming disconnect also exists between pilots and scale-ups, as most existing digital applications are unsuccessful in expanding beyond the pilot phase.Development Strategies and Governance (DSG); Transformation Strategie
Gender bias in customer perceptions: The case of agro-input dealers in Uganda
No full textCONTEXT
Faced with incomplete and imperfect information, economic actors rely predominantly on perceptions and often base decisions on heuristics prone to bias. Gender bias in perceptions favoring men has been found in a variety of settings and may be an important reason why some sectors remain dominated by men and gender gaps in terms of benefits persist. In modernizing food supply chains in a patriarchal context such as the maize sub-sector in Uganda, this may result in women facing significant barriers to entry.
OBJECTIVE
Using a unique dataset of ratings of agro-input dealers provided by smallholder farmers in their vicinity, we test if farmers perceive male-managed agro-input shops differently than agro-input shops managed by women.
METHODS
We use a dyadic dataset of farmer-dealer links to explicitly control for quality differences between male- and female-managed agro-input shops and use the fact that a farmer has generally rated more than one agro-input to account for farmer-level heterogeneity using fixed-effects regression.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
We find that farmers rate male-managed agro-input outlets higher on a range of attributes related to the dealership in general, as well as on the quality of inputs sold by the dealer. After controlling for both dealer and farmer level confounders, we conclude that gender bias in customer perceptions persists.
SIGNIFICANCE
Our results suggest a comparative disadvantage and an important entry barrier for female agro-input dealers. The gender bias may also affect social outcomes like women's capabilities, aspirations, and empowerment in seed systems but also impairs development at more aggregate levels: as a considerable share of agro-input shops is managed by women, this finding may impose challenges for varietal turnover, hindering agricultural productivity, food security, and rural transformation. Policies and interventions designed to challenge gender norms and customs are needed to correct this bias.Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS); Transformation Strategie
Impact of farm subsidies on global agricultural productivity
No full textThe agriculture sector receives substantial fiscal subsidies in various forms, including through programs that are linked to production and others that are decoupled. As the sector has reached the technology frontier in production over the last three decades or so, particularly in high‐ and middle‐income countries, it is intriguing to investigate the impact of subsidies on productivity at aggregate level. This study examines the impact of subsidies on productivity growth in agriculture globally using a long time series on the nominal rate of assistance for 42 countries that covers over 80% of agricultural production. The econometric results show heterogenous effects from various subsidy instruments depending on the choice of productivity measure. Regression results suggest a strong positive effect of input subsidies on both output growth and labor productivity. A positive but relatively small impact of output subsidies is found on output growth only.Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI); Food and Nutrition Polic