Upload 68 IFPRI-matched files to data/part_2

data/part_2/0052908680.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fe848fd1b720c49c69dacb5c7554284b","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/7ece631b-4bb6-4ca6-9bd4-29f71bead29d/retrieve","description":"The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.","id":"1143795706"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"2306ab4e-ce5d-47ee-a561-af033427e282","pagecount":"2","content":"Under-5 stunting, 2012 a Under-5 wasting, 2012 b Under-5 overweight, 2012 a WRA anemia, 2011 b EBF a On course, good progress On course Off course, no progress Off course NA Sources: a Definitions of progress developed by GNR's Independent Expert Group with guidance from WHO/UNICEF; b WHO 2014. Notes: Currently it is only possible to determine whether a country is on or off course for five of the six WHA targets. The year refers to the most recent data available; on/off-course calculation is based on trend data. WRA = women of reproductive age. EBF = exclusive breastfeeding. NA = not available.INCOME INEQUALITY Gini index score* Gini index rank † Year 48 122 2012 Source: World Bank 2015. Notes: *0 = perfect equality, 100 = perfect inequality. † The countries with a Gini index are ranked from most equal (#1) to most unequal (#145).","tokenCount":"144","images":[],"tables":["1143795706_1_1.json","1143795706_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/0290041023.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"daa85d05f03453e49cb9b5ec5fec0594","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/86a1a25d-5dfb-4e94-8480-6c195d345041/retrieve","description":"Most food retail prices in September 2021 were found to be substantially higher than in September 2020. Retail prices of the cheapest variety of rice–by far the most important staple in Myanmar–have risen by 8 percent, on average. The relatively more expensive but widely locally consumed rice (pawsan) increased by 17 percent. Relative to September 2020, national-level food price inflation in September 2021 stood at 11 percent. Inflation was highest in the Hills and Mountains areas (15 percent). Households in the poorest quintile were affected by food price inflation more than those in the richest while rural areas (12 percent) were exposed to almost twice the level of food inflation compared to urban areas (6 percent). Food availability is seemingly not a challenge at the national level in September 2021. Food vendors report that availability of most commodities is comparable to the same period in a normal year. However, there are increasing trade frictions with higher transportation costs and more frequent mobility issues due to lockdowns and insecurity problems. COVID-19 prevention measures were widely practiced by market vendors in 2020. While they had been abandoned by a substantial share of vendors surveyed in the middle of the year, these prevention measures were again widely adhered to in September 2021.","id":"-1070815065"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"5bbf210e-b7e5-4ff2-9acd-1de6441a82c0","pagecount":"8","content":"Food vendors -September 2021 survey round Key findings ▪ Most food retail prices in September 2021 were higher than in September 2020. Retail prices of the cheapest variety of rice-by far the most important staple in Myanmar-have risen by 8 percent, on average. The relatively more expensive but widely locally consumed rice (Pawsan) increased by 17 percent.▪ Relative to September 2020, national-level food price inflation in September 2021 stood at 11 percent. Inflation was highest in the Hills and Mountains areas (15 percent). Households in the poorest quintile were affected by food price inflation more than those in the richest while rural areas (12 percent) were exposed to almost twice the level of food inflation compared to urban areas (6 percent).▪ Food availability is seemingly not a challenge at the national level in September 2021. Food vendors report that availability of most commodities is comparable to the same period in a normal year. However, there are increasing trade frictions with higher transportation costs and more frequent mobility issues due to lockdowns and insecurity problems.• COVID-19 prevention measures were widely practiced by market vendors in 2020. While they had been abandoned by a substantial share of vendors surveyed in the middle of the year, these prevention measures were again widely adhered to in September 2021.This Research Note presents the results from nine rounds of a telephone survey with food vendors conducted in rural and urban zones throughout Myanmar and focuses on the results from the latest round completed in September 2021. The purpose of the survey is to provide data and insights to interested stakeholders in order that they better understand the effects of shocks related to COVID-19 and the ongoing political crisis on Myanmar's food markets. In particular, the note explores COVID-19 prevention measures, changes in shopping behavior, difficulties in food vendor operations due to the COVID-19 and political crises, changes in availability and prices of foods, and perceived changes in consumption.We conducted nine rounds of food vendor phone surveys between June/July 2020 and September 2021. The areas in which the surveyed food vendors operate are shown in Figure 1. The sample has changed slightly over survey rounds. In the most recent round, almost 200 food vendors were interviewed (Table 1). Food vendors in urban areas make up 15 percent of the sample, with the remaining 85 percent in rural areas.The vendors selected for the survey sample were those that are well informed on food markets overall; they deal regularly with food traders such as suppliers and wholesalers, are highly numerate, and are knowledgeable about food prices. Table 1 shows the basic characteristics of the food vendors in our sample. More than half of the vendors are women, their average age is 42 years, and almost all vendors operate out of their own general stores. We asked food vendors about the COVID-19 prevention measures that had been implemented in the village or township wet market where the vendor operated and compared their responses to the situations in December 2020 and other periods in 2021 (Table 2).  We draw the following takeaways:• Mask wearing was universally mandated and widely practiced at the end of 2020. However, by May 2021 a substantial share of vendors and customers in wet markets had abandoned these practices. Food vendors stated that only 58 and 55 percent of vendors and customers, respectively, were mandated to wear masks in May 2021. Yet, in the last two months, we note a significant improvement in these practices with 95 percent of both vendors and customers mandated to wear masks.• Additional efforts-spraying chemicals throughout wet markets, operating handwashing stations, and proper distancing between vendors-were implemented by 87, 92, and 85 percent of vendors, respectively, in December 2020. These shares had declined to 34, 46, and 15 percent, respectively, in May 2021 but then increased to 75, 81, and 55 percent, respectively, in September 2021, likely driven by high recent incident rates of COVID-19 and the fear of being infected. Despite the recent increases, these shares are still below 2020 levels.We asked a series of high-level questions about factors that may have affected food vendors' businesses in the last month (Table 3). Only 1 percent of food vendors indicated that recent events had not affected their business. Twothirds of vendors reported that they had to pay higher prices than normal, and 17 percent reported that suppliers from outside the village had difficulties supplying them with products while almost 30 percent indicated problems with supply from outside the village. Supply challenges may be a result of lockdowns and increased transportations costs. Additionally, almost 26 percent reported that clients were visiting their shop less often.To investigate the important changes in fuel and transportation costs over the last nine months, food vendors were further asked about fuel costs as well as transportation costs for people traveling from their locality to Yangon at the time of the survey in September 2021. Recall questions were also asked about the situation in June 2021 and January 2021. Respondents report substantial increases across the board in both fuel and transportation costs. As displayed in the left panel of Figure 2, the average price of petrol at the national level increased by 50 percent between January 2021 and September 2021, and price increases were similar in all agri-ecological regions. For transportation costs (shown on the right panel), we note an average increase of 72 percent, comparing September 2021 to January 2021, at the national level. Increases are particularly high for the more remote regions (i.e., the Hills and Mountains zone and the Coastal zone). Compared to nine months earlier, prices in these zones increased by 95 percent and 96 percent, respectively. Major food security concerns among Myanmar households include adverse changes in the availability and prices of products, possibly linked to more limited mobility in the country due to COVID-19 measures and the political crisis. We therefore asked food vendors for their perceptions of changes in the availability of different food products compared to similar periods in previous years.In the September 2021 survey round, there were no major issues with the availability of food products in most markets. Most vendors reported that availability of food products in their village or township was the same as normal (Figure 3). However, there is variation by food group. For onions, 11 percent of vendors reported even greater availability now compared to the same period in a typical year. This suggests that food supply systems have generally been resilient in the current crises. We further asked food vendors to assess how quantities purchased by their consumers in September 2021 had changed compared to normal periods. They reported that the quantities purchased are at normal levels for most food products. The \"same\" category varied between 97 percent for vegetables and 75 percent for pork (Figure 4). The latter products-and animalsourced products in general-seem to have taken the biggest hit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis. This result is consistent with the high-income elasticities of animalsource foods; when incomes decline, these products are consumed less frequently (proportionally more so than the decline in income). This is due in part to animal-source foods being relatively expensive calorie sources despite their high density of micronutrients and high-quality protein. While availability may not have significantly changed, changes in prices may indicate other signs of stress in the food marketing system. In a similar manner as for the availability questions, we asked food vendors to compare prices at the time of the survey to similar periods in a normal year. Overall, a large share of food vendors report increases in the retail prices of most foods, with the largest share indicating increases for rice, chicken, pork, dried fish, and cooking oil (Figure 5).  To compare price differences between different periods, we present average and median prices for major foods in September 2020, July 2021, and September 2021 (Table 4). This analysis indicates overall significant food price increases in September 2021 compared to the situation almost one year earlier. Prices of the cheapest available rice and cooking oil increased by 8 percent and 64 percent, respectively, in September 2021 compared to September 2020. The price of the more expensive and locally preferred rice (Pawsan) increased by 17 percent compared to the same period last year. On the other hand, onions showed an 11 percent price decreases compared to September 2020. Yet, in the short run, price increases between July and September 2021 were most severe for potatoes (17 percent), pulses (13 percent), onions (18 percent) and cooking oil (11 percent). Finally, we calculate overall food price inflation in September 2021 and compare price levels to those gathered from food vendors in the third food vendor survey round conducted in September 2020, in December 2020, the last round before the military takeover, and in the previous survey round in July 2021. To give different weights to these prices to allow an estimate to be made of food price inflation overall, we use average consumption levels from the Myanmar Poverty and Living Condition Survey (MPLCS), a nationally representative sample of households conducted in 2015, for the different food groups listed in Table 4. On top of the national food price inflation levels, we also calculate inflation levels faced by subgroups (urban/rural, four agro-ecological zones, and poverty quintiles), relying on data on their different food consumption patterns from the MPLCS. The estimates of food price inflation are reported in Table 5. These results are imperfect and approximate, since we only use one representative price per food group. We also have no data on processed foods and food consumed away from home. Food price inflation over the 12-month period from September 2020 to September 2021 amounted to 10.9 percent. Urban areas had significantly lower inflation rates than rural areas (6.2 vs. 12.0 percent). The Hills and Mountains areas (14.9 percent) showed substantially higher food inflation than other agri-ecological zones. We further find that food price inflation was higher for households in the poorest quintile (12.5 percent) than for richer households (9.5 percent) indicating that foods eaten by the poor were more affected by price inflation than those eaten by better-off households. Table 5 also illustrates that most food inflation occurred over the last 9 months (i.e., between December 2020 and September 2021) as shown by the relatively high price increases over that period.1 At the national level, the cost of a food basket increased by 10.0 percent between December 2020 and September 2021. The increase was highest between December 2020 and July 2021 but has leveled off since.","tokenCount":"1759","images":["-1070815065_1_1.png","-1070815065_1_2.png","-1070815065_1_3.png","-1070815065_2_1.png","-1070815065_8_1.png"],"tables":["-1070815065_1_1.json","-1070815065_2_1.json","-1070815065_3_1.json","-1070815065_4_1.json","-1070815065_5_1.json","-1070815065_6_1.json","-1070815065_7_1.json","-1070815065_8_1.json"]}

data/part_2/0299347008.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"174eb6eebac63dc3522855613422fa23","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/adca7cec-8b47-4a44-8139-0295e688de7a/retrieve","description":"The long partnership between the Government of Egypt and the International Food Research Institute (IFPRI) began in the late 1970s but became much more active with the launch of IFPRI’s Egypt Strategy Support Program (ESSP) in 2016. Over the years, IFPRI’s research, with support from PIM since 2012, has informed important decisions on Egypt’s key safety net programs, including the food subsidy and the national cash transfer programs. This summarizes some of the most recent outcomes of this work.","id":"-153442631"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"5593e26e-2c35-48f8-9262-89c80edcdb22","pagecount":"4","content":"Food subsidies are central to Egypt's social protection efforts. About 70 million people benefit from the Tamween ration-card system, and 83 million benefit from subsidized baladi bread, a staple for many Egyptians. Together these two programs account for about 6 percent of the government's budget annually. Spending on food subsidies has remained stable and even increased in recent years, despite criticism that the subsidy system contributes to the country's growing fiscal deficit and has not reached those most in need.An IFPRI evaluation carried out in 2015-2016 found that Egypt's food subsidy system increased the risk of children facing the double burden of malnutrition (coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight or obesity) by promoting overconsumption of calorie-dense food; rice, oil, bread, and sugar are the main items subsidized. The presentation of these results to the government in 2017 contributed to reforms to make the subsidy system more nutrition-sensitive, as part of an effort to encourage the production and consumption of healthier foods. In a symposium organized by IFPRI in December 2020, Dr. Habiba Hassan Wassef (National Nutrition Sciences Committee, Academy of Scientific Research and Technology) stated, \"The most important impact of IFPRI is the reform of the food subsidy system and the re-orientation of the social protection system.\" Changes in the targeting modalities of the subsidy system were begun in 2019 but are currently on hold due to COVID-19-related constraints. Supporting Egypt's safety net programs for better nutrition and food security, inclusiveness, and effectivenessAmplifying the impacts of Egypt's national cash transfer program Egypt's first nationwide conditional cash transfer program, Takaful and Karama, was launched by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in 2015, with support from the World Bank. The Takaful (Solidarity) component targets poor households with school-aged children; transfers are conditional on health monitoring and school attendance. The Karama (Dignity) component targets the elderly poor, people with disabilities, and orphans.Three years into the program, IFPRI/PIM researchers conducted an impact evaluation of Takaful and Karama. This evaluation showed increased household consumption among program beneficiaries and reduced probability of a beneficiary household being poor. Recipients spent cash transfers on children's education, including school supplies and school transportation, and on higher quality food, particularly fruits and meat. However, women's decision-making was not increased, and the program's eligibility criteria excluded many of the poorest households, particularly in urban areas. In addition, the evaluation showed that many households found the registration and selection process confusing. These results prompted policymakers to allocate additional funds to the program and make several adjustments to increase its effectiveness in reaching the poor and empowering women.During an online conference held in December 2020, Dr. Nivine El-Kabbag (Ministry of Social Solidarity) described the changes that were inspired by the recommendations of the impact evaluation. Notably, the reach of the program was expanded from about 2 million to 3.8 million households. Coordination with other ministries was enhanced through use of an electronic network (Unified National Registry initiative) for joint targeting of social protection programs. Transparency in the beneficiary selection process was improved through the creation of social accountability committees, and a communication strategy engaged mass media to share information about the program. To address gender inequities, female Takaful beneficiaries were prioritized for inclusion in the new Forsa (Opportunity) program, which focuses on economic empowerment. ","tokenCount":"541","images":["-153442631_2_3.png","-153442631_3_3.png"],"tables":["-153442631_1_1.json","-153442631_2_1.json","-153442631_3_1.json","-153442631_4_1.json"]}

