Opportunities And Challenges For Community Involvement In Public Service Provision In Rural Guatemala

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Opportunities and Challenges for Community Involvement in Public Service Provision in Rural Guatemala

Author : Johanna Speer
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 18 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Opportunities and Challenges for Community Involvement in Public Service Provision in Rural Guatemala by : Johanna Speer

Download or read book Opportunities and Challenges for Community Involvement in Public Service Provision in Rural Guatemala written by Johanna Speer and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-11 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of the research summarized in this paper is to provide policy-relevant knowledge on the governance of rural services in Guatemala and thus to contribute to improving the provision of services that are essential for agricultural and rural development. Almost 10 years ago, the Guatemalan government decided to strengthen decentralization and community participation to improve the quality of public services, as well as access to these services for the poor, especially in rural areas. Based on quantitative and qualitative primary data, we examine how services are actually provided today and how community preferences and participation affect service provision in rural Guatemala. Our main finding is that the provision of formally decentralized services by local governments is incomplete. As a result, many rural communities continue to lack access to services, and some of them engage in supplying these services themselves. However, communities do not consider themselves to be more effective at service provision and would therefore prefer to be served by the government. Moreover, we find that community participation in the planning and evaluation of services has a positive impact on the responsiveness of the local governments service provision. However, the effectiveness of community participation varies greatly among the examined cases, with several participatory governance bodies not functioning properly due to low education levels, poverty, and weak civil-society organization.

Agricultural Trade

Author : David Laborde
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Agricultural Trade by : David Laborde

Download or read book Agricultural Trade written by David Laborde and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we provide an overview of the agricultural trade negotiations within the current World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations and we show that including agriculture in the Doha Development Agenda talks is important both economically and politically, although the political resistance to reform is particularly strong in this sector. While agriculture accounts for less than 10 percent of merchandise trade, high and variable agricultural distortions appear to cause the majority of the cost of distortions to global merchandise trade. Within agriculture, most of the costs appear to arise from trade barriers levied on imports, since these barriers tend to be high, variable across time and over products, and levied by a wide range of countries. The negotiations face a need for balance between discipline in reducing tariffshence creating the market access gains that are central to the negotiationsand flexibility in managing political pressures. While the approach of providing flexibility on a certain percentage of tariff lines is seriously flawed, the proposed modalities still appear to provide worthwhile market access. Better ways appear to be needed to deal with developing countries concerns about food price volatility while reducing the collective-action problems resulting from price insulation.

A Regional Computable General Equilibrium Model for Honduras

Author : Samuel Morley
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis A Regional Computable General Equilibrium Model for Honduras by : Samuel Morley

Download or read book A Regional Computable General Equilibrium Model for Honduras written by Samuel Morley and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Exchange Rate Policy and Devaluation in Malawi

Author : Karl Pauw
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Exchange Rate Policy and Devaluation in Malawi by : Karl Pauw

Download or read book Exchange Rate Policy and Devaluation in Malawi written by Karl Pauw and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Malawian economy has in recent months been plagued by a severe foreign exchange crisis, fueled in part by a steadily rising import bill, sharp successive declines in tobacco export prices, the suspension of direct government budget support from several development partners in 2011, and an all-time low in international investor confidence. Up until the regime change in April 2012, the government resisted calls for a devaluation, which at the time resulted in a thriving parallel foreign exchange market. At its peak, the Malawi kwacha was trading at a premium of up to 100 percent in this secondary market. Economic theory shows that such a situation has adverse implications for an economy in terms of the balance-of-payments adjustment process and income distribution in the economy. Those with access to foreign exchange at the official rate are able to extract rents by selling foreign currency or imported goods at inflated prices. Imports sold domestically are then often valued at the parallel exchange rate rather than the official rate, with the parallel market rate serving as the only adjustment mechanism through which equilibrium can be restored in the balance of payments. This has a significant impact on domestic inflation to the detriment of consumers, while those with preferential access to foreign exchange at the official rate capture large rents. A simulation exercise using an economywide model for Malawi considers how the economy responds to different types of foreign exchange shocks under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. While the foreign exchange crisis in itself has severe negative implications for the economy, our results suggest that the economy responds much better to these types of shocks under a flexible exchange rate regime (that is, devaluations or a free-floating currency). Our main simulation shows that under the latter policy, gross domestic product growth, although negative, is 1.5 percentage points higher than under a fixed exchange rate policy. Similarly, poverty is 6.9 percentage points lower. A relaxation of the exchange rate policy, however, is only part of the solution; in the longer run, good governance and sound macroeconomic policy that is conducive to growth are needed to address the underlying structural problems in the economy that also contribute to foreign exchange shortages.

