42 research outputs found
An Agri-Food Systems Analysis to Establish a Supportive Environment for Kenya’s Flour Blending Policy
No full textKenya’s forthcoming national flour blending policy mandates the incorporation of at least 10% of traditional high-value crops, such as sorghum and millet, into maize flour. This policy represents a significant shift in the country’s food system, with the potential to drive increased demand for these drought-tolerant crops, promote agricultural diversification, and enhance food security. Taking an agri-food systems perspective, this study provides a critical analysis of the policy, identifying key constraints, knowledge gaps, and leverage points necessary for its successful implementation.
The policy’s successful adoption hinges on a coordinated, multi-sectoral approach across different domains of the agri-food system. Agricultural production systems, market structures, processing capacities, and consumer preferences must be aligned to ensure that the scaling of blended flours is feasible and sustainable. Additionally, the policy has the potential to disrupt the existing maize value chain, with potential winners and losers emerging along the supply chain. This includes smallholder farmers, millers, and traders, who may experience differential adaptation capacities. Some value chain actors, particularly those already engaged in traditional crop production, may benefit from new market opportunities, while others, more dependent on maize, could resist the transition.
The analysis also highlights potential lock-ins, such as entrenched consumer preferences for pure maize flour and the limited infrastructure for processing and distributing traditional grains at scale. Trade-offs may emerge, particularly in terms of balancing short-term economic costs against long-term food system resilience. Therefore, the policy should be implemented with a holistic and cautious approach, ensuring that changes in the agri-food system are coordinated to minimize disruptions and unintended consequences. To achieve the intended benefits of enhanced nutritional quality, food security, and climate resilience, the policy must be supported by investments in farmer capacity-building, improved market access, and public
awareness campaigns to shift consumer preferences. The need for ongoing monitoring and adaptive governance is paramount, ensuring that the policy evolves in response to dynamic feedback from key stakeholders, including farmers, processors, and
consumers
Does Market Experience Attenuate Risk Aversion? Evidence from Landed Farm Households in Ethiopia
Get PDFRisk preferences are important drivers of many relevant economic decisions of farm households. High risk aversion is a well-known trigger of "poverty traps" for farm households in developing countries. This paper analyzes the effect of market experience on risk aversion for a relatively large sample of landed farm households characterized by historically low mobility in Ethiopia. We measure risk aversion using lab-in-field experimental data, and relate it to actual market experience of household heads. We use an instrumental variable approach to address the issue of endogeneity due to possible self-selection into trade. We find that market experience attenuates risk aversion--farm households with greater market experience are more risk tolerant. Results are robust to using several alternative specifications, controlling for internal mobility, out-migration and other potential unobservables, and for violations to rational choice. Overall, this study provides strong empirical evidence that risk preferences endogenously change as a result of market experience, and can help design policies aiming to increase the productivity and efficiency of farm households.</p
The effect of women's nutrition knowledge and empowerment on child nutrition outcomes in rural Ethiopia
Get PDFChild malnutrition remains widespread in Ethiopia. Women’s nutrition knowledge
and empowerment are emphasized as key impact pathways for nutrition sensitive
programs and interventions. This paper examines effects of women’s
nutrition knowledge and empowerment on child nutrition outcomes using survey
data from rural Ethiopia. Employing econometric strategies that account
for potential endogeneity concerns, nutrition knowledge, and empowerment are
found to have strong and significant effects on children’s dietary diversity and
stunting. Their interaction is significantly correlated only with stunting, perhaps
suggesting the importance of the interaction between nutrition knowledge
and empowerment for long-term nutrition outcomes.Adisaggregated analysis of
empowerment reveals that empowering women in household agricultural decisions
and increasing their access to and control of economic resources are more
promising for improving child nutrition.Overall, the findings suggest that efforts
targeting to improve child nutrition in Ethiopia need to be complemented by
efforts to improve women’s nutrition knowledge and empowerment
Table_1_From individual decisions to team decisions under risk: evidence from a field experiment.pdf
No full textThis paper investigates how individual decisions are aggregated to team decisions under risk in field experiment with a sample of Ethiopian farmers and the team decision-making process behind this aggregation. In an experiment structurally similar to the Gneezy-Potters' risk game, subjects make decisions first individually and then jointly with a random anonymous partner. In the aggregate, teams make higher allocation into the risky asset compared to the average of individual decisions. However, teams are neither polarizing nor simply averaging individual preferences. Instead, team decisions are consistent with an outcome of group bargaining and deliberation process based on intensity of individual preferences. But more risk-taking subjects have a stronger influence on team decisions. This influence of more risk-taking members on the group decision is leveraged by their better education levels. Analysis of the team decision-making process reveals several interesting insights. About 54% of the teams do not reach immediate agreement with initial allocations. Both less risk-taking and more risk-taking team members are equally likely to disagree with initial allocations but for different reasons. Teams that disagreed with initial allocations reached final team decisions significantly different from disagreed initial allocations. Less risk-taking subjects are more willing to concede to allocations proposed by more risk-taking subjects to reach at an agreed team decision. Demanding messages in group communications have a stronger effect on outcomes of group decision-making. Finally, teams with greater differences in willingness to take risk among members are more likely to disagree with initial team allocations, take more rounds of deliberations to come to a decision, and make choices further away from the average of individual decisions. Our results permit to better characterize the process of group decision-making beyond differences between individual and group decisions.</p