data/part_2/0349972371.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"b86851098bc6d1493c57cb67ff72fcf0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/25ee9875-3393-4e46-8214-30b537ed07ac/retrieve","description":"Financing for water projects, especially for irrigation, has been moving towards collapse in recent years due to declining donor and government funding. Some Indian states have undertaken innovative institutional reforms by setting up financially autonomous corporations to mobilise required funds from the domestic bond market. This analysis of the performance of one such corporation, Karnataka's Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited, indicates that although adequate funds were mobilised, and physical works are on schedule, the new institution did not attempt to enhance overall irrigation performance and to move towards financial sustainability of the irrigation project. This paper describes the background of this institution, its achievements, inadequacies and potential of the innovative efforts made in irrigation financing reforms. -- Authors' Abstract","id":"628292647"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"aa79c83e-0c78-43dd-9f3e-1248dd3b7cda","pagecount":"45","content":"Financing for water projects, especially for irrigation, has been moving towards collapse in recent years due to declining donor and government funding. Some Indian states have undertaken innovative institutional reforms by setting up financially autonomous corporations to mobilise required funds from the domestic bond market. This analysis of the performance of one such corporation, Karnataka's Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited, indicates that although adequate funds were mobilised, and physical works are on schedule, the new institution did not attempt to enhance overall irrigation performance and to move towards financial sustainability of the irrigation project. This paper describes the background of this institution, its achievements, inadequacies and potential of the innovative efforts made in irrigation financing reforms.iii    K.V. Raju,1 Ashok Gulati,2 and Ruth Meinzen-Dick3 Irrigation and domestic water supply projects worldwide face serious underfunding. The World Water Commission (2000) reported that worldwide, additional investment of $100 billion per year is needed to meet needs of irrigation, water supply, and sanitation infrastructure to meet the food and domestic needs of a growing population. At the same time, funding from traditional sources-government budgets and development assistance-is drying up. Alternative financing arrangements are needed even to sustain existing investment in water systems. This is not only a concern of governments, but also of the international community. For example, the World Water Council, the Third World Water Forum and the Global Water Partnership have formed a high-level panel led by M. Michel Camdessus, former General Manager of the International Monetary Fund, to consider solutions to the future global financial needs of the water sector. The panel is to identify innovative approaches to mobilizing resources, as well as how financing arrangements can contribute to better water governance. Yet much of the emphasis in global discussions has been on international financial markets, and particularly the role of multinational corporations in financing water-related infrastructure. Much less attention has been given to the potential of domestic financial markets to provide such funding. Even in developing countries, these may control substantial resources. Since the 1980s, the Indian capital markets have emerged as an important source of funds for corporate units in the private and public sectors. Primary capital mobilization by private sector companies in the form of equity and debt rose from less than Rs 2 billion in 1980 to over Rs 43 billion in 1990-91 and then recorded a quantum jump to over Rs 260 billion by the end of 1994-95 (GOI, 1996; 81). During this period, several state governments have begun to tap into this domestic financial market to finance irrigation development.Canal irrigation financing in India suffers from several inter-related problems: First, the funding for construction of on-going or new canal networks has been shrinking, leading to undue delay in completion of projects, which in turn raises costs and reduces benefits. At the same time, the resources for normal operation and maintenance are also under severe pressure as the cost recovery from canal irrigation is extremely low, and the state budgets are not able to allocate more funds because of the overall fiscal crunch. Furthermore, existing systems do not perform well, which is often attributed to management problems, agency incentives, as well as inadequate maintenance. In turn, the poor performance of many surface irrigation systems makes farmers unwilling to pay more for their water, thus limiting the resources that irrigation systems generate to cover their own costs, leading to further resource shortages and inadequate maintenance. This state of affairs points towards impending financial crisis in Indian canal irrigation.Without urgent steps to reverse this trend, such as through innovative institutional reforms, canal irrigation would remain much below its potential and could be heading for a collapse. This is not the first time that such institutional reform is being proposed. Indeed, the working group on major and medium irrigation projects for India's Eighth Five-Year Plan (1992-97) considered the issue of inadequate funding for projects in the Seventh Plan. Against the spill over liability of Rs 260 billion for major and medium projects that remained uncompleted from previous Plans, the Seventh Plan outlay was only Rs115 billion. To enable the central government to assume a more positive role, in 1988 the Ministry of Water Resources formulated a proposal for establishment of an Irrigation Finance Corporation to provide financial assistance to projects of national importance in the irrigation sector (GOI, 1995). Though this proposal was supported by a large number of states, the planning commission did not approve it. Over the years, the states that had important ongoing projects established autonomous irrigation finance corporations. In south India, Karnataka's Krishna Bhagya Jal Nigam Limited (KBJNL) is one of them.Does KBJNL provide a model for institutional reforms to solve the problems of canal irrigation financing? Can one take the structure and functioning of KBJNL as a model for ensuring efficiency, equity and sustainability of canal irrigation? The theoretical literature suggests that converting government irrigation departments into financially autonomous irrigation agencies (FAIA) can contribute to these objectives. However, the extent to which this type of reform has been effective in practice also needs to be examined. This paper provides an in depth evaluation of KBJNL, particularly its record in addressing the critical problems of canal irrigation financing and management. In the following section we discuss the potential of such reforms. We then turn to the origin of KBJNL, its accomplishments and weaknesses, and conclude with broader recommendations.While conventional government and multilateral financing for irrigation is decreasing, the capital and debt markets provide an important alternative source of funding. The debt markets trade bonds of public sector undertakings and corporate debentures. In India, major investors in these bonds are institutions, due to the investment pattern specified by the Indian government. 4 There are prospects for such financing to become a major source of funding in the near future, but there are certain conditions to be met:• Only companies and corporations can issue papers, which can be traded in these markets to raise funding. State-issued papers are subject to the overall ceiling on state borrowing.• The bonds must be professionally designed and issued, with terms, interests, and payments modes, which attract the specific market segment to which a particular issue is addressed. 4 The Indian government specifies a pattern of investment to be followed by non-government institutions to invest their provident funds, superannuation funds, and gratuity funds. • The issuing companies or corporations must have the capacity to generate enough cash flow to service the bonds, which is constrained by the very low levels of water charges at present.But the potential of setting up financially autonomous irrigation agencies goes beyond raising funds. A review of irrigation financing in several countries (Small et   al.1989) identified FAIAs as a potentially powerful reform for improving irrigation performance. Small and Carruthers (1991) argue that this approach is desirable from the efficiency perspective because a policy of user fees implemented by a FAIA creates the potential for improvements, both in the operation and maintenance of existing irrigation facilities and in the process by which investments decisions are made.The creation of FAIA can be an effective means for: a) introducing administrative and financial autonomy; b) increasing accountability; c) facilitating contacts with, and contracting out to farmers, NGOs and private firms; d) introducing less politicized procedures to set and collect water charges; and e) mobilizing private sector funds. The key concept here is self-financing. After a pre-defined nascent period, such corporations must provide for O&M and recurrent expenditure out of their own revenues, even if capital expenditures may still continue to be funded by the state. They must have both the mandate and the authority to set water charges at a level adequate to cover their expenses and service their debts. Once such self-financing has been established and recourse to treasury funding for recurrent and O&M expenditure cut off, they can also sell debt in the bond market (World Bank, 1997a: 26).The potential for improvements in O&M stems in part from the greater control that a FAIA can have over its budget. But the key to attain higher efficiency under FAIA lies in linking incentives of the agency staff with their performance in satisfying the demands of end users. Having the income of these FAIAs dependent on the revenue they themselves collect for irrigation service would provide incentive for more regular and stricter collection of revenues from user groups. Because users withholding payment in response to poor service will then have a direct impact on agency budgets (including salaries), it also creates incentives for better irrigation service to facilitate fee payment. Financial autonomy thus provides a functional link between collection of revenue from users of irrigation water and more effective irrigation performance by suppliers of water, as confirmed by Svendsen's   (1991) study of the reforms of the National Irrigation Agency (NIA) in the Philippines.Further, with financial autonomy, incentives are created to increase agency income, and to reduce costs.Taken together, these factors should help establish a relationship of mutual dependence between the supply agency (i.e. irrigation department) and the farmer usergroup. The irrigation agency provides an essential service to farmers, i.e. irrigation water in the quantity and quality desired by the user, while users, in turn, provide the agency with the financial resources necessary for its existence and operation. This mutual dependence can result in greatly expanded potential for efficient irrigation management (Gulati, Svendsen, and Choudhury 1994: A-78). It is the possibility of creating this critical link that distinguishes the FAIA from the typical irrigation department approach. To be an effective conditions ever since its inception in 1975. 5 The 1994 finance committee suggested the corporation should be wound up (Kolavalli and Raju, 1995; Shah et al., 1995). 5 The corporation has accumulated a loss of over Rs 700 million and depends on the government for large subsidies to continue its operations. It faces constraints on what it can charge for its services and cost escalation add to the deficit every year. Nearly 20% of the deep tubewells that were not being adequately utilized have been closed down; the corporation began leasing out the tubewells to users in 1987 to reduce costs. It had a staggering wage bill of Rs 220 million for a staff of 6400, while its annual gross income was only Rs 60 million.Four Indian states (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh) have now set up corporations, or Nigams, that focus on mobilizing funds for surface irrigation. All four states started their corporations mainly to overcome the reduced budgetary allocations for the irrigation sector. These corporations were broadly established on the lines of public sector companies, to mobilise funds. 6 Emphasis was on mobilising funds from institutions like commercial banks, cooperative banks, urban and rural cooperatives, and financial institutions, directly or indirectly regulated by or linked to government, rather than individuals.However, it is easy to underestimate the dangers of introducing commercial principles in a situation where the forces of competition don't work. The Expert group on Commercialisation of Infrastructure (India, 1996) examined the potential to raise finances from markets and improve operational efficiency by introducing some commercial principles in infrastructure projects, but it also warns that despite the new possibilities of competition, most infrastructure services retain very strong monopolistic elements. The state continues to be responsible for providing appropriate regulatory frameworks, which assist investors and infrastructure entities on the one hand and protect consumers from monopolistic exploitation on the other. The commercialization of infrastructure and unbundling also lead to a considerable increase in transaction costs which have to be mitigated through transparent and appropriate regulation (GOI, 1996; 2). In a free market environment, costs of production/service are kept low by competition. But canal irrigation is more of a natural monopoly, and unless its costs are kept under tight control and its 6 The ordinance and the Act issued to establish these corporations indicate the broad intentions.operations made transparent, it runs the danger of passing on the high costs to the users of water (Herath and Gulati, 2002). Indeed, the corporate arrangement provides less accountability and transparency than for government expenditures. The price for faster turnaround in expenditure appears to be a reduction in crosschecks. Thus, there is need for an independent regulatory body such as an IRCCI as a complement to financially autonomous agencies, to ensure transparency in the operations of such an agency. These reforms should have consumer as their priority and social interests and not the means or intermediate goals such as privatization, or bringing about independent regulation. Many contradictions which regulators today face would not exist had the consumer been given primacy (Morris, 2001).In such a context, setting up some form of independent regulatory commission is needed to bring transparency in the operations of FAIA, especially if it is to work on commercial lines, and to ensure that pricing of water is distanced from political interference.FAIA represents a move towards bringing some elements of corporate culture in irrigation financing. One thinks of charging the users of water to recover all costs of O&M at least, and if possible even capital costs. A regulatory body that creates transparency is essential to keep costs down and prevent exploitation of water users by the corporation. This same transparency can also help distance pricing from political interference. When the current level water tariff is so low that even recovering O&M costs may require drastic increases in water rates (often more than four times), users are likely to object, which obviously has political repercussions, and no political party can afford to ignore this. It becomes essential to involve farmers in the entire exercise of setting fees and checking on how they are spent, and to instill confidence in them that higher tariff would help the agency to render better service. (However, due to lack of initiative from these states, the award has not been reviewed and the old status is continuing into 2002.) Thus a deadline was set to utilize the given water allocations by three states. Under this Award, Karnataka is to utilize 734 TMC (20.7 million ha m) of water from Krishna river.The Upper Krishna Project (UKP) was developed to take advantage of the award. 7 The state government sought World Bank assistance for UKP during 1980. The World Bank gave two credits: one expired by 1986 and another by June 1997, for a total loan of Rs 5.48 billion.Meanwhile, in 1988, the state felt the need for an authority to look into required land acquisition, which was posing a major problem in project implementation.The triggers for setting up KBJNL were: the cumbersome process of land acquisition and the deadline of 2000 AD to complete all physical works of UKP. In 1993, only seven years were left to complete the project. The future World Bank aid was uncertain because of problems with rehabilitation and resettlement in the UKP,8 and a dispute with Andhra over the height of the Almatti Dam, with its consequent impact on water availability for Andhra. The stipulations of the World Bank loans became difficult for the Government of Karnataka to meet, and further credit on UKP was suspended owing to inadequate efforts by the state government in rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) in the UKP. Further, the focus of the World Bank also shifted to water resources consolidation projects, which accorded priority to basin development over individual projects.In a normal course, the state budget could have supported the entire UKP execution, but then the project completion could have been anywhere from 15 to 20 years, since the state budgetary allocation of around Rs 10 billion is meant for all major and medium projects in the state.UKP alone needed Rs 10 billion every year from 1994-95 to 2000. 9 The goal was to mobilise massive funding (up to Rs 60 billion) in a short time. The World Bank funding for UKP was drying up, and the revenue from existing irrigation projects was too meagre to give any support to the huge funding requirements of UKP. In Karnataka, revenue generation from the irrigation sector is not very encouraging. What has been the result of creating KBJNL? In the following sections we assess the financial outcomes in terms of successful mobilization of capital, physical accomplishments in terms of pace of project implementation, reduction and reduction of the financial burden on the state, cost recovery, and overall improvement in delivery of improvement in delivery of irrigation services.The state government's efforts to raise funds through KBJNL are an innovative experiment. To borrow funds from the market, the company got a rating from CRISIL, a credit rating agency. The rating is based on the financial health of the government of Karnataka, which provided the guarantee to all the issues of KBJNL, and gets revised each year. In 1998, the rating for KBJNL bonds was 'A (SO)', which is considered quite a safe investment from risk point of view of the investors.KBJNL is eligible to borrow up to 1. 25  As of 1998, KBJNL had a total of 397,000 bond holders. The KBJNL bonds and public issue have been subscribed to by investors from all over the country. They include commercial banks and rural and urban cooperatives (including Maharashtra and Gujarat cooperatives). A majority are institutional investors, while the first public issue had numerous individual investors. Major categories of investors include: Commercial banks (50%), Corporate bodies (like Sahara, Peerless) (20%), Provident Funds (20%) and Gratuity, Religious Trusts, Coops, and RRBs 10% (Figure 2).Major Categories of investors in KBJNL Bonds.Provident Fund 20%Commercial Banks 50%One of the major reasons behind KBJNL's success in raising funds appears to be the involvement of the Government of Karnataka, (GOK), which has guaranteed the payment of interest and the principal amount through a tripartite agreement between GOK, KBJNL and the trustee of bond holders (earlier ICICI and now Vijaya Bank). Under this agreement, an escrow account has been created and it is funded substantially through budgetary resources of the state, including any revenue of KBJNL through water fees. The GOK has to transfer funds to escrow account 45 days before the due date for interest payment. By June 1998, GOK paid Rs 2.94 billion as interest through this account. From the investor's security point of view, therefore, an annualized yield ranging from almost 19% (for issue no.2) to 14.76%(for issue no. 7-A) on these bonds looks attractive. The bonds are in fact better priced than recent offerings from other companies (eg., IDBI). Liquidity during the life of the bonds is sought to be provided through the exit routes as well as by listing them on two leading stock exchanges.KBJNL has done quite a successful job of mobilizing capital resources for irrigation.The additions in structures over the last five years will keep raising the book value of assets.Fund raising has become easy for KBJNL because Karnataka is not a heavily indebted state, and Rs 50 billion is not so high as to shake up the government's financial health in crucial conditions. According to KBJNL management, the highest repayment of Rs 17 billion in 2004 is manageable. KBJNL's borrowing is only for a fixed period. Investors know the purpose of borrowing and to boost up their confidence, the project completion is on schedule. Other reasons include the lack of political interference and the fact that the company also places its funds temporarily in other banks to earn interest (at 9-10%).Because of the regular flow of funds through KBJNL and the high priority given in the state to complete all structures of UKP by the initial deadline of the year 2000, the project made reasonably good progress, both in terms of physical construction as well as in spending financial resources. By March 1999, the project achieved 50% of its financial target and 48% of its physical target set for the year 2000 in terms of irrigation potential created (259,000 ha) and 28% in terms of actual utilization (145,000 ha till mid-1997).Originally, KBJNL was entrusted the task of providing storage of 173 TMC and the main canals, but due to inadequate performance of command area development, even the lining of canals and construction of field channels were entrusted to the KBJNL at the cost of Rs 25 billion to be mobilised during the next four years. KBJNL has allocated Rs 6.5 billion during 2001/02 to construct field channels to irrigate 145,000 ha.During the last 20 years, the government of Karnataka had allocated Rs 13 billion for the UKP project. As KBJNL increased its market borrowing, the state support (state's share of capital outlay) was reduced from 71 per cent in 1995-96 to just 6 per cent in 1997-98, while KBJNL's share increased from 29 percent to 94 per cent over the same period (see Figure 3). ultimately it is going to fall on the state government, as that is the ultimate guarantor.Over the years, KBJNL has made some experiments to use its funds more efficiently. Some of them are: a) it is getting Rs 4.04 billion at lower interest rate (Rs 2.04 billion at 9%, and another Rs 2 billion at 12.5-14%) from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation for housing activity in the rehabilitation and resettlement area; b) it is planning to return funds borrowed at higher interest rates (14-17.5%) through borrowing funds at lower interest rates, currently prevailing in the money market; c) it has got approval to raise funds under infrastructure schemes, which are available at cheaper interest rates because the returns to investors are exempt from income tax; and d) it has requested the a credit rating agency to suggest avenues to raise revenue in the UKP project. This would include toll tax on 600 km roads in the UKP command area, toll collection on six bridges constructed on the Krishna river, fishing rights, leasing out fibre optical lines for communication to be installed along the major canals, growing and selling of trees on canal bunds, and others.Although KBJNL has made considerable progress in mobilizing capital for construction, it has not made structural reforms within the organization, nor has it paid attention to repayment. KBJNL is not generating income on its own. So far KBJNL has failed to revise the water rates to any reasonable level that can cover O&M costs, let alone repayment of debt. The organisation depends on the government's budgetary support for both interest and principle payments to bond subscribers and shareholders.Because of the continued dependence on the state budget to pay for expenses, the \"financial autonomy\" of KBJNL is really a myth.Theoretically, KBJNL is empowered to levy and collect water rates in areas where water is supplied or made available by the company. 