A Partial Equilibrium Model of the Malawi Maize Commodity Market

Author : Mariam A. T. J. Mapila
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis A Partial Equilibrium Model of the Malawi Maize Commodity Market by : Mariam A. T. J. Mapila

Download or read book A Partial Equilibrium Model of the Malawi Maize Commodity Market written by Mariam A. T. J. Mapila and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a model of the Malawi maize commodity market that is developed for use as a policy analysis tool. The model captures national and local maize market dynamics and the linkages existing within the maize market in the country. This research has been undertaken in order to provide policy makers with a robust tool which can be used to simulate the impact of policy changes on markets and households. Such a tool ensures the availability of evidence for informing food and agricultural policies. The model is a multiequation partial equilibrium model of the national maize market in Malawi. It is developed and linked in a top-down unidirectional manner to the local maize economy via a price linkage equation. A nonbehavioral arithmetic microaccounting approach is used to estimate rural household incomes that are linked to the local economy, through which macroeconomic-level maize price changes transmit. The model can be used as a tool for analyzing the impacts of macroeconomic and agricultural policy changes on the maize industry as well as on rural households that rely on maize. The novelty of the model is that it takes into account the interrelationships between farm/household, local-economy, and national maize market prices, as well as economic theory and existing empirical evidence, to build a framework that is capable of linking to the macroeconomy rural subsistence households that are traditionally deemed to have few or no backward and forward linkages.

Agricultural Mechanization in Ghana

Author : Nazaire Houssou
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 24 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Agricultural Mechanization in Ghana by : Nazaire Houssou

Download or read book Agricultural Mechanization in Ghana written by Nazaire Houssou and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2007, the government of Ghana has been providing subsidized agricultural machines to private enterprises established as Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprise Centers (AMSEC) to scale up tractor-hire services to smallholder farmers. Although farmers demand for mechanization has increased in recent years, most of this demand concentrates on land preparation (plowing) service. Using the firm investment model and recent data, this paper quantitatively assesses whether AMSEC as a private enterprise is a viable business model attractive to private investors. Even though the intention of the government is to promote private sector-led mechanization, findings suggest that the AMSEC model is unlikely to be a profitable business model attractive to private investors even with the current level of subsidy. The low tractor utilization rate as a result of low operational scale is the most important constraint to the intertemporal profitability of tractor-hire services. Our findings further support the argument of Pingali, Bigot, and Binswanger (1987), who indicated that mechanization service centers supported through governments heavy subsidy are not a policy option anywhere in the world, even in the current situation in Ghana. Although the tractor rental service market is a proper way of mechanizing agriculture in a smallholder-dominated agricultural economy such as Ghana, this paper concludes that the development of such a market depends crucially on a number of factors, including increased tractor use through migration across the two very different rainfall zones (north and south), increased tractor use through multiple tasks, and use of low-cost tractors. The government can play an important role in facilitating the development of a tractor service market; however, the successful development of such a market depends on the incentive and innovation of the private sector, including farmers who want to own tractors as part of their business portfolio, traders who know how to bring in affordable tractors and expand the market, and manufacturers in exporting countries who want to seek a long-term potential market opportunity in Ghana and in other west African countries.