Consumer nutrition knowledge and dietary behavior in urban Ethiopia: A comprehensive study
No full textThis paper studies the association between nutrition knowledge and consumer dietary behavior using large survey data from 996 respondents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find that health was the most important factor in individuals' food choice. However, most consumers were found to have imperfect understanding of the link between food and health. Especially, the causes and consequences of obesity were poorly understood. A considerable proportion of respondents also endorsed harmful food taboos. We found that nutrition knowledge was positively associated with more diversified diets and healthy eating attitudes and practices. Individuals with higher levels of nutrition knowledge were also more likely to reject harmful food taboos
Access to credit and heterogeneous effects on agricultural technology adoption: Evidence from large rural surveys in Ethiopia
Get PDFConsumer Nutrition Knowledge and Dietary Behavior in Urban Ethiopia : A Comprehensive Study
No full textThis paper studies the association between nutrition knowledge and consumer dietary behavior using large survey data from 996 respondents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find that health was the most important factor in individuals’ food choice. However, most consumers were found to have imperfect understanding of the link between food and health. Especially, the causes and consequences of obesity were poorly understood. A considerable proportion of respondents also endorsed harmful food taboos. We found that nutrition knowledge was positively associated with more diversified diets and healthy eating attitudes and practices. Individuals with higher levels of nutrition knowledge were also more likely to reject harmful food taboos
Access to credit and heterogeneous effects on agricultural technology adoption: Evidence from large rural surveys in Ethiopia
No full textModern agricultural technologies hold huge potential for increasing productivity and reducing poverty in developing countries. However, adoption levels of these technologies have remained disappointingly low in Africa. This paper analyzes the effect of access to credit on the likelihood of adoption and use intensity of chemical fertilizers using data from large rural surveys in Ethiopia. Using a heteroscedasticity-based identification strategy to address the endogenous nature of access to credit, we find that access to credit has significant positive effects on adoption and intensity of use of chemical fertilizers. However, important heterogeneities are observed. Credit obtained from formal sources is more important for the intensity of use than for the decision to adopt chemical fertilizers. Credit taken with the primary purpose of financing agricultural inputs is more likely to promote adoption of chemical fertilizers than credit taken per se. Furthermore, reported credit effects are larger when estimated against the sample of credit-constrained non-users as compared with the pool of the whole sample of credit non-users. The results remain robust to several sensitivity analyses. Our results yield useful implications for the design, promotion, and targeting of credit services to leverage their effect on adoption of agricultural technologies
Farmers’ heterogeneous preferences for traits of improved varieties: Informing demand-oriented crop breeding in Tanzania
No full textThis study uses choice experiment data from a random sample of 1299 Tanzanian farmers to analyze preferences for traits of groundnut varieties, trade-offs in the valuation of attributes, and heterogeneity in preferences. Groundnut farmers have strong preferences for varieties that are high-yielding, tolerant to environmental stresses, early-maturing, red-colored, and fetching high sale prices in grain markets. Farmers are willing to pay the highest premium for high-yielding and tolerance attributes. Further, a latent class analysis identifies considerable heterogeneity in farmers’ trait preferences. A specific distinction is between consumption-oriented and market-oriented farmer classes. The results have important implications for demand-driven variety development and targeted dissemination of improved varieties. Breeding programs need to consider the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and weigh the potential market size before scarce resources are committed to improving an attribute. The results highlight that trait-based promotion and marketing of varieties may offer an effective strategy to promote improved varieties
An enabling environment for the national flour blending policy: A food systems analysis
No full textA national flour blending policy is about to be implemented in Kenya. This requires maize flour (the country’s main staple) to be blended with at least 10 percent of either one or a composite of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet.1 The blending ratio is expected to increase gradually, with the goal of ultimately reaching 30 percent. The policy envisages achieving several goals. The first is to improve the nutritional quality of maize flour: sorghum and millet (and other candidate blending crops) have micronutrient characteristics that are absent in maize. The second is to promote more climate-tolerant crops and technologies: sorghum and millet can be grown in less favorable arid and semiarid lands (ASALs), in the very conditions that many farmers face in Kenya. This is particularly important given that maize is more susceptible than other staple crops to climate change. The third is to reduce the country’s overreliance on imported maize and concerns about its food sovereignty.PRIFPRI4; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for allDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG); Transformation Strategie