13  The existing water rates were very low, covering less than 4 percent of the O&M cost (about 3.75%). The Committee on Pricing of Irrigation Water (India, 1992) suggested that, to begin with, cost recovery should be aimed at least to cover the O&M costs and 1% interest on capital employed. Based on this approach, the pricing per hectare in KBJNL area would work out to Rs 962/ha--close to Rs 945/ha. calculated by the state irrigation department. 14 Even the Agricultural Policy of the government of Karnataka (Karnataka, 1995), has suggested increasing the water fee levels to 5% of the gross value of the produce. 15 As indicated in KBJNL implemented the same water rates that the Government of Karnataka announced for the whole state. This ended all speculations of having a different set of water rates for the KBJNL area. As indicated on Table 2, the new rates adopted are less than 17 percent of the KBJNL proposed rates for all crops except sugarcane and tobacco, which are minor crops in the KBJNL command, and less than 3 percent of the gross value of production. 14 Actual O & M costs in UKP are turning out to be Rs 912/ha, which is almost 200 per cent higher than projected by KBJNL (Rs 300/ha.) in its prospectus. Rs.945 per ha is based on the KBJNL's proposed water rates, which is 15 times higher than the current rates. 15 Based on the data for the year 1995-96, obtained from the agricultural wing of UKP-CADA, 5% of the gross value of produce per ha works out to:  For levying and collecting water charges, KBJNL has accorded priority to bulk water supplies on a volumetric basis to farmers' societies and the collection of volumetric water rates. 16 This type of wholesaling of water is a departure from the normal approach of collecting water fees from individual farmers based on the area and crop irrigated.Volumetric wholesaling has the advantage to the agency of reducing its transaction costs in collecting, by only having to collect from groups rather than many individuals. It could also introduce incentives to save water, because the groups would be billed based on amount of water used. However, this approach requires strong user groups that are able to collect fees from their members. Moreover, the groups have to pass on the incentives to conserve to their members, and this is not easy because water is not metered at the individual farm level (Meinzen-Dick and Mendoza 1996). The Karnataka state government's policy on participatory irrigation management is being formulated, and the various acts and rules are being amended as needed. KBJNL has to provide water supply to individual users in non-society areas.To keep administrative costs low, KBJNL has proposed to entrust levy and collection of water rates to the O & M field staff, with one additional assistant engineer/junior engineer and one additional first division accounts assistant at the sub-divisional level, for effectively managing the process of levy and collection. After societies are adjusted to bulk water supplies, the O & M field staff will be re-deployed in new non-society areas.KBJNL proposes three modes for collection of water rates, whereby users or societies can pay at the agency's sub-divisional cash counter, designated banks, or directly to the concerned section officer of the irrigation department. Levy and collection tasks will be carried out at the sub-divisional level, supervised at the divisional level, and monitored at the circle level. Passbooks will be issued to users as prescribed by the government. For delayed payments by a user/society a penalty at the rate of 18 percent will be levied for the delayed period. Cases of non-payment of water rates and penalty may be referred to the Revenue Department for recovery as arrears of land revenue.For effective levy and collection of water fee in the UKP, as outlined above, KBJNL has proposed the following changes in the legal framework suggested to transfer power to levy and collect water fees from the general revenue department or irrigation department of the state to the Executive Engineer of KBJNL, except in case of recovering the arrears.In practice, KBJNL is assessing water charges of Rs 50 million per year, but the collection rate is only 50%. This is at least partly because KBJNL staff lack the enforcement powers accorded to the Revenue Department officials who collect water charges in the non-KBJNL area of the state. Even this 50% that is collected goes to the state exchequer, rather than directly to KBJNL, thereby losing any connection between farmer payments and KBJNL revenues, as would be required for a financially autonomous agency.The new fee recovery strategy focuses on volumetric sales, and organizing users to become involved in system management and fee collection. But the failure to consult with users about basic issues in canal development, fees, or contracts, has created resistance. The approach remained typically top down. When farmers came to know of the hefty increases in the proposed water rates, they started agitations, mobilised political support, and thwarted any increase in water rates. As a result, the same old water fees are levied and only part of that is collected. This is nowhere near the actual expense on O&M of the project, not to talk of any interest or part of the loans raised. Thus, the potential of FAIAs seems to have remained unachieved, even after six years of its existence.To address the problems of the irrigation sector, financially autonomous, farmer-financed irrigation agencies need to create different incentives for the agency and its staff. However, that has not been an objective of the agency as a whole, so it has not been translated into the work plans or reward structure of KBJNL.A major reason that switching from a government irrigation department to KBJNL did not improve incentives for service delivery lies in the fact that more than 95 per cent of the staff, including the managing director and director of finance are on deputation from various government departments to KBJNL. 17  This situation is aggravated by the lack of a regulatory body to examine costs, set fee levels, or respond to farmer complaints. The KBJNL by-laws make provision for the Nigam to reset water fee levels, levy and collect it. In practice, even after six years, it could not increase the water fee levels. Even a regulatory body has not been set up to examine costs and monitor the process. On the other hand, anticipating the proposed water fee hike, the farmers' lobby has organised a series of agitations over the last few years. These protests, held both in the project area and in state capital, were fueled by the lack of transparency and stakeholder involvement in the system management. Farmer's opposition to increasing irrigation charges is gaining momentum. The political implications of this opposition have made the government even more reluctant to address repayment issues.Thus we see that because many of the staff are seconded from government line departments, KBJNL has not developed a distinct corporate culture. The expectation of the staff is that they are only there for a fixed period of time. Further, the main clients are the bondholders, who are not the farmers. The need to assure the bondholders that they will be repaid provides some leverage to raise water fees, but because the farmers were not consulted about this and see no improvement in system performance, they oppose the increase. Moreover, because the expectation of bond-holders, rating agency, agency staff and farmers alike is that the government will pay, their behavior based on these expectations is no different from \"business as usual.\" Functional hierarchy, lack of accountability, and inadequate performance measurement practices, lack of consultations with stakeholders, file maintenance, and method of management information system indicates it is more of an extension of government department.Nor did the corporation link incentives with performance to do a better and quicker job. When the National Irrigation Administration of the Philippines became financially autonomous, it introduced incentives to increase agency income and reduce its costs at the project level, and included these incentives in the performance appraisals of the employees. KBJNL has had no plans (as of 2000) to do any of this.To some extent, the motives for and benefits of KBJNL cannot be understood without looking at water rights. Accelerating the process of irrigation development in UKP doesn't just reduce lags and therefore cut costs, but it also secures water rights under the Bhachawat Award. Delays in implementation between 1995 and 2000 not only increase the cost of irrigation, but risk having water taken away from Karnataka when the Award is reviewed. If states see demand for water rising in the future, the value (in economic and political terms) of UKP in securing water may be greater than the estimated returns on the irrigation system alone.One more corporation known as Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Limted (KNNL) has been formed on the lines of KBJNL, to raise funds and manage eight irrigation projects in the Krishna basin of Karnataka. Four more corporations are being planned on similar lines.The corporation is authorised to charge suitable water rates for irrigation, municipal, to city corporations, and industrial use. KNNL has an authorised capital of Rs 30 billion and it has so far raised Rs 2.47 billion from two issues.Other Indian states have similarly adopted the Nigam approach to funding irrigation development. The extent to which other developing countries can rely on their domestic bond market is likely to depend on the size and structure of their capital markets and the level of investor confidence in repayment. Indian government rules governing investment of pension funds and other institutional funds has certainly helped KBJNL to raise funds, as have income tax exemptions on infrastructure investments. Confidence that investors will be repaid must come from either the organization's track record in raising resources or the financial stability of the government that backs it, since the systems' \"assets\" actually have little collateral value in the case of failure to repay.The latest trend in financing canal irrigation in India harks back to colonial ventures to raise funds for canals and other infrastructure investments in India. Several states have now launched irrigation corporations, with the primary objective to raise financial resources from the market to build irrigation structures. Their genesis lies in the acute scarcity of financial resources faced by the respective state governments, and the compulsions to build the irrigation structures rapidly. The financial crunch for canal irrigation has been felt because of stoppage/suspension of loans from the World Bank or the Central government, as the concerned projects have invited criticism and dispute either from the people at large, due to poor implementation of R&R, or from the riparian states. These states, finding it difficult to mobilise funds under normal procedures, are raising funds from the market by floating a corporation. To get the confidence of lenders, the state governments not only gave a guarantee to the bondholders to pay back the interest and the principal amount if the corporation failed to do so but also actively persuaded them to buy these bonds.Theoretically, these corporations can usher in reforms in the canal irrigation of those basins/projects, and put them on a sustainable track, but their activities largely have remained concentrated in mobilising large funds, and spending them liberally to complete the structures in reasonably short time. Flow of funds is faster: it takes only 1 to 2 weeks to get money from KBJNL and pay it to contractors, compared with 2-3 months in a system where funds have to come from the government. As a result, the construction activity stayed more or less on schedule. Thus, overall, it appears that there is some reduction in the time consumed, which should result in shortening the gestation lag between expenditures incurred and potential created. This, in turn, should help towards containing the escalation in the costs to the extent they were due to delays in implementation emanating from lack of resources, or erratic/halting release of funds. But it is difficult to measure precisely how much is the gain in cost reduction under the current set up vis-a-vis the departmental set of GOK without looking into other aspects too.Whether it has led to reduction in cost, whether expenditures patterns have been transparent and productive, and whether these corporations have infused the spirit of efficiency in the functionaries by linking incentives with performance, remains doubtful.A detailed analysis of the style of their functioning reveals that although these corporations, including KBJNL, appear to be financially autonomous, they are really still dependent on the state, and they fail to deliver reforms beyond mobilisation of capital funds and construction of physical infrastructure. These corporations basically remain a means for raising funds from the market, thus bypassing the limits imposed on state borrowing by the Planning Commission and the Reserve Bank of India. Failure to consider repayment of the capital remains their greatest weakness.KBJNL has not ushered in major performance improvements, mainly because the agency has some in-built lacunae: a) The environs demanded raising money fast, and this they did. What it didn't do is pay any attention to the long-term sustainability of the system, either in terms of financial sustainability or managerial and infrastructure sustainability; b)To fulfill the credit rating agency requirements KBJNL had made some promises like raising water prices, formation of water users associations, and collection of revenue through WUAs. Even after six years of KBJNL functioning, these promises were not kept nor were there serious attempts to move towards in that direction; and c) Improvement in performance of the system was neither part of its objective, nor do its current functions stress performance. This is in spite of most of the irrigation project review studies emphasizing the crucial need for performance improvement. Here, the emphasis is on rapid construction.Clearly there is a lack of vision among the management staff about what a financially autonomous irrigation agency can do. Both agency staff and farmers interviewed believe that the state will repay all debts, and they continue to act based on that premise of \"business as usual.\" Furthermore, many of the staff has no long-term identification with KBJNL, nor an incentive to see it succeed, because they are only on deputation from the government of Karnataka (especially the regular Irrigation Department).KBJNL in its present form is not sufficiently equipped to address the larger issues of the reforms in the irrigation sector: increasing efficiency in project performance; increasing agricultural productivity; enhancing revenue generation; providing users more productive roles to play in the project; reducing operational costs over time; or sustainable management of the project. As a result, they do not inspire the confidence of farmers to overcome images of inefficiency and corruption. The result is that farmers are opposing increases in irrigation fees.In the whole process, the KBJNL has achieved its key mandate of mobilising adequate funds and completing physical structures on schedule. But they fail to generate internal resources to pay back the loans, sooner or later, the burden will fall back on the state, and like many other corporations, whether they are for state transportation or for power generation and supplies, these are also likely to become financially sick.Furthermore, unless they address the need to improve service delivery and orientation of the staff, farmers will continue to resist any efforts to increase cost recovery and contribute to financial viability. After a decade or so, some expert committee may come and recommend their closure. The experiment of ushering reforms to improve the overall functioning of canal irrigation through financially autonomous irrigation agencies such as KBJNL may thus remain a missed opportunity. 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data/part_2/0370660944.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"f6eae0c2b85cc2fdcc4fd1f54201c035","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/1ce067ac-4f09-4162-950c-9d30da767d9f/retrieve","description":"Evidence shows that consistent and systematic interpersonal communication (IPC) is critical to changing infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices (UNICEF 2013). Using this evidence, UNICEF designed videos to enhance the capacity of frontline workers to provide correct information and appropriate counseling on IYCF. The assumption is that building the capacity of frontline workers will lead to increased counseling, improved knowledge, and changes in practices among mothers and caregivers.","id":"-822862062"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d511456d-7286-4a12-b15b-fdf7f5ff85bd","pagecount":"4","content":"Evidence shows that consistent and systematic interpersonal communication (IPC) is critical to changing infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices (UNICEF 2013). Using this evidence, UNICEF designed videos to enhance the capacity of frontline workers to provide correct information and appropriate counseling on IYCF. The assumption is that building the capacity of frontline workers will lead to increased counseling, improved knowledge, and changes in practices among mothers and caregivers.With the support of five nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), UNICEF implemented this intervention in three districts in Odisha with a large population of scheduled castes and tribes who were extremely vulnerable to malnutrition.The intervention aimed to build the capacity and skills of frontline workers to interact with and motivate marginalized communities to adopt nutrition and IYCF practices that focused on improving the quantity, quality, and diversity of complementary feeding.A baseline survey was conducted to observe cultural practices and nutrition-related behaviors among the target communities. Focused discussions and interviews with anganwadi workers (AWWs), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) supervisors, and NGO facilitators highlighted specific challenges.Using this information, UNICEF developed an entertaining video series titled Kyunki Ammaji Kehti Hain, which included 11 videos on maternal nutrition, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding. The videos focused on key messages related to related maternal infant and young child feeding. In a dramatized form, the videos elaborated the wrong practices related to IYCF and called for mothers to take action to improve their IYCF behaviors. The videos were recorded in Odia and formatted to be viewed on television and mobile phones for small-group viewing and home visits.Facilitators from partner NGOs led a training of ICDS supervisors and AWWs in a three-day workshop on IYCF practices and maternal nutrition, interpersonal communication skills, and the use of videos.AWWs screened the videos at the village level with support from the facilitators during Village Health and Nutrition Days, village meetings, and routine immunizations sessions. They also uploaded mobile versions of the videos (mobisodes) and showed them during home visits. ICDS supervisors provided supportive supervision during field visits.UNICEF was responsible for the project's design, monitoring and evaluation, and documentation.Monthly monitoring meetings, quarterly review meetings with AWWs, and other staff meetings were held to discuss such issues as rescheduling shows during monsoons and resolving technical glitches in handling equipment. Some of these points were shared in district and block interface meetings.A total of 2,700 shows were conducted in 240 villages in the three districts. Each video session was attended by about 45-50 women and 10-15 men. Ten shows were held in residential schools for tribal girls to improve awareness among adolescents. Approximately 264,000 people were reached with the videos. An end-line evaluation was carried out at the end of six months when the project concluded. The efficacy of the intervention was assessed in terms both of satisfaction of end users and families and of changes in knowledge, motivation, and skills of trainers, NGO facilitators, and AWWs in using the communication tools and products. External evaluators observed training sessions; interviewed AWWs, supervisors, and facilitators; and analyzed pre-and post-test results of AWWs to understand the increase in knowledge and communication skills of these frontline workers.The intervention led to increased confidence among AWWs to share key IYCF messages during counseling, community awareness of IYCF, and community demand for nutrition services. Of 101 AWWs, 98 percent mentioned that they could use all training materials demonstrated in the training. When asked about their views regarding the usefulness of the training, 21 percent said it was very useful, 71 percent said it was useful, and 9 percent did not find it useful (CORT Unpublished).The in-depth interviews with supervisors and NGO staff show that training was useful to frontline workers as they noted that they felt empowered to explain to villagers and mothers about a particular theme (CORT Unpublished).Though the intervention lasted only six months, evaluators observed that women had increased awareness of exclusive breastfeeding, timely and appropriate complementary feeding, and demand for regular services from the anganwadi center (CORT Unpublished).This effort shows that facilitated video is an effective medium for IYCF messages, and that it is an attractive method for reaching both men and women. The use of video is most successful when those showing it are trained to ensure the adoption of messages for the long term.Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India (POSHAN) is a 4-year initiative that aims to build evidence on effective actions for nutrition and support the use of evidence in decisionmaking. It is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and led by IFPRI in India.","tokenCount":"756","images":["-822862062_3_1.png"],"tables":["-822862062_1_1.json","-822862062_2_1.json","-822862062_3_1.json","-822862062_4_1.json"]}