Understanding the Role of Research in the Evolution of Fertilizer Policies in Malawi

Author : Michael Johnson
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding the Role of Research in the Evolution of Fertilizer Policies in Malawi by : Michael Johnson

Download or read book Understanding the Role of Research in the Evolution of Fertilizer Policies in Malawi written by Michael Johnson and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the role of research in agricultural policy making in Malawi at a time when the Africa Union and the New Partnership for Africas Development have been seeking to promote greater evidenced-based decision making in agriculture. Drawing on both theory and actual past experiences documented in the literature, results are intended to improve our understanding of the extent to which research has played any role in influencing policy change in Malawi. This is done in the context of the evolution of the countrys fertilizer subsidy policies. Results point to some general lessons. First, strengthening the Ministry of Agricultures capacity for policy analysis and becoming more proactive in the policy process proved critical in the earlier years of Malawis long history of fertilizer subsidies. Second, the governments experience of bargaining with donors may have actually strengthened its own ability to position and assert its legitimacy in shaping policies. Third, while research may have played a historically marginal role, researchers have been able to influence policy choices whenever a window of opportunity arose for technical inputsuch as at times of crisis. However, researchers would also benefit from engaging more with the policy debates and policymaking process. Finally, while the paper draws on existing theoretical frameworks to understand the role of research in the policy process more generally, a better framework still needs to be developed in describing the standard experiences and realities of the African agricultural policy landscape.

Assessing the effectiveness of multistakeholder platforms

Author : Thaddée Badibanga
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Assessing the effectiveness of multistakeholder platforms by : Thaddée Badibanga

Download or read book Assessing the effectiveness of multistakeholder platforms written by Thaddée Badibanga and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the effectiveness of local-level (territory) multistakeholder platforms using data from 55 CARGs in 23 randomly selected territories in three provinces (Bandundu, Bas-Congo, and Kinshasa) of the DRC. The first CARG was established in 2008, and the survey was conducted three years later, from August to October 2011.

The Impact of Oportunidades on Human Capital and Income Distribution

Author : Dario Debowicz
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 44 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Impact of Oportunidades on Human Capital and Income Distribution by : Dario Debowicz

Download or read book The Impact of Oportunidades on Human Capital and Income Distribution written by Dario Debowicz and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to inform social policy in Mexico, this paper analyzes the effects of a major social program on school attendance and household income distribution, accounting for its partial and general equilibrium effects. Linking a microeconometric simulation model and a general equilibrium model in a bidirectional way, the paper explicitly takes spillover effects of the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program into account. Our results suggest that partial equilibrium analysis alone may underestimate the distributional effects of the program. Extending the coverage of the program leads to a significant increase in school attendance, which reduces labor supply and increases the equilibrium wages of the children who remain at work. This general equilibrium effect indirectly reduces income inequality and poverty at the national level.

Filling the learning gap in program implementation using participatory monitoring and evaluation

Author : Elias Zerfu
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 44 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Filling the learning gap in program implementation using participatory monitoring and evaluation by : Elias Zerfu

Download or read book Filling the learning gap in program implementation using participatory monitoring and evaluation written by Elias Zerfu and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is motivated by the idea that even though participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is widely accepted as a tool to manage development programs to be effective, its application is widely constrained by its high start-up resource requirements in terms of both finance and time. However, this paper argues that after the initial investment is made, the payback from using PM&E is much higher both in terms of grassroots-level learning, empowerment, and capacity building and in terms of higher-level strategic decision making which enhances impact. This is demonstrated using field-level experience of implementing PM&E in farmer field schools (FFSs) under the Agricultural Services Support Program and Agricultural Sector Development ProgramLivestock (ASSP/ASDP-L) program in Zanzibar, Tanzania. After describing the major steps followed in designing and implementing a PM&E for FFSs, the major lessons learned and challenges faced in the process are discussed. The study found out that PM&E has enabled the tracking of technology uptake and reasons behind adoption and nonadoption of technologies through detailed data collection. This informed and improved decision making at a higher level to design feasible methods to scale up adoption at other FFSs and to devise solutions for nonadoption. The need for incentives to undertake PM&E was found to be one of the major challenges of implementation, among others.