data/part_2/0700186871.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8019f66c6d857e906e7a5021d7f8623f","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/75a5c928-a97f-4c88-b573-c72605f81a58/retrieve","description":"Unanticipated spikes in food prices can increase malnutrition among the poor, with lasting consequences; however, livelihood strategies that include producing food for home consumption are expected to offer a measure of protection. To test this, we use anthropometric and consumption data from Indonesia collected before and after the 2007/08 food price crisis. Based on standardized height and weight measures, our results indicate that soaring food prices had a significant and negative impact on child growth among households that did not produce food for home consumption. A corresponding effect was undetectable for the households that did. The results remain robust when income effects from increased commercial sales, and possible attritions through migration and fostering are considered. Further, local food price changes were uncorrelated with the share of producing-households in the village and the initial average child nutrition status in the village, suggesting that observed outcomes are directly attributable to market events and livelihood strategies. Gender differences were not detected. Our findings imply that the food price crises can have negative impacts on children, potentially leading to lifelong disadvantages. Livelihood choices that include food production provide protection against price hikes but may trap households on low income paths.","id":"820790"},"keywords":["food price crisis","child growth","human capital","safety nets","Indonesia JEL Classifications: Q11","Q18","O12","O15"],"sieverID":"7b217071-1e05-408b-9d92-726cd150cf1b","pagecount":"43","content":"established in 1975, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. IFPRI's strategic research aims to foster a climate-resilient and sustainable food supply; promote healthy diets and nutrition for all; build inclusive and efficient markets, trade systems, and food industries; transform agricultural and rural economies; and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is integrated in all the Institute's work. Partnerships, communications, capacity strengthening, and data and knowledge management are essential components to translate IFPRI's research from action to impact. The Institute's regional and country programs play a critical role in responding to demand for food policy research and in delivering holistic support for country-led development. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world.Poor households build livelihood strategies that include mechanisms to mitigate and manage the many risks they face. Included are informal forms of insurance based on a willingness to help extended family members and neighbors in time of need with the expectation of receiving assistance when needed. In the absence of formal insurance and risk markets, informal mechanisms are crucial and can work well when risk events are idiosyncratic. However, informal insurance systems can fail when needed most in the face of a systemic risk event affecting all members of the informal insurance network. Governments can and do help prop-up informal systems by responding to crises and by building all-purpose safetynets.In rural areas, households often choose to produce much of their own food. This livelihood choice provides a measure of protection against a loss of other sources of income and can be especially effective in the face of rising food prices. However, the protection comes at a cost, since the strategy can obligate families to devote limited land and labor resources to activities and production technologies that are less profitable under normal circumstances. In turn, this makes it harder for families to generate higher incomes, accumulate wealth and human capital, and escape reinforcing poverty traps.In this paper, we focus on surging food prices, a cardinal risk that can undermine the capacity of poor households to meet minimal nutritional needs. We distinguish between two types of households: households that produced some food for home consumption (food-producers) and households that did not (non-producers), and examine the potentially permanent effects of the food price crisis of 2007-08 on child nutrition intakes. We calculate local food price indices to take into account spatial differences in the transmission of global price shocks and the effects of differing diet compositions; we construct standardized child anthropometric nutrition-status measures, heightfor-age and weight-for-age z scores, to detect health outcomes. The analysis uses Indonesian household panel data collected in 2007 and 2010. The villages in our sample are rural, but include farming and non-farming households. The first round of 2007 was fielded from the second to third quarter, immediately before the initial food price run-up late in 2007. The follow-up survey was conducted in 2010 after the crisis had subsided. The timings offer us an ideal setting to assess the impact of food price spikes on child growth. 3 The geographic coverage of the survey over seven 3 First, early childhood nutrition status is a cumulative measure that records long-term impacts of an event that adversely affects their nutrition intakes. The 2007/08 food price crisis is a good example, which can be captured by nutrition status such as the height-for-age z score. Second, though the 2007/08 food price crisis that created international food price spikes ceased in the middle of 2008, price transmission to domestic markets depends on various factors (discussed in Section 2). The Laspeyres price index calculated from the 2007 and 2010 local food prices and consumptions captured in 98 villages is high, that is, local food prices have increased rather continuously during the period (see Section 3). provinces in five macro regional islands lets us take advantage of significant variations in villagelevel food price changes.Our findings suggest that the livelihood strategies available to food-producers and nonproducers are qualitatively different, which led to asymmetry in the impact of the price crises on child growth. Specifically, we find strong evidence that soaring prices had a significant and negative impact on child growth among non-producer households, despite government-backed support programs meant to help the most vulnerable. At the same time, a corresponding effect on child growth was not detected for food-producing households, suggesting that minimal levels of selfsufficiency in food mitigated the harshest consequences of the crises. 4 The result remains robust when income effects from increased commercial sales and possible attritions through migration and fostering arrangements are considered. Further, local food price changes were uncorrelated with the share of non-producer village households and the initial average child nutrition status in the village, suggesting that observed outcomes are directly attributable to market events and livelihood strategies. Interestingly, gender differences were not detected. Our findings imply that the food price crises can have long-term impacts on child human capital formation, potentially fostering lifelong income inequality among those affected at an early and vulnerable stage of life.This gives incentive for households with access to land to produce their own food, thereby achieving a measure of protection against food price shocks. However, the strategy comes at a cost, since it may trap poor households on low income paths. Policy implications are discussed in the concluding section.Following decades of relative stability, global food prices spiked between the summer of 2007 and June 2008. On the heels of a six-month run-up in oil prices, wheat prices began to rise, surging 14 percent between May and June 2007. Maize prices increased 15 percent between December 2007 and January 2008. Rice prices, which had been climbing modestly during the summer, registered month-over-month increases of 21, 24 and 42 percent in February, March and April of 2008. Stocks relative to use had fallen for all three grains during the previous years, for a variety of reasons, including a strategic decision by China to drawn down government stockpiles (Headey and Fan,   2008; Piesse and Thirtle, 2009). With inventories low, markets were positioned to react sharply to negative news (Larson, 2007). In the case of wheat, poor harvests in Ukraine and Australia were seen as triggering events, while, in the case of maize, the large diversion of US maize to mandated biofuel quotas was blamed (Mitchell 2008; Timmer, 2010, Headey, 2011b). In the case of rice, researchers suggest that the crisis was largely driven by a series of over-reactive policy decisions, and that interventions meant to insulate domestic markets sometimes led to rounds of counterproductive hoarding and speculation (Slayton, 2009; Dawe, 2009; Timmer, 2010). Regardless, a contagion of decisions by large producers to restrict exports clearly exacerbated the crisis (Headey,   2011b). 5 From April 2007 to April 2008, the World Bank's Food Price Index rose by 67 percent, the associated Grain Index nearly doubled, and rice prices nearly tripled.The scale and suddenness of the price increases unleased widespread social and political unrest (Slayton, 2009; Bellemare, 2015). However, the sharp change in food prices played out differently among households, creating a continuum of outcomes, even among the poor (Swinnen,   and Squicciarini, 2012.) In rural areas especially, households produce some or all of their own food, and this key aspect of rural livelihood strategies is thought to have been particularly important during the food price crises, since the cost of food produced and consumed at home is unaffected by changing market prices. In addition, households producing a surplus of food likely benefited from higher prices, as did households with livelihoods linked to agriculture. Consequently, poor rural smallholders are thought to be less vulnerable to food price spikes than the landless and urban poor (Ruel et al, 2010). Even so, this strategy comes at a high cost, since smallholders must often pass up more-profitable opportunities in order to generate their own food. What's more, households often choose to produce their food using traditional low-risk-low-productivity farming methods. These choices can trap households on low-income paths that keep poor households poor (Binswanger and McIntire, 1987; Rosenzweig and Binswanger, 1993; Carter et al., 2007; Larson and   Plessmann, 2009; Larson et al. 2016).Nevertheless, because the poor devote 50-80 percent of their expenditure to food and because many poor rural households are net buyers of food, the food crisis was thought to have increased poverty and malnutrition in both rural and urban areas (de Pee et al., 2010). Results from a series of simulation models suggest these impacts were large. For example, de Hoyos and Medvedev (2011) estimate that the food crisis increased global poverty by more than 155 million people, and analysis by USDA (2009) suggests that the number of food insecure people rose by 75-80 million because of the crisis. The simulation models distinguished between food producing and food consuming households, and the results suggest some portion of poor net-producer households benefited from higher prices. For example, Ivanic and Martin, (2008) estimated that the crisis, on balance, decreased poverty rates in Pakistan and Vietnam. Still, most studies concluded that global net poverty rates increased as a result of the crisis, as did poverty rates in most developing countries, including Indonesia (McCulloch, 2008; Warr and Yusuf, 2014).It is important to note that most staple crops are produced and consumed locally; for example, only 7-8 percent of the world's rice enters formal trading routes (Timmer, 2010). And while there is strong evidence that the prices recorded at a country's borders reflect global markets, transportation and transaction costs mute the impact of changes in international prices on local prices (Mundlak and Larson, 1992; Dawe and Maltsoglou, 2014; Yang et al., 2015.). Long-standing trade and food policies affect pass-through rates, too. However, in the case of the food-price crisis, a weakening US dollar and new interventions were important as well (Anderson, Ivanic and Martin, 2013). 6 For example, in his study of seven large Asian countries during the crisis, Dawe (2009) found that, on average, exchange rate appreciations muted the impact of rising global prices by 18 percent, roughly $32 per ton. Dawe also reports that the remaining price-wedge, attributable to markets and policies changed during, as tariff, trading rules and consumption taxes were adjusted to insulate local markets. The net effect was to lower domestic prices, on average, by $97 per ton, up from an average of $16 a ton during the previous four years. In the case of Indonesia, Dawe found that policy-related protection rates for consumers increased from $13 to $123 per ton during the crisis. Currency movements slightly reduced the rate of protection, moving from an estimated $20 per ton pre-crisis to $19 per ton.Households that do face rising food prices can adjust, although the capacity to do so varies.Wealthier households are better able to smooth their intake of calories and essential nutrients by adjusting other expenditures, by drawing down savings and selling assets, and by borrowing (Morduch, 1995; Dercon, 2005; Kazianga and Udry, 2006; Carter and Lybbert, 2012). In contrast, poor households spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food generally and on staple crops in particular (Jensen and Manrique, 1998; Warr, 2005). Consequently, poor and near-poor households that purchase food are especially vulnerable to rising food prices.In the face of incomplete markets for credit and insurance, poor households also develop alternative informal insurance mechanisms with family members and neighbors to mitigate the risks they face, lending support when asked and seeking assistance when they face difficulties of their own. Such arrangements can be affective when risks are idiosyncratic, but can also fail with dire consequences in the face of systemic events like the food crisis (Townsend, 1994; Larson,  Anderson and Varangis, 2004; Skees et al., 2005). To counter this, governments and donors responded by bolstering existing food safety net programs, and launching feeding programs and other new initiatives aimed at helping the most vulnerable (Demeke, Pangrazio, and Maetz, 2008;   Wodon and Zaman, 2010). By enhancing the capacity of households and informal insurance networks, these programs can mitigate malnutrition impacts (Coady, Grosh, and Hoddinott, 2004). When all else fails, households apportion limited food supplies among family members, where allocations are affected by family size, age and gender (Lanjouw and Ravallion, 1995; Aromolaran,   2004; Kumar and Quisumbing, 2013).To the best of our knowledge, there are no peer-reviewed studies measuring the impact of the food 2007/08 price crisis on poverty, nutrition outcomes, or child human capital in Indonesia.However, there are a number of studies showing the links between child nutrition outcomes and fast-rising food prices from a decade earlier. The so-called \"financial crises\" of 1997/98 was in fact a broader event with three elements: a banking crisis, which led to a sharp depreciation of the Rupiah; widespread political discord, which ended the 31-year-old presidency of Suharto; and a severe drought combined with a series of wildfires, which led to food production shortfalls. During the crisis, price rose sharply, from January 1997 to October 1998. Rice prices increased by 195 percent, vegetable prices increased by 200 percent, dairy and egg prices increased by 117 percent, and fish and meat prices increased by 89 and 97 percent (Block et al., 2004). The price hikes for protein and vegetables raised particular concerns about micronutrient deficiencies, which have been linked to impaired cognitive development, lower educational attainment, impaired work capacity, increased morbidity and shortened lives (Block et al., 2008; Christian, 2010; Mani, 2012).Nevertheless, studies of that episode suggest families managed to find ways to partly shield the diets of their children. For example, in a study limited to Java, Block et al. (2004) find no significant differences attributable to the 1997/98 crisis among children of either sex in a weight-for-age index; however, they do report an associated decline in maternal body mass, suggesting that mothers buffered the diets of their children by consuming less themselves. 7 They also detect an increase in anemia for mothers and children, suggesting the crisis led to micronutrient deficits.Using a nationally representative dataset, Strauss et al. (2004) also found no noticeable decline in weight-for-age from the crisis. Like Block et al. (2004), they detect declines in hemoglobin concentrations, although the declines are only statistically significant among boys. Mani (2012)   finds indications that the crisis reduced future height, but also finds evidence that younger children were able to partly recover. Estimating micronutrient demand elasticities before and after the 1997 crises, Skoufias, Tiwari and Zaman (2012) show that households managed to cope during the crisis by significantly adjusting the composition of their diets.Looking at the on-going, rather than episodic effects of food price fluctuations in Indonesia, Yamauchi (2012) shows that the seasonality of rice price explains birthweight, which subsequently affects height and weight. In turn, low birthweight negatively impacts schooling outcomes, such as the age at which children start school and the number of grade repetitions. The research suggests that, over time, seasonal (and presumably predictable) price movements combined with imperfectly timed fertilization have long-lasting impacts on human capital outcomes.Before moving on, it is worth pointing out key differences between the 1997/98 and the 2007/08 crises, since much of what we know about the impact of food price spikes on childhood nutrition in Indonesia is based on the earlier event. As discussed, the 1997/98 crisis originated in the financial sector and moved quickly to the real economy. The Indonesian GDP declined by 13 percent in 1998 and remained flat in 1999. Food prices soared partly on a sharp devaluation of the rupiah and also because a drought and associated wildfires harmed domestic food production. The drought proved especially harmful to smallholder farmers (Bresciani et al., 2002). In contrast, the Indonesian economy remained strong during the 2007/08 crisis, as did the rupiah. Smallholder farmers did not face weather-related problems, and agriculture largely benefited from higher international prices, growing as a share of GDP. Nationwide poverty levels fell in both rural and urban areas, and self-assessments of food insecurity improved during the period (Headey, 2011a).Nevertheless, our results suggest that a segment of society remained vulnerable to the significant prices increases that did occur. The harshest consequences were felt by mostly urban households that did not produce a portion of their own food.Our empirical strategy includes two key elements. First, we assume that the food price spike experienced 2007/08 was not anticipated. We find support for this assumption in our analysis.Second, we speculate that livelihood strategies that include producing food for home consumption provide a fundamentally distinct form of ex ante protection against food price spikes. The hypothesis does not imply that households cannot and do not make adjustments within their overall livelihood strategies. Indeed, the data we present shows that households made significant changes to their diets to compensate for overall rising prices, and for relative price changes among food commodities. There is also weaker evidence that some household became food producers because of the crisis. Nevertheless, we find strong evidence that pre-crises food-producing households retained a significant advantage over other households and were better able to protect the nutritional intake of their children.We use child nutrition status, specifically the height-for-age and weight-for-age z scores, to measure child human capital. To measure price changes, price indices are constructed from price and quantities and consumption data captured in two rounds before and after the 2007/08 food price crisis. First, we compute the median price for each food commodity in each village for each period.Both value based expenditure shares and calorie based consumption shares are used to construct the indices that are used for our analysis. For the value based indices, village-average consumption quantities are valued by median village-prices to calculate an aggregate consumption budget and commodity expenditure shares. For the caloric measures, observed consumption quantities are converted to calories; total calories consumed are then calculated along with commodity shares.The base year for the indices is set to 2007.The consumption data distinguish between household-produced food and food from other sources. We use this to calculate a discrete indicator based on the proportion of food consumption (in terms of calories) supported by own production. We then use the indicator in our estimation of the consequences of food-producing and other livelihood strategies during the crises.We use the following first-differenced applied model to measure the impact of food price spikes on child nutrition status:where Δg ijv is change in the anthropometric measure (weight or height) of child i, in household j and village v, ΔP v is the change in village-level price index (using either quantities or calories consumed weights), k j 0 is the initial livelihood-strategy measure, which takes the value of one if the proportion of consumed food calories supported by own production prior to the crisis is below a threshold and zero otherwise. We initially set the threshold at zero -that is we categorize any household that is recorded as having consumed food produced by the household as a producing household, regardless of the proportion of consumption produced at home. We later use alternative thresholds to test the robustness of our results. X ijv 0 is a vector of initial individual, household and village characteristics, including the child's age, gender, birthweight, and initial household income.The term Δε ijv is an error difference term, with a distribution centered on zero. The set [β 1 , β 2 , Β] are parameters to estimate.A potential correlation between of Δ\uD835\uDC43 \uD835\uDC63 and \uD835\uDC58 \uD835\uDC57 0 is a concern. First, the household may invest in child human capital to increase their resilience to possible food price spikes if they believe that such events are likely to occur. Second, consumption shocks likely cause Δ\uD835\uDC43 \uD835\uDC63 and \uD835\uDC58 \uD835\uDC57 0 to move togetherthat is, some households may have decided to produce food at home once the runnup in prices (IMDG-1). Figure 1 shows locations of surveyed villages. In 2010, the survey team revisited all the 98 sample villages to re-interview sample households and their splits.9 Out-migrants were also tracked through either direct or phone interviews. Anthropometry data were collected in both 2007 and 2010. Child's height, weight, and his/her mother's weight were measured in the field. In addition, birthweight was recorded from official sources. However, the age coverage differs between the two rounds. In the 2007 round, children aged 0 to 6 were covered, and the 2010 round extended the age range to cover children aged up to (in addition to capturing split households in the same villages). Second, the anthropometry module covered children age 0 to 12 years, so the coverage of children was expanded (the 2007 survey covered children age 0 to 60 months). This study uses the anthropometry section of the 2010 survey 10 In the case of split households, child anthropometry data were collected since the full household questionnaire was used. However, in the case of out-migrants who joined other households in the same village or moved out from the village, child anthropometry data were compromised since due to time constraint, the survey team had to shorten the household questionnaire. The tracking rules have some implications on potential attrition bias, which turned out to be inconsequential in our analysis below.12. Following a standard procedure, we calculated the height-for-age z scores for children aged 0 to 12 and the weight-for-age z scores for children aged 0 to 10. In the panel analysis, we use the sample of children aged 0-6 in 2007 (thus, corresponding to the cohort aged 3-9 in 2010).The surveys collected consumption and expenditure data using the following formats. For food consumption, which is of our primary interest, respondents were asked to do a one-week recall to provide information, for each commodity, on quantity consumed and, if purchased, the price. Theywere also asked the share of total consumption produced by the household and the share received as a gift. The 2007 round used varying units but quantities were converted into kilograms when the data were processed. The 2010 round recorded quantities in kilograms when households were interviewed; if necessary, alternative units were converted in the field). We use prices per kilogram in our analysis. From the above data, we computed the proportion of calories produced by own production. Two measures were constructed for main food items, which includes (i) staple, (ii) fish, meat, tofu and tempe, (iii) beans (pulses), (iv) vegetables and fruits, and (v) milk and eggs.11 Figure 2 shows the distribution of home-produced calorie shares for the main food commodities and also for the subset of staple goods. In the case of staple foods, the shares cluster around zero and one, indicating that while most do not rely on home-grown staple foods, a portion of households rely exclusively on the staple crops they produce.As discussed, we use both calorie-weighted and value-weighted indices in our analysis. This is because of potentially significant differences in the way household adjust to higher prices.Sometimes households adapt by moving to lower-quality lower-priced commodity grades, for example, by purchasing bags of rice with a higher proportion of broken grains. Especially for staple foods, these lower grades usually provide the same number of calories per kilogram. Consequently, a value-weighted index can underestimate the impact of a price increase for staple goods when nutritionally equivalent lower-priced grades are available. A calorie-weighted index addresses this concern. Alternatively, an increase in food prices can lead households to shift to food items that are less nutritious, but which generate the same number of calories; for example, when consumers switch from protein rich meat to calorie-rich staples. In this case, caloric weights mask an expenditure adjustment with important consequences for childhood development. 12 The two types of adjustment are not mutually exclusive, and households may adjust in both ways.As a practical matter, the differences are small in our setting. Figure 3 compares the distribution of village Laspeyres price indices for 2010 using value-share and calorie-share weights.The calorie-weighted index is dominated by the value-weighted index but the two distributions are quite similar.Figures 3 about hereTable 1 shows descriptive statistics of the Laspeyres price index by province using either quantities or calories as weights. 13 The table illustrates two points. First, the index is larger when weights are constructed from consumption quantities. This implies that households tend to consume more calories from foods that had smaller price increases at the subsequent period.Second, regardless of which index is used, the means are quite similar across provinces, which indicates that the impact of the crises on food prices were national rather than provincial.Nevertheless, we find significant within-province variations of food price changes, which we use in the child-growth regressions.As discussed, we use Laspeyres indices in our estimation because the shares indicate expenditure outcome prior to the food price shock and therefore predetermined in our applied model. By contrast, the weights in a Paasche index reflect final period expenditures. Consequently, differences between the two indices shows the degree to which, on average, households were able to lessen the impact of price crisis by restructuring consumption. Figure 4a    Attrition between the sampling periods is very small. In the estimation sample, attrition rates of children are 5.65% and 2.87% over the three years for the height-for-age z score and the weightfor-age z score, respectively. 14 Nevertheless, there is a risk that the sample used in our analysis is the result of a selection process endogenous to the price shock -for example, that fostering arrangements made in response to the crisis explain the attrition found in our sample. To check, we examined whether the main explanatory variables used in the main analysis are significantly correlated with attritions. The preliminary test showed that they are not, which leads to more confidence in our main results. 15 Table 3 about hereWe also see that average price changes and the initial livelihood strategy are uncorrelated. In particular, village-level price changes captured by the Laspeyres price index are regressed on the proportion of non-producers in the village (Table 3). The results confirm that local food price changes are uncorrelated with the initial livelihood strategies. In particular, the production structure prior to the food price crisis did not affect the subsequent price index, though it is potentially correlated with the consumption bundles in 2007 used to weigh commodity-wise price changes. No correlation between the price index and the initial livelihood strategy also means that there is no evidence that households started producing food in anticipation of a future price surge.This finding is important since, to some extent, we can conclude the extent to which non-producers at the initial stage decided to produce food after seeing price changes is negligible. . 16 As shown 14 Attrition comes from the following three possibilities: (i) children were not followed up in the 2010 survey under the tracking rules, (ii) anthropometry data were not collected for some reasons (e.g., children were temporarily away from their households), and (iii) outliers that become missing when age-standardized z scores were computed. 15 In the weight z-score attrition equations, the asphalt road indicator and distance to provincial capital have significantly negative effects on attrition. However, since these two variables are controlled in the main outcome equations, we can conclude that they are not influential to our main findings. Though the effect of the food price change is significant at a 10 percent confidence level in the weight z-score attrition equation (calorie-based), the focus of our analysis is on the impact on children in non-producer households. 16 In the abstract, it is still possible that common shocks affected food prices and child human capital simultaneously, creating a correlation between the two variables. In order to have our empirical evidence, however, the effect needs to be separable between food producing and non-producing households, which we think is highly unlikely in the given empirical setting.later, a full specification that includes all explanatory variables (village-average) also confirms the result.We also compare children's and household characteristics between the producer and nonproducer groups. Table 4 shows the group-specific means and t values. Birthweight, age, gender, and anthropometric measures (height and weight z scores) are similar between the two groups. 17That is, the individual-level initial conditions were not statistically different. However, the comparison of household characteristics shows that heads of the non-producer households are more likely to be male and older and earnings (not including transfer incomes) are significantly higher. However, the value of assets is similar between the groups. 18 One final concern has to do with our indicator of producer status. We base our classification of self-reported consumption data that spans a short period of time. Potentially, producers may be misclassified as non-producers if stocks of self-produced foods have already been consumed or are held in storage as a hedge against seasonal price increases. 19 Misclassification in the opposite directions, non-producers wrongly identified as producing households, are less likely since households affirm that they have consumed home-produced foods during the recall period.Moreover, remaining mistakes are likely attributable to non-systematic recall or recording errors, which are less problematic. Consequently, potentially systemic classification errors tend to reduce outcome differences between the two groups, since some households wrongly included in the nonproducer group received unaccounted-for protection. As a result, systematic errors of this type would make it more difficult to identify the nutritional advantages of producing households.Nevertheless, despite potential classification errors that obfuscate differences between the groups, we find robust evidence that children in food producing households experienced better health outcomes than non-producers during the crisis.17 Our estimation results reported below show that the height z score increases larger among children of nonproducer households. However, we did not see any significant difference in changes in the weight z score between non-producers and producers. 18 The results are qualitatively the same even if we use different cut-off points in the own-production share of food consumption to define non-producers. Table 4 uses 0%, whereas alternative tests used 5% and 10%. 19 In our sample, some households appear to switch their status from non-producer in 2007 to producer in 2010, although 69 percent do not. However, the adjustments are small. Of the remaining 31 percent, a quarter produced less than 6.3 percent of their food expenditures, while half produce less than 17 percentThis section summarizes the empirical results. As discussed, we use two constructions of the Laspeyres index to measure of food price changes, one based on quantities and the other on calories. Results using both formulations are presented in the following tables.Table 5 about hereTable 5 shows the benchmark results on changes in the height-for-age z scores. 20 Columns 1 and 2 present the key results using value-weighted and calorie-weighted price indices, respectively.The specifications include: a non-producer indicator that has the value of one if the proportion of main food consumption own produced is zero and the value of zero otherwise21 ; the Laspeyres price index; a price-non-producer interaction term; the child's age in months and age squared; a male gender dummy, the log of birthweight (kg), and province dummies. The results show a significant positive effect on height associated with the non-producer indicator and a negative effect associated with its interaction with the price. The price index itself is not statistically significant.Results are similar when either the value-weighted or calorie-weighted indices is used. All things equal, children in non-producer households experienced higher growth; however, the results suggest they were more vulnerable to food price spikes than food-producers, resulting in a measurable reduction in child growth during the study period. Age has a significantly positive but convex effect. Children in Lampung, East Java, Nusa Tenggara Barat and North Sulawesi grew faster relative to those in Central Java. Among non-producers, any existing inequalities in child human capital increased in severely affected areas.The point estimate in Column 3 of Table 5 shows that an exposure to the sample average value- the distance to provincial capital (kilometers). Both household income and household assets are interacted with a gender (male) dummy. The asphalt inter-village road indicator and the distanceto-the-provincial-capital variable are also interacted.Both Columns 3 and 4 confirm the earlier finding of a negative effect associated with the pricenon-producer interaction term. 23 The price index itself is again not significant. Again, the results are largely unaffected by how the indices are weighted. Household income has a significantly positive effect on child-height only for females, while the initial value of asset holding has a significantly positive effect only among males. The estimated effects of income loss due to negative shocks during 2008-2010 were significant and negative when interacted with initial assets. The asphalt road indicator has a significantly positive effect only when the village is located far from the provincial capital.Table 6 about hereTable 6 shows the results on changes in the weight-for-age z scores. The sample size differs that of Table 5 since the survey captured weight but failed to measure height for some children.Columns 1 and 2 present the key results using value-based and calorie-based price indices, respectively. Interestingly, in the case of the weight z scores, we find a marginally significant positive effect in birthweight only. Price changes and the interaction with the non-producer indicator are insignificant. Columns 3 and 4 include household and village characteristics. First, the birthweight effect remains significantly positive (t values are much larger). Second, total asset values and income loss have significantly positive and negative effects, respectively. Third, interestingly, changes in the weight z score are larger in more remote areas (i.e., distant from provincial capital), but not if the village is connected with a paved road.The results in Tables 5 and6 present a clear difference in the price spike impact between the height z-scores and the weight z-scores. The difference between the two results is likely related to the timings of the price surge and the panel data collection. Food prices increased from late 2007 until mid-2008, followed by a slight decline. The survey follow-up round was fielded in mid-2010, leaving time for affected children to gain weight if their nutrition intake improved. In contrast, height effects tend to be more permanent. The above observation is consistent with the existing research in which the height-for-age z score is chosen as the standard measure of early childhood nutrition intake (e.g., Alderman, et al., 2006). Since height is a cumulative measure of human capital, the result indicates that the food price crisis had a longer-term impact on child human capital formation, in general, as early childhood stunting is often a strong predictor of lower education and learning outcomes at later stages (e.g., Alderman et al., 2006; Hoddinott, et al. 2008; Yamauchi,   2008; Stackel, 2009). 