Typology of Farm Households and Irrigation Systems

Author : Hiroyuki Takeshima
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Typology of Farm Households and Irrigation Systems by : Hiroyuki Takeshima

Download or read book Typology of Farm Households and Irrigation Systems written by Hiroyuki Takeshima and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irrigation is considered an important factor for agriculture and food security. Knowledge gaps, however, still exist with regard to how farmers in Africa south of Sahara, including Nigeria, are using irrigation. Given the diverse agroecological and socioeconomic environment in countries like Nigeria, understanding the diverse patterns of irrigation use and their associations with household characteristics is important in designing how irrigation can contribute to the agricultural transformation. This report summarizes the typology of farm households and irrigators in Nigeria. We apply a cluster analysis method to the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS)Integrated Survey on Agriculture data and various secondary data. We also compare the costs and inputs used across different irrigation crops, as reported in Nigeria. Findings indicate that the three major irrigation systems in Nigeria are (1) labor-intensive diverted stream irrigation of rice, (2) supplementary irrigation of coarse grains and legumes using groundwater, and (3) dry season irrigation of vegetables. Each crop is irrigated during a specific season and using a specific water source and irrigation system. Farmers choice of irrigation system tends to depend on many factors. For example, in the South, tractorization is often a necessary precondition for rice irrigation. In the North, intensive irrigation of rice and vegetables may make sense only if labor is cheap, whereas irrigation of sorghum and legumes is supplementary and may not affect farm households behaviors. Although more rigorous studies are needed in the future, observed patterns of irrigation use in Nigeria indicate that the policies aiming to raise agricultural productivity and to develop the value chains of key crops may need to be based on an understanding of why irrigation is used in specific ways in different systems and of what the key constraints in scaling up such systems in other locations are.

Population Density, Migration, and the Returns to Human Capital and Land

Author : Yanyan Liu
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 28 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Population Density, Migration, and the Returns to Human Capital and Land by : Yanyan Liu

Download or read book Population Density, Migration, and the Returns to Human Capital and Land written by Yanyan Liu and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth on in the general equilibrium setting, we examine the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household outcomes using panel data from Indonesia. More specifically we explicitly highlight the importance of migration to urban sectors in the analysis. Empirical results show that human capital in the household determines the effect of increased population density on per capita household consumption expenditure. The effect of population density is positive if the average educational attainment is high (above junior high school), while it is negative otherwise. On the other hand, farmers with larger holdings maintain their advantage in farming regardless of population density. The paper concludes with some potential lessons for African countries from Indonesias more successful rural development experiences.

Reverse-Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency

Author : Hosaena Ghebru Hagos
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Reverse-Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency by : Hosaena Ghebru Hagos

Download or read book Reverse-Share-Tenancy and Marshallian Inefficiency written by Hosaena Ghebru Hagos and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-05-17 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there are ample empirical studies that claim the potential disincentive effects of sharecropping arrangements, the existing literature is shallow in explaining why share tenancy contracts are prevalent and diffusing in many developing countries. Using a unique tenant-landlord matched dataset from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, we are able to show how the tenants strategic response to the varying economic and tenure-security status of the landlords can explain sharecroppers productivity differentials. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use tenantlandlord matched data that accounts for both the supply (landlord) and demand (tenant) side characteristics in analyzing sharecroppers level of effort and productivity. The study reveals that sharecroppers yields are significantly lower on plots leased from landlords who are non-kin, who are female, who have lower income-generating opportunity, and who are tenure insecure than on plots leased from landlords with the opposite characteristics. While, on aggregate, the results show no significant efficiency loss on kin-operated sharecropped plots, more decomposed analyses indicate strong evidence of Marshallian inefficiency on kin-operated plots leased from landlords with weaker bargaining power and higher tenure insecurity. This study thus shows how failure to control for the heterogeneity of landowners characteristics can explain the lack of clarity in the existing empirical literature on the extent of moral hazard problems in sharecropping contracts.

Group Lending with Heterogeneous Types

Author : Li Gan
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 44 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Group Lending with Heterogeneous Types by : Li Gan

Download or read book Group Lending with Heterogeneous Types written by Li Gan and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Group lending has been widely adopted in the past thirty years by many microfinance institutions as a means to mitigate information asymmetries when delivering credit to the poor. This paper proposes an empirical method to address the potential omitted-variable problem resulting from unobserved group types when modeling the repayment behavior of group members. We estimate the model using a rich dataset from a group-lending program in India. The estimation results support our model specification and show the advantages of relying on a type-varying method when analyzing the probability of default of group members. In particular, our model helps to better understand the factors driving repayment behavior, which may differ across group types, and shows a higher predictive power than standard single-agent choice models.