24 Table 7 to be insertedIn Table 7, we check robustness of the above results by using different cut-off points in the proportion of food consumption own produced. Columns 1 and 2 for the height z score (5 and 6 for the weight z score) use the indicator which takes the value of one if the proportion of food consumption own produced is smaller than 5 percent of food expenditures and the value of zero otherwise. Similarly, the cut-off point of 10% is used in Columns 3 and 4 for the height z score ( 7and 8 for the weight z score). Columns 1 to 4 confirm that the key results found in Table 5 on the height z score remain robust over a range of cutoff points. The impacts on change in the weight z score are insignificant in Columns 5 to 8. Based on the above findings, we conclude that the key results are not sensitive to the choice of the cut-off point in the proportion of good consumption own produced.Table 8 to be inserted Next, we check whether village level differences -observable and unobservable -affect the main results by using village fixed effects (Table 8). The specifications include all the individual and household level variables used in Tables 5 and6 (not reported here). The results confirm that the key findings of the adverse effect of price shock for children in non-producer households are robust against the village-level differences. The effects are significant at 10% level for the height z-score, while such an effect was again not detected for the weight z-score.Next, we include the proportion of crop income in total household earnings and its interaction with Laspeyres index to explore possible income and wealth effects arising from food price spikes. 25 Included in our sub-sample of food producing households are households with significant levels of production at the onset of the crisis. These households have a greater capacity to substitute homeproduced food items for purchased food. In addition, they may be better positioned to expand production by employing more intensive techniques. Moreover, they may stand to make windfall profits during price spikes as harvested stocks appreciate and the expected value of already planted 24 We also estimated the two equations as a system (seemingly unrelated regressions), which confirmed that the results in Tables 5 and6 are robust even after potential cross-equation correlation are considered. 25 Total household earnings do not include transfer and non-labor incomes. The observations of negative crop incomes are treated as the share of zero (there are 677 households). The non-producers in our consumption definition may have crop incomes during the past crop year since food consumption was captured in the past one week. Some households that reported zero crop incomes used their crops only for own consumption.crops rises. This is especially true for households, largely located in outer-Java island communities, that own mature cohorts of tree crops, like oil palm, rubber and coffee. At the same time, initial levels of income, wealth and producer-status were already included in the base regressions.Consequently, we are testing that the potential for progressively large windfalls affected child health outcomes. As Table 9 shows, we find that it does not. The key results, that producer-status protected gains in height remains robust. As with the previous results, we do not see any significant effects in the weight z score.Table 9 about here Implicit in our analysis is the assumption that parents shield the diets of all of their children equally during the crisis. However, parents may choose to protect a subset of the group. As discussed, the preference is sometimes gender-based with the consequence that intra-household resource allocation favors male children. Outcomes may also differ by age, because parents choose to protect the youngest and therefore the most vulnerable of their children, or because the youngest are often breast-fed. 26 Table 10 about hereTable 10 summarizes estimation results on potential heterogeneity. The specifications include all the explanatory variables used in Table 5 (although they are not reported here). As discussed, producing food is one of several livelihood activities that mitigate the impact of food price increases. We investigate whether the initial asset-holding and amounts of non-food expenditure affect child nutrition outcomes. Both are expected to blunt the effects of surging food prices. Greater wealth makes it easier for households to dis-save in times of crises to protect consumption and a large portion of income spent on non-food items allows households greater scope for reallocating current income.First, we checked potential heterogeneity by the initial asset holding. Recall that assets were already included in our initial regression, so this exercise is a check to see if there is asymmetry in how assets affect producing and non-producing households. We find that they do not. Similarly, we find no indications that larger shares of non-food expenditures available for reallocation had differential effects on producer and non-producer households.The remaining results in the table relate to net remittance and public transfers in 2007.Households connected with others through remittances and/or already receiving public transfers before the crisis, may have in place informal or public insurance mechanisms that insulate them, partly or wholly, from food price risks. The results suggest that the differential impact of receiving remittances were negligible. However, public transfers did appear to benefit non-producers in a differential way. This may be because non-producing households were better targeted. Or it could be that non-producing households were more reliant on the transfers and benefited more from them. Regardless, the result confirms the general conclusion from earlier studies that targeted interventions, such as feeding stations and cash transfers, can protect the welfare of children during times of crisis.This paper examines the impact of food price spikes experienced during the 2007/08 food price crisis on child nutrition status using rural household panel data in Our results show that the crisis had a significant and negative impact on child growth, measured by the height z-score, among the non-producers. However, when food prices began to surge in late 2007, households entering the crises with a livelihood strategy that included a degree of food self-sufficiency were largely able to protect their children in a way that non-producers could not. The results remain robust when income effects from increased commercial sales are considered. Further, local food price changes were uncorrelated with the share of non-producer village households and the initial average child nutrition status in the village, suggesting that observed outcomes are directly attributable to market events and livelihood strategies. Differences by gender or age attributable to the crisis were not found in height regressions; however, we found evidence of greater weight gains by boys in non-producer households.Price indices constructed from food prices observed before and after the crisis show a significant spread in spatial outcomes. However, expenditure shares show that households adjusted their consumption bundles significantly, moving, in general, to less expensive and less nutritious food items. Measured differences between ex-ante weighted Laspeyres and ex-post weighted Paasche price indices suggest that households in areas subjected to the largest price changes also made the largest adjustments. As a consequence, the average impact of the price shock was lessened, and the spatial distribution of the price spike narrowed. This result held whether the indices were calculated using value-based weights or calorie-based weights.Previous research has established that early childhood nutrition is critical for human capital formation and shows that families take a variety of precautions to protect the health and well-being of their children against a range of economic shocks. Further, governments, development agencies, and charitable groups build safetynet systems to protect the most vulnerable. When food-price shocks do arrive, families take a variety of actions to lessen adverse impacts. In the specific case of the 2007/08 crisis, the Indonesian Government and civil society responded with additional interventions targeting vulnerable children. And we find evidence that public transfers did help non-producer households.Still, our finding indicate that these multiple protections failed for a discernible number of households in Indonesia, resulting in a cohort of children born to vulnerable families with an additionally reduced capacity to succeed. Our results also show that the children of food-producing households fared better during the crises, suggesting that some degree of self-sufficiency in food is a prudent livelihood choice for poor households with access to agricultural land.This later result presents a conundrum for poor households and for policy makers. Our results indicate that, in normal times, child growth rates are among the non-producers.Consequently, for this group, policies should focus on shoring up targeted safetynets to provide adequate protections during adverse events, including episodes of unusually high food prices. 27 For other households, livelihood strategies build around agriculture may generate higher incomes and better long-term welfare outcomes than available alternatives. Targeted safetynets can help these households as well, by providing an alternative hedge against high food prices and lessening the incentive to devote scarce labor and land resources to low-profit food crops. Improving on-farm productivity can, over time, also help farming households build up savings that can be drawn down to smooth out consumption when times are bad. Improving storage markets and the improved dissemination of on-farm storage methods can also help farming households. For one, better storage technologies can lower crop losses from field to market, thereby improving farmgate receipts and incomes. Importantly, improved on-farm technologies like hermetic bags or steel containers lower the costs of storing good on-farm for eventual consumption, thereby lowering the costs associated with livelihood strategies that include a self-sufficiency component 28 . 27 Non-targeted programs and policies to control domestic prices have proven expensive to maintain and therefore given to failure when most needed. See, for example, discussions in Larson, Anderson and Varangis  (2004) and Larson et al. (2013). 28 See Gitonga et al. (2013) and Ndegwa et al. (2016) and references therein on the impact of new on-farm storage technologies.       Numbers in parentheses are absolute t values using robust standard errors. Non-producer is the indicator which takes the value of one if the proportion of food consumption own produced is zero and the value of zero otherwise. Specifications include all the individual and household level variables used in Tables 5 and6.   4). Non-producer is the indicator which takes the value of one if the proportion of food consumption own produced is zero and the value of zero otherwise.   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data/part_2/1007579091.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"84acea8af9607d0019bfc815479a2544","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/2d737abb-056e-431b-a0f1-cdc960a52f42/retrieve","description":"","id":"863034830"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"007aba88-ea38-43c4-a2f1-fef2eaf4bbc6","pagecount":"2","content":"country that is setting out to explore the benefits of modern agricultural biotechnology for national development must be prepared to do so in a safe, systematic and transparent manner. The Integrated Confinement System for Genetically Engineered Plants provides model procedures and documents for the regulation and conduct of Confined Field Trials (CFTs) with genetically engineered (GE) plants. These models may be used by regulators and scientists in their efforts to develop a comprehensive national system ensuring biosafety, accountability and transparency in field evaluations of GE plants.In a Confined Field Trial, researchers are able to safely evaluate GE plants in the natural environment by following simple procedures of biological confinement and good management practices. Planning for biosafety procedures in the conduct of a CFT requires a comprehensive approach that foresees all the individual steps required to perform a field trial, from initial planning through trial conduct and oversight, post-harvest management, and final reporting.The primary purpose of the Integrated Confinement System, which is summarized in this policy brief, is to provide practical and user-friendly models of these procedures along with supporting documents in a single, unified resource that users may freely modify and adapt for their own specific needs. Intended users include regulators, product developers, trial managers, and biosafety inspectors. The models provided will help to ensure biosafety by allowing the reader to quickly and easily create a modern, customized \"Quality Management System\" for the regulation, conduct and oversight of CFTs. The practical and functional nature of the materials will help to endow users with the capacity and confidence to evaluate GE crops that may be of benefit to their countries for food security and poverty alleviation.The ICS materials originated in PBS collaborations with Kenyan and Ugandan scientists working to develop biosafety systems for CFTs in those countries. Realizing the importance and need for the materials produced by these fruitful collaborations, PBS has provided the relevant documents in generic format in the ICS handbook. The approach of the ICS materials is grounded in \"Good Laboratory Practices\" (GLP) regulations, such as those applied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for laboratory and field studies. The ICS materials distil the vast experience of many experts in the execution of GLP-type field studies, in order to present a system employing the best of GLP principles in systematic, accountable and reproducible documentation for field trials.The approval and implementation of a regulated field trial requires that regulatory bodies, research scientists and product developers communicate within their groups, with each other, and with stakeholders in an organized and sequential fashion (see Figure 1). The ICS materials provide practical and functional models for these interactions as applied to regulated field trials, so that the goal of biosafety in the testing and development of GE crops is achieved. Overall, the goal of PBS is to help ensure biosafety by fostering a modern, comprehensive and systems-based approach to the regulation, management and oversight of field trials with GE plants. We hope that the materials provided in the Integrated Confinement System will help to advance this goal.","tokenCount":"516","images":["863034830_1_1.png","863034830_1_2.png","863034830_1_3.png","863034830_1_4.png","863034830_1_5.png"],"tables":["863034830_1_1.json","863034830_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/1111193185.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"7eb4134644763fbb5f9a1a6858c200e6","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/69cf9d26-08e3-4032-93ca-49e52836eaf7/retrieve","description":"","id":"-1102701934"},"keywords":["Wage Bargaining","NREGS","Wage eect","Rural labor market"],"sieverID":"e45487e2-7895-4b7e-b18c-72e62c0ae4d1","pagecount":"16","content":"This paper answers the question that, does having some household members working in public work program increase other household members' wage bargaining power in private sectors? we use DID matching method to estimate NREGS's eect on participating households' labor market outcomes. Results show that non-participants from participating households (i.e. households with at least one person participating in the program) receive a 5% wage increase compared to individuals from non-participating households. This result is consistent with a unitary household utility model and wage bargaining story. Intuitively, when a household participates in the program, the benet obtained from this program may transmit from participants to household non-participants, hence leading to a higher reservation wage for the latter. This wage eect only exists in Karif season, an agricultural busy season.Previous studies have documented a positive wage eect of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (hereafter, NREGS program). They nd government hiring via public works programs may crowd out private sector work and therefore leads to a rise in equilibrium private sector wages (e.g. Basu et al., 2009;Berg et al., 2014;Imbert and Papp, 2015). Most current empirical studies use district level variation of NREGS rolling out, estimating average treatment eect (ATE) of the program at district level. ATE is relevant in that it says, for two identical individuals who are not working in NREGS, one from NREGS district but the other not, then the rst individual tends to receive a higher wage in private sector than the latter.However, ATE measurement is silent on dierential wage eects for program participants and non-participants within the same district. Intuitively, in a district with access to NREGS program, it's likely that NREGS participants enjoy a higher positive wage eect than non-NREGS participants. In the same vein, it's also likely that non-participants from an NREGSparticipating-household enjoy a higher positive wage eect than individuals from a non-NREGSparticipating-household. 1 To say something about such dierential eects, we need to estimate Average Treatment Eect for the treated (ATT). For the ease of empirical analysis, the current paper focuses on the second comparison, by restricting the sample to non-NREGS-participants.There could be multiple channels leading to such dierential eects. One is through bargaining story. When NREGS program provides a household with extra employment opportunities (and usually with a higher wage), assuming a unitary household utility model where household members share benets from NREGS participation, such employment opportunities help to secure household subsistence needs. As an indirect result, it may be followed by a higher reservation wage of non-NREGS-participants in the same household as well as that of program participants.Thus, our hypothesis is, non-participants from NREGS-participating households tend to receive a higher private sector wage than individuals from non-NREGS-participating households.For this story to hold, we need the following two assumptions 1) a unitary household utility model where household members share benets from NREGS participation and 2) more job oers to transmit higher reservation wage to a higher real wage.1 In a village with NREGS program, some households apply for and nally get work opportunities from this program, whereas other households may either not apply or nally do not pass nal review process. We call the rst type of households \"NREGS-participating households\" where at least one person participates in NREGS program, and the second type \"non-NREGS-participating households\" where nobody participates in the program. We are going to stick to these terms throughout the paper.In one word, our research question is, does the fact that some household members receiving public work opportunities increase other household members' wage bargaining power in private sectors (mostly as agricultural casual labor)? This paper provides an implicit test of the bargaining story by empirically estimating the Average Treatment Eect on private sector wages for nonparticipants from NREGS-participating households (ATT). This measurement is also important in evaluating welfare eect for program participants.Empirically, we use dif-in-dif matching method to pin down this eect. Treated households are dened as households with at least one member participating in the program, and control households are dened as households with nobody participating in the program ever.We nd non-participants from participating households receive about 5% higher wage compared to individuals from non-participating households. This wage eect only exists in Karif season which is an agricultural busy season. The rational is that NREGS work brings competition for labor against private sector, when there is already a relatively large labor demand in private sectors in Karif season. In contract, in Rabi and Summer season, when labor demand is originally low, NREGS work does not result in competition with private market.The rest of paper is organized as below. Section 2, a brief literature review. Section 3 provides background information of NREGS program implementation. Section 4 builds a theoretical framework for this analysis. Section 5, data. Section 6, empirical model. Section 7, results.Section 8, conclusion.This paper is related to the empirical literature on the impact of workfare schemes in labor markets low-income countries (see Devereux and Solomon, 2006).Several studies have documented a positive earnings (or wage) eect of NREGS program in agricultural labor market (e.g. Berg et al., 2014;Imbert and Papp, 2015), although some other studies nd zero or marginal earnings eect (e.g. Zimmermann, 2012). The most cited one is by Imbert and Papp (2015). They focus on the eect of NREGS program on labor market equilibrium in terms of earnings and employment.Our paper is related to this wage eect, but essentially asks a dierent question. We want to examine the role of wage bargaining between employers and wage labor in deciding nal wages. In order to do that, we need to tease out any equilibrium eect in labor markets. Put in another way, equilibrium eect mainly arises from NREGS participants shifting from private to public works program, while bargaining eect arises from non-NREGS-participants bargaining in private labor markets.The second aspect of dierence lies in the data. Most above mentioned studies use repeated cross-sectional NSSO employment data. Sample years are 2004-05, 2007-08. We use household survey panel in 2005-06 and 2007-08, which allow us to control for individual level time-invariant unobservables. As Imbert and Papp (2015) assert, in their paper, the relevant level of analysis is at district level, and the reason they use individual level wages is to tease out the eect of population composition change. Therefore, not controlling for individual xed eect probably does no harm. However, the limitation of repeated cross-sectional data makes it dicult to study intra-household interactions, which none of existing studies did. Our paper adds to the literature how intra-household interactions in making work decision aect wage bargaining and hence wage levels.Thirdly, a potential aw of the study by Imbert and Papp (2015) is the assumption of competitive market. Our paper assumes the opposite, i.e. employers having market power in hiring casual workers.The current paper also talks to a small literature on welfare eects of NREGS (e.g. Basu and Sen, 2015;Ravi and Engler, 2015;Imbert and Papp, 2015). Ravi and Engler (2015) looks at poverty reduction eect of NREGS. Imbert and Papp (2015) nd a welfare redistribution from rural labor employers to workers.In terms of identication strategy, Ravi and Engler (2015) nicely points out potential selection issue between program participant and nonparticipants, and uses propensity score matching plus dif-in-dif to address this issue. Our paper uses similar methodology. This program issues a unique job card two weeks after they apply for NREGS works and get approved. Job cards are then used to keep track of days worked and payments received by each participant. A job card identication number also contains the information where the household resides in, such as state, district and village. Job card information is publicly available in NREGS ocial website to protect labors against corruption and fraud.Several households may apply for a project and then work on it together, such as irrigation, road pavement etc. Within a household, more than one member can work in the project at the same time.The average daily wage on NREGS work is 81 Rupees, as opposed to about 55 Rupees/day for women and 86 Rupees for men working as agricultural casual labor (mostly casual labor hired by landlords). 2 Thus, NREGS work is usually seen more attractive than working as agricultural casual labor in private sector, especially for women. This is consistent with the initial aim of this program to empower women by proving them employment opportunities.Although the program asserts providing 100 days working opportunity for each household per year, there is actually an unmet demand of work. The average working days is roughly 35 days for all members of the household during that year. 3 The rationing of demand for NREGS work is a reason that across Indian states the number of NREGS days provided is only weakly correlated with poverty (Dutta et al., 2012).In terms of workers' time allocation, most of those (above 50% based on our survey data) who participate in NREGS work as agricultural or non-agricultural casual labor in private sector, with only a small fraction of them work in salary jobs.   Population census data contains village information such as rainfall and other village characteristics.Since both survey and administrative data has job card information and individual names, we use these to merge survey households and NREGS-participating households from administrative data. The nal data is in the form of household-member-season. For each member in the household, we have labor market participation information in each season. We exploit the fact that this program was taken up gradually at individually level, treating three seasons in 2006 survey year as pre-treatment periods, and the corresponding seasons in 2008 as post.We use matching method to estimate the eect of having at least one person participating in NREGS on other members' wage and employment eect, as in Ravi and Engler (2015).DID matching estimator entails a comparison of the change in labor market outcome of nonparticipants from participating households to that of workers from non-participating households. We are interested in the change of non-participants' agricultural casual labor wage following some members participating in the program in season s, i.e.Y t (1) -Y t (0)(1)Our analysis uses a DID matching estimator that requires the following identifying assumption:where P (X) denotes the propensity score, i.e., P (X) = P r(D = 1|X). Given (2), and further assuming 0 < P (X) < 1, the following estimator can be obtained:where ∆Q t ≡ Q t -Q 0 . We estimate the matched outcome using the average of the outcomes of the x nearest neighbours. Mathematically:where A x is the set of control observations with the lowest values of |P (X i ) -P (X j )|. Our implementation uses x = 20. 4In robust analysis, because NREGS participation at household level also varies by total number of days of work (out of the maximum 100), we utilize this variation by replacing binary treatment variable D it with a continuous treatment.The identication strategy for ATT is based on the assumption that the distribution of NREGS job opportunities is exogenous to households, so that without NREGS job, individual wage growths in Treatment and Control households would have identical trends. However, if some households (e.g. elite class) have manipulation power on the distribution of job opportunities, then this assumption will be violated. For instance, if households with high-skill non-participants 4 Any ties are broken randomly.are more likely to obtain NREGS work opportunities, then the eect of receiving public works on non-participants' private sector wages will be confounded by non-participants' skill/ability.Fortunately, with two periods of data prior to treatment, we can examine the pre-treatment common trend assumption by doing a placebo test.This Assuming a unitary household model and intra-household sharing mechanism, the benet from NREGS program may transmit from participants to non-participant members in the same household. Compared to individuals from non-participating households, these non-participants from treated households have better fallback options, hence more likely to have a higher bargaining power in negotiating wages with landlords in private labor markets. This section empirically tests this eect and estimates its magnitude.To get rid of general equilibrium eects, we restrict both treatment and control households to be from NREGS-available villages. The sample is restricted to non-NREGS participants who have worked positive days in the season in question.In table 2  Estimates are obtained using the same specications and same sample, except that assuming To answer this question, we use DID matching method to estimate NREGS's eect on participating households' labor market outcomes, i.e. average treatment eect on the treated households. Results show that non-participants from participating households (i.e. households with at least one person participating in the program) receive about 5% higher wage compared to individuals from non-participating households. This result is consistent with a unitary house-hold utility model and wage bargaining story. Intuitively, when a household participates in the program, the benet obtained from this program may transmit from participants to household non-participants, hence leading to a higher reservation wage for those the latter. This wage eect only exists in Karif season, an agricultural busy season.The identication of our estimates relies on the assumption that, conditional on observables included in our model, the distribution of NREGS job opportunities is exogenous to households. In other words, without NREGS job, individual wage growths in Treatment and Control households would have identical trends.In addition, by dening the start of NREGS program in a village by whether anyone has really worked on it, we acknowdege that we ignored announcement eect.","tokenCount":"2214","images":[],"tables":["-1102701934_1_1.json","-1102701934_2_1.json","-1102701934_3_1.json","-1102701934_4_1.json","-1102701934_5_1.json","-1102701934_6_1.json","-1102701934_7_1.json","-1102701934_8_1.json","-1102701934_9_1.json","-1102701934_10_1.json","-1102701934_11_1.json","-1102701934_12_1.json","-1102701934_13_1.json","-1102701934_14_1.json","-1102701934_15_1.json","-1102701934_16_1.json"]}

data/part_2/1268358740.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"32e2c91fdaa8f045eb5c81bdd1a8f0a2","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/023df279-ea46-4bbe-9e78-00305f481106/retrieve","description":"","id":"585805856"},"keywords":["migration","local off-farm","agriculture","efficiency","China JEL Classification: D24","O12","O13"],"sieverID":"a9a9698e-ac02-4d18-adfb-183e82f7c146","pagecount":"30","content":"This paper studies the effect of local off-farm employment and migration on rural households' technical efficiency of crop production using a five-year panel dataset from more than 2,000 households in five Chinese provinces. While there is not much debate about the positive contribution of migration and local off-farm employment to China's economy, there is an increasing concern about the potential negative effects of moving labor away from agriculture on China's future food security. This is a critical issue as maintaining self-sufficiency in grain production will be critical for China to feed its huge population in the future. Several papers have studied the impact of migration on production and yield with mixed results. But the impact of migration on technical efficiency is rarely studied. Methodologically, we incorporate the correlated randomeffects approach into the standard stochastic production frontier model to control for unobservable that are correlated with migration and off-farm employment decisions and technical efficiency. The most consistent result that emerged from our econometric analysis is that neither migration nor local off-farm employment has a negative effect on the technical efficiency of grain production, which does not support the widespread notion that vast-scale labor migration could negatively affect China's future food security.After Lewis's seminal work on a dualistic economy (Lewis 1954), nearly all development economists agree that a structural transition of the economy is necessary for growth and development (Barrett, Carter, and Timmer 2010). The quintessential feature for that transition is the movement of labor out of agriculture, which is well illustrated by the development path of Japan in the 1950s and 1960sandof South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s (Knight, Deng, and Li 2011).With its relaxation of the hukou (household registration) system and other restrictive regulations, as well as its rapid economic development, China is now experiencing its largest and fastest structural change, which is characterized by the steady flow of labor from rural areas to urban areas and from the agricultural sector to nonagricultural sectors. Official data from the 2011 China Statistical Year Book show that the share of labor employed primarily in agriculture fell from 68.7 percent in 1980 to 36.7 percent in 2010. According to the recent population census, more than 261 million rural residents in China worked in places other than their birth places in 2010 (NBSC 1 2011), which is more than the total number of international migrants from all countries combined (Sirkeci, Cohen, and Ratha 2012). The flow of migration is expected to increase further as China's economy continues to grow.The massive labor migration in China has also attracted great research interests among development economists in recent years. The impact of China's internal migration on migration destinations and the overall economy is enormous as migrants accounted for 46.5 percent of China's total urban labor force in 2007 (Cai, Du, and Wang 2009).Migration has also been found to increase migrant households' income (Du, Park, and Wang 2005); smooth consumption and 1 NBSC: National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China.reduce exposure to shocks affecting agricultural production (Giles 2006); encourage investment in agricultural productive assets (Zhao 2002), housing and other consumer durable goods (de Brauw and Rozelle 2008), and children's education (Chen et al. 2009); and contribute to the diversification of rural economy in their source communities (Murphy 2000).At the same time, there are a number of concerns about the potential negative effects of migration on the destination communities, the source communities, and migrant families. In the related literature about the sending communities and migrant families, two issues stand out. The first issue concerns the well-being of the left-behind family members (de Brauw and Mu 2012; Mu and van de Walle 2011;de Brauw et al. 2013;Chang, Dong, and Macphail 2011;Giles, Wang, and Zhao 2010).As expected, these studies typically find that migration increased additional farm and domestic work time of the left-behind members (women, children, and elderly), especially the female and senior members. The additional work, however, does not necessarily lead to worsened health conditions for the left-behind members (Mu and van de Walle2011). The second issue is related to the potential negative effect of migration on agricultural production (de Brauw et al.2013;Wang, Wang, and Pan 2011;Li et al. 2013;Taylor, Rozelle, and de Brauw2003), with mixed results. A study by the United Nations Development Program argued that the large-scale migration of rural workers and women' staking over farming activities could potentially threaten China's future food security (UNDP, 2003).The theoretical prediction of the impacts of migration on agricultural production, however, is ambiguous. On one hand, loss of labor to migration can reduce the agricultural production in migrant-sending areas. Furthermore, migration can decrease farmer attention to the appropriate use of technology and change labor quality (from adult male members to female, child, and elderly members) and other inputs, which would ultimately cause a decline in productivity (Yue and Sonoda 2012). But on the other hand, scholars advocating New Economics of Labor Migration argue that migration and remittances might increase agricultural productivity through providing better access to information and more flexible liquidity as well as enabling rural households to overcome credit and risk constraints (Wouterse 2010).The inclusive theoretical prediction has given birth to a large body of empirical literature.Using the stochastic production frontier method, Mochebelele and Winter-Nelson (2000) and Nonthakot and Villano (2008) found that households with migrants have significantly higher technical efficiency in Lesotho and northern Thailand, respectively, while Chang and Wen (2011) showed negative association between off-farm work and technical efficiency in Taiwan. And Chavas, Petrie, and Roth (2005) did not find any significant impact of off-farm employment on technical efficiency using data from Gambia. In the context of U.S. agriculture, Kumbhakar and Summa (1989) showed that off-farm work is negatively associated with technical efficiency using diary data from Utah. And Fernandez-Cornejo (1996) found similar results using data from a vegetable farm survey in Florida.There are also studies on the impacts of migration on agricultural production in China.Usingan instrument variable regression approach, Taylor, Rozelle, and de Brauw (2003) show that migration has negative effects on crop income but positive overall effects on yields, which may explain the change in inputs for households with migrants.2 Using the stochastic frontier production (SFP) function approach, Chen, Huffman, and Rozelle (2009) find a positive association between village migration ratio and technical efficiency. Yue and Sonoda(2012), on the other hand, find that the average technical efficiency is higher for households without a wage worker than for those with a wage worker in all their sample regions. Others find migration has no effect on yield and production (de Brauw et al. 2013;Wang, Wang, and Pan 2011;Li et al. 2013).The existing studies about the impact of Chinese internal migration on agricultural production/productivity suffer from several noticeable limitations. First, a large majority of the studies about the impact of migration on agriculture focus on the impact of migration on production, yield, or both, but the impact of migration on technical efficiency is rarely studied.Second, the few that do study the impact on technical efficiency fail to account for the potential endogeneity of technical efficiency (which will be discussed briefly in the next paragraph and more in-depth in the Estimation Method section). And finally, despite the increasing importance of local off-farm activities for rural employment and income (Mohapatra, Rozelle, and Goodhue 2007;Zhang et al. 2006), the impact of local employment on agricultural productivity is largely overlooked in the literature.In this study, we aim to fill the knowledge gap by studying the impact of migration and local off-farm employment on crop production efficiency using household panel data for 2000 households from five provinces covering the period from 2004 to 2008. While the stochastic production frontier model is a standard approach to study the technical efficiency of crop production, the estimation of the determinants of efficiency for the stochastic production frontier model is a difficult task (Liu and Zhuang 2000). As migration and local off-farm employment are found to be related to some household endowments (Du, Park, and Wang 2005), failure to control for the household unobserved characteristics may lead to biased and inconsistent estimation of migration effects on technical efficiency. In this paper, we adopt a correlated random-effects (CRE) coefficient model (Wooldridge 2002) to control for the unobserved household effects.We find that after the unobserved household effects are controlled, there is no significant effect of migration on technical efficiency for rural farms. However, the effects are not consistent across different types of migration (for example, long versus short distance, migration versus local off-farm employment), a result similar to that of Chavas, Petrie, and Roth (2005), who used migration data from Gambia. In light of the huge regional difference across provinces (Chen, Huffman, and Rozelle 2009), we also estimated the same regressions using data from each of the sample provinces. And we find that the estimation results based on data from all provinces mask considerable regional differences as well.