2019 Global food policy report

Author : International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 : 0896293505
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis 2019 Global food policy report by : International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Download or read book 2019 Global food policy report written by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IFPRI’s flagship report reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2018, and considers challenges and opportunities for 2019. This year’s Global Food Policy Report highlights the urgency of rural revitalization to address a growing crisis in rural areas. Rural people around the world continue to struggle with food insecurity, persistent poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation. Policies, institutions, and investments that take advantage of new opportunities and technologies, increase access to basic services, create more and better rural jobs, foster gender equality, and restore the environment can make rural areas vibrant and healthy places to live and work. Drawing on recent findings, IFPRI researchers and other distinguished food policy experts consider critical aspects of rural revitalization.

The Impact of Irrigation on Nutrition, Health, and Gender

Author : Laia Domenech
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 28 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Impact of Irrigation on Nutrition, Health, and Gender by : Laia Domenech

Download or read book The Impact of Irrigation on Nutrition, Health, and Gender written by Laia Domenech and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) is still largely rainfed. SSA also exhibits the lowest crop yields for major staples in the world, largely due to low use of irrigation and fertilizer. Rainfed agriculture poses growing production risks with increased climate variability and change. At the same time, smallholder irrigation in the region developed rapidly over the past decade, albeit starting from very low levels. In addition to largely demand-driven irrigation development by smallholders, there is a significant push by donors for large-scale irrigation development, as well as some push for smallholder irrigation. There has also been a long-standing debate about whether irrigation in SSA should be large scale or small scale to achieve its potential. However, given the potentially high rewards, but also high possibility of failure, the assessment of irrigation potential must go beyond large scale versus small scale to integrate concerns regarding environmental sustainability, resource use efficiency, nutrition and health impacts, and womens empowerment. The hypothesis underlying this review paper is that how irrigation gets deployed in SSA will be decisive not only for environmental sustainability (such as deciding remaining forest cover in the region) and poverty reduction, but also for health, nutrition, and gender outcomes in the region. The focus of this paper is on the health, nutrition, and gender linkage. We find that to date, few studies have analyzed the impact of irrigation interventions on nutrition, health, and womens empowerment, despite the large potential of irrigation to affect these important variables. Irrigation interventions may have differential effects on different members in the household and in the community, such as irrigators, non-irrigators, children, and women. Measuring and understanding such differences, followed by improving design and implementation to maximize gender, health, and nutrition outcomes, could transform irrigation programs from focusing solely on increased food production toward becoming an integral component of poverty-reduction strategies.

Spillover Effects of Targeted Subsidies

Author : Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Spillover Effects of Targeted Subsidies by : Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie

Download or read book Spillover Effects of Targeted Subsidies written by Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though there is increasing evidence of the availability and potential of new agricultural technologies in Africa south of the Sahara, effective demand for them is still low. A recent refocus on increasing farmers use of modern technologies such as improved seed and chemical fertilizer has led to a resurgence of input subsidies for these products in many developing countries. One popular mechanism currently in use is input vouchers. Targeted input vouchers are intended to simultaneously improve the targeting of subsidies and develop demand in private markets. While there is growing evidence of the impact of targeted subsidies on private input demand, as far as we are aware no empirical studies have examined the spillover effects of targeted subsidies for just one input on the use of other complementary inputs with which there is low substitutability. Consequently, this study begins to fill this gap by exploring the effect of increasing access to subsidized fertilizer on farmers use of improved seed in Nigeria. Using a control function approach within a limited dependent variable framework, we explore the effect of receiving subsidized fertilizer on a farmers likelihood of using improved seed. The study finds evidence that increased access to subsidized fertilizer increased the likelihood of farmers using improved seed in Kano, Nigeria. This indicates that farmers are re-optimizing their use of other inputs in response to increasing availability of one input. This complicates the ability to isolate the returns to any one input when evaluating programs targeted at just one input. Our results were robust to various model specifications and indicate that there is a clear link between farmers use of improved seed and fertilizer in Kano, which could be leveraged in the development of input subsidy programs across Africa south of the Sahara.