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the Research Center for Rural Economy (RCRE) data we are going to use. The estimation methodology is presented in Section 3. The results of the stochastic production function estimation and regional comparison are given in Sections4 and 5. We conclude in Section 6.The data used in this research are panel household data from a National Fixed Point Survey (NFPS), implemented by RCRE, a research unit of China's Ministry of Agriculture. The NFPS started in 1986 in nine provinces. The sample in each province was selected in three stages. First, a set of counties that are stratified by income level was randomly selected. Second, one village was randomly selected from each sample county. Finally, between 40 and 120 households (depending on the size of the village) were randomly selected from each sample village. Benjamin, Brandt, and Giles (2005) provide a detailed description of the survey design and implementation of the NFPS. The initial master sample of the RCRE survey in 1986 contains more than 20,000 rural households. The dataset for our study includes more than 2,000 randomly selected households from five provinces from 2004 to 2008. The households are resampled each year. The five provinces are Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Shandong, Hunan, and Sichuan. These five provinces cover a wide range of economic and agroecological conditions as well as migration and local employment patterns. Table 2.1 reports the sample distribution for each province for each of the five years. The panel data are unbalanced for two major reasons. First, one or two villages during some years for some provinces were not surveyed. Second, there were a number of missing values for a number of variables of interest.The reason we use the panel from 2004 to 2008 is that the detailed input and output information was not collected before 2004. One of the key innovations of the RCRE survey since 2004 is that input and output data were collected for each crop rather than for all crops, which enables more accurate information about capital input in agricultural production. In constructing input and output variables, we follow the existing literature (Zhang, Yang, Wang 2011;Chen etal.2009). The output is measured by the total value of grain crops (including wheat, rice, corn, soybean, tuber crops, and others) and cash crops (including cotton, rapeseed, sugar, fiber, tobacco, silkworm cocoon, vegetables, and others) separately. The input variables are the same for grain and cash crops, which include cultivation area (in Mu), labor (in person-days) input, cost of fertilizer and pesticide (in yuan), and other input (in yuan).Other input costs include the cost of irrigation, animal power, machine use, and hand-tool purchase as well as the depreciation and repair cost for fixed production assets.Table 2.2 reports the number of working members and land endowment across provinces.As expected, the number of working members varies only slightly, with an average number of 3,and ranges from 2.76 in Heilongjiang to 3.11 in Jiangxi province. Similarly, the average coefficient of variation is also small for all provinces (0.34-0.38).Unlike the case of working members, there is huge variation in terms of land endowment. While an average household in Heilongjiang owns 44.78 mu of arable land, a typical household in other provinces owns less than 6 muof land (ranging from 3.8muin Sichuan to 6.0muin Jiangxi). There is also considerable variation in landholding size within each province as the coefficient of variation ranges from 0.51 in Sichuan to 0.85 in Heilongjiang.Table 2.3  Table 2.4 reports the total production and yield of crop production over time for all the five provinces. We note that both grain production and grain yield actually increased over the survey years for all the five provinces. This does not support the growing concern that moving labor away from the agricultural sector would reduce crop production and yield. However, production and yield are not equivalent to production efficiency because high yield or production could be achieved in three ways: (1) a higher level of production frontier (that is, better technology), (2) a higher level of input use, and/or (3) high technical efficiency. Table 2.5 reports key inputs of grain production over time. Interestingly, the total sown area for an average household hadslightly increased in all the five provinces. As expected, labor use intensity has indeed declined (from 14.66 working days per mu of sown area in 2004 to12.39 working days per muof land in 2008).The decline in labor input is accompanied by a considerable increase in other inputs. While fertilizer continues to be the most important material input, accounting for almost half of nonlabor variable cost, the largest relative increase is the cost of agricultural mechanization (from 23 yuan to 40yuanper mu). By 2008, agricultural mechanization accounted for a quarter of non-labor input expenses. Seed intensity and pesticide use intensity also increased to some extent.The descriptive analysis indicates that while migration and local off-farm employment have absorbed a significant part of agricultural labor away from grain production, the decline in labor intensity has partly been offset by the substantial increase in nonlabor input-use intensity, especially the rapid increase in the level of agricultural mechanization. Meanwhile, the data also indicate an overall increase in grain production and yield despite the loss of labor to off-farm employment. While the descriptive analysis is informative, it does not allow us to establish a causal relationship between migration and local off-farm employment and production efficiency.To identify the causal effects of migration and local off-farm employment on-farmers' technical efficiency, we will rely on a rigorous multivariate econometrics analysis, which is the focus of the rest of the paper.The SFP function is a standard approach used to analyze technical efficiency. Following the literature (Aigner, Lovell, and Schmidt 1977;Meeusen and van den Broeck 1977), the standard panel data model for SFP can be written aswhere \uD835\uDC66 !\" is the grain output produced by household \uD835\uDC56 in year \uD835\uDC61;\uD835\uDC65 !\" is a vector of inputs used by household \uD835\uDC56 in year \uD835\uDC61 to produce output \uD835\uDC66 !\" ; \uD835\uDC63 !\" is assumed to be iid \uD835\uDC41 0, \uD835\uDF0E ! ! ;u it is a nonnegative random variable; and the term exp \uD835\uDC62 !\" is the measure of technical inefficiency of household \uD835\uDC56 in year\uD835\uDC61.We assume \uD835\uDC53(\uD835\uDC65 !\" ; \uD835\uDEFD) to have the general translog functional form. The advantage of the translog functional form over the Cobb-Douglas functional form is that the former is more flexible while the latter restricts the elasticity of substitution between factors of production to be unity. A translog model collapses into a Cobb-Douglas model if all the coefficients of interaction terms and squared terms in the translog function are jointly not significant from zero. A simple F test allows us to choose between the two models. The test results suggest that we should employ the translog functional model.There are two approaches (two-step approach and one-step approach) in the literature on technical inefficiency analysis using an SFP framework. The earlier studies typically relied on the two-step approach. In the first step, the technical efficiency parameter for each farm is estimated after an SFP model is estimated. In the second step, the estimated technical efficiency parameter is then regressed on variables that could potentially determine the technical efficiency (Pitt and Lee 1981;Kalirajan 1981;Chen, Huffman, and Rozelle 2009). However, this two-step approach was criticized for the inconsistency between the independency assumption of u it in the first step and the dependency assumption in the second step (Wang and Schmidt 2002;Kumbhakar and Lovell 2000). The problem is essentially the same as the omitted variable problem in the linear regression model.The one-step approach is more popular as it overcomes the above-mentioned concern of the two-step approach. We also adopt this approach in this paper. In the one-step model, the mean of \uD835\uDC62 !\" is assumed to depend on exogenous variables\uD835\uDC67 !\" ,that is,where \uD835\uDF16 !\" ∼ \uD835\uDC41(0, \uD835\uDF0E ! ! )), and the distribution of \uD835\uDF16 !\" is bounded below by the variable truncation point -\uD835\uDEFE ! \uD835\uDC9B !\" . It has been shown that this distribution assumption on \uD835\uDF16 !\" is consistent with the distributional assumption on \uD835\uDC62 !\" that \uD835\uDC62 !\" ∼ \uD835\uDC41 ! \uD835\uDEFE ! \uD835\uDC9B !\" , \uD835\uDF0E ! ! . With the distribution assumption on \uD835\uDC63 !\" and \uD835\uDC62 !\" , The method of Maximum Likelihood Estimation can be used to estimate the model.Another concern arises if one or more of the \uD835\uDC9B !\" variables are endogenous in the one-step approach. To our knowledge, this has not been well addressed in the literature. In this study, the key variables in\uD835\uDC9B !\" (share of time spent on migration and on local off-farm employment) are likely to be correlated with household unobservable (c i ) (Greenwood 1971;Lucas 1997;Du, Park, and Wang2005).If we believe \uD835\uDC50 ! is also correlated withthe technical efficiency, that is, \uD835\uDC62 !\" = (\uD835\uDEFE ! \uD835\uDC9B !\" + \uD835\uDC50 ! + \uD835\uDF16 !\" ) ≥ 0, then the one-step estimation without appropriately dealing with the existence of c i would lead to an inconsistent and biased estimator.We adopt the CRE model pioneered by Mundlak (1978) and Chamberlain (1980) to address the existence of c i . Specifically, we assume that \uD835\uDC50 ! = \uD835\uDC9B ! \uD835\uDEFF + \uD835\uDC4E ! (where \uD835\uDC9B ! is the mean of time varying variables during the five sample years) and \uD835\uDC4E ! ∼ \uD835\uDC41(0, \uD835\uDF0E ! ! ) .To guarantee the nonnegativity of \uD835\uDC62 !\" , we need the distribution of \uD835\uDF16 !\" to be bounded below by the variable truncation point(-\uD835\uDEFE ! \uD835\uDC9B !\" -\uD835\uDC50 ! ). Since both \uD835\uDF16 !\" and \uD835\uDC4E ! have normal distributions, \uD835\uDC62 !\" will still have a truncated normal distribution, which can be expressed as\uD835\uDC62In conclusion, our model can be expressed as follows: the SFP regressions. We also include provincial dummies and the interaction terms between the time dummies and the provincial dummies.We estimated equation 2 for the pooled sample as well as for each province. While equation 2 was estimated using the one-step approach, we present the estimation results in two separate tables. Table 4.1 reports the coefficients for the input variables of the production function (the X it variables in equation 2),and Table 4.2 reports those for the determinants of technical efficiency (the Z it variables in equation 2). The first and second columns are based on the pooled data, and the rest of the columns are based on data from individual provinces. The data for Jiangxi, Hunan, and Sichuan are jointly estimated because we were unsuccessful in getting the translog SFP model to converge based on data from each of these provinces. We expect the results from each of these provinces to be similar because these three provinces share a high degree of similarity in agroecological and socioeconomic conditions. And all three provinces are the main migrationsending provinces in China, which is also confirmed by our descriptive evidence reported in Table2.2.The highly significant coefficients for all the interaction terms and square terms of the four types of input (top panel of Table 4.1) tend to suggest that the translog production function is a more appropriate function form than a Cobb-Douglas function form. To help interpret the relative importance of each input, we calculate the elasticity of production for each of the four inputs based on the sample mean (the bottom panel of Table 4.1).The estimated variable input elasticities are all positive as expected. Based on the pooled sample, land is the most important production factor, with an elasticity of 0.48, which means that doubling land size (while holding everything else constant) could cause crop output to increase by 48 percent. The second most important factor is other input (with an elasticity of 0.35), followed by fertilizer and other input (0.26). Labor turns out to be the least important variable input among the four, with an elasticity of 0.1. The estimation results based on data from individual provinces suggest considerable variation in the relative importance of the production factors across provinces. For example, land is the most important factor in Shandong as well as Hunan and Jiangxi, fertilizer and pesticide (or other inputs) are more important than land in Heilongjiang (or Sichuan). Given the large land endowment in Heilongjiang, it is not surprising that the marginal contribution of land is smaller than that of fertilizer and pesticide. The most robust result is the relatively small contribution of labor to grain production across provinces. Except for Heilongjiang, where the labor elasticity is 0.23, the elasticity of labor in all other provinces is less than 0.1, suggesting that labor in general is not likely to be a constrained factor of grain production in China.Turning to the efficiency equation, the results are also quite consistent for a number of variables across provinces. First of all, the mean values of several time-varying variables being significant across provinces indicates that the CRE model is a relevant specification. 5 The results are also consistent for a number of household characteristics. For example, the head's level of education has no effect on technical efficiency, but the head's age has a negative effect on technical efficiency. The family political background has no effect on farming efficiency as neither the coefficient on \"having a party member\" nor the coefficient on \"having a member in village council\" is statistically significant.Second, it is important to note that neither the total number of working members nor the composition of labor (in terms of age or gender) has any significant effect on efficiency. And these results are also highly consistent across provinces. The existing literature on internal migration in China (Zhang, Yang, Wang 2001;Du, Park, and Wang 2005;Zhao 2003) typicallyshows that migrants are generally younger members. From a technical efficiency point of view, this is not necessarily a concern if more seasoned agricultural labor can be used to replace younger agricultural labor. Another potential concern is the shift from male agricultural labor to female labor due to migration. Mu and van de Walle (2011) found that the loss of male members to migration causes the remaining female members to work significantly more hours on their own farms. Our results do not find any significant effect of the participation of female members in farming activities on farm efficiency. Putting these two effects together, our results do notsupport the concern about the potential negative effects of shifting a large number of young and male agricultural laborers away from agricultural activity.Finally, the coefficients on share of time spent on migration and share of time spent on local off-farm employment allow us to test the effects of engaging in different types of off-farm employment on farming efficiency directly. The insignificant coefficients on both variables in the pooled regressions as well as in all the regressions using data from different provinces suggest that neither migration nor local off-farm employment has any negative effect on farming efficiency. These results are also consistent with the insignificance of household demographic composition variables and the overall small labor elasticity of crop production. To further explore the potential heterogeneous effect of migration and local off-farm employment on the technical efficiency of farmers with different farm sizes, we interact these two variables with a land size dummy variable (=1 if the land size is bigger than village average, and =0 if otherwise).The positive and significant coefficient of the farm size dummy suggests that households with more land are relatively more efficient and the coefficients for the two interaction terms (between land size dummies and the two off-farm employment variables) are statistically insignificant, suggesting that migration and local off-farm employment have no effect on farming efficiency regardless of farm size.No country has experienced the scale of labor movement (from rural to urban and from the agricultural sector to the nonagricultural sector) that China is currently experiencing. According to the recent population census, more than 261 million rural residents in China worked in places other than their birthplaces in 2010 (NBSC 2012), which is greater than the total number of international migrants from all countries combined (Sirkeci, Cohen, and Ratha 2012). Meanwhile, local off-farm employment has also emerged as an important local economic activity in terms of employment and income generation. While there is not much debate on the positive contribution of migration and local off-farm employment to China's economy, there is increasing concern about the potential negative effects of moving labor away from agriculture on China's future food security. This is a critical issue as maintaining self-sufficiency in grain production will be critical for China to feed its huge population in the future. Several papers have studied the impact of migration on production and yield, with mixed results. But the impact of migration on technical efficiency is rarely studied.This paper studies the impact of migration and local off-farm employment on the technical efficiency of grain production using a large panel dataset from five provinces of China.Using an improved SFP function approach, we find that neither migration nor local off-farm employment has any negative impact on technical efficiency in grain production. This finding is also robust across all provinces, regardless of farm size. There are a number of reasons to support this finding. First, labor is in general abundant relative to land especially for provinces with limited land endowments, which is implicitly supported by the small elasticity of labor. Second, the shift from male labor to female labor or from more young labor to older labor does not affect productivity. Third, the loss of labor to migration is largely offset by the more intensive use of   Note：***、** and * denote significant at 1 percent、5 percent、10 percent, respectively.Province fixed effect, year fixed effect, and the interaction of province and year fixed effect are all included in the estimation of (1), (2), and (5). Elasticities are computed based on the parameters estimated in the top panel and the sample mean value of the output and input variables. ***、** and * denote significant at 1 percent、5 percent、10 percent, respectively. Province fixed effect, year fixed effect, and the interaction of province and year fixed effect are all included in the estimation of (1), (2), and (5). CRE =correlated random-effects.","tokenCount":"4477","images":[],"tables":["585805856_1_1.json","585805856_2_1.json","585805856_3_1.json","585805856_4_1.json","585805856_5_1.json","585805856_6_1.json","585805856_7_1.json","585805856_8_1.json","585805856_9_1.json","585805856_10_1.json","585805856_11_1.json","585805856_12_1.json","585805856_13_1.json","585805856_14_1.json","585805856_15_1.json","585805856_16_1.json","585805856_17_1.json","585805856_18_1.json","585805856_19_1.json","585805856_20_1.json","585805856_21_1.json","585805856_22_1.json","585805856_23_1.json","585805856_24_1.json","585805856_25_1.json","585805856_26_1.json","585805856_27_1.json","585805856_28_1.json","585805856_29_1.json","585805856_30_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"3cc19081798d93317147e72ad81da79a","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/926709a9-ab10-435f-a8d5-c9072bae5c82/retrieve","description":"Lynn Brown CGIAR SEMINAR SERIES Food Security Trends and Resilience-Building Priorities Co-organized by IFPRI, the CGIAR, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) SEP 1, 2023 - 9:00 TO 10:30AM EDT","id":"1385470755"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d6838809-488f-4cf3-8b84-71b33005565e","pagecount":"6","content":"More detailed and focused, expanded issues  land, water, trees -bundles of rights, common property, privatization of rights  women's assets, income flows, financial services, mobile phones, information, social protection  empowerment -concepts and measurement, WEAI  human rights -education, violence against women including IPV, food and nutrition security  enabling equality -work, inheritance, legal rights, governance public and private  women are shock absorbers for their families -assets sold first, food sacrificed,Immunization? Donor Development Policies -commitment into action, gender less than 2% of humanitarian assistance  Gender based budgeting -key sectors like health  Data -SDG monitoring only 16% of data is available for at least two points in time,  Data -IDPs only 14% documented sex and age, and only 25% of those systematically for disasters. Average displacement lasts 9 years!  Norms are powerful -even when it leads to death of womenGlass half full or half empty?? 17 SDGs -7 have no gender indicators. SDG 6,7,9,11,12,13,14,  18 countries husbands can prevent wives from working, 39 countries no equal inheritance rights, 49 countries no protection against domestic violence  750 million women and girls married before age of 18  women are just 13% of agricultural land holders  women do 2.6 times more domestic work ","tokenCount":"209","images":["1385470755_1_1.png","1385470755_1_2.png","1385470755_1_3.png","1385470755_2_1.png","1385470755_2_2.png","1385470755_3_1.png","1385470755_3_2.png","1385470755_4_1.png","1385470755_4_2.png","1385470755_5_1.png","1385470755_5_2.png","1385470755_6_1.png","1385470755_6_2.png"],"tables":["1385470755_1_1.json","1385470755_2_1.json","1385470755_3_1.json","1385470755_4_1.json","1385470755_5_1.json","1385470755_6_1.json"]}

data/part_2/1605642583.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"dbcbf527cf4de631156fde4e40cc2b78","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/36064175-a9bd-4532-9c6e-1e58261e2fe3/retrieve","description":"Extreme weather events cause considerable damage to livelihoods of smallholder farmers globally. Whilst index insurance can help farmers cope with the financial consequences of extreme weather, a major challenge for index insurance is basis risk, where insurance payouts correlate poorly with actual crop losses. We analyze to what extent the use of crop simulation models and crop phenology monitoring can reduce basis risk in index insurance. Using a biophysical process-based crop model (APSIM) applied for rice producers in Odisha, India, we simulate a synthetic yield dataset to train non-parametric statistical models to predict rice yields as a function of meteorological and phenological conditions. We find that the performance of statistical yield models depends on whether meteorological or phenological conditions are used as predictors, and whether one aggregates these predictors by season or crop growth stage. Validating the preferred statistical model with observed yield data, we find that the model explains around 54% of the variance in rice yields at the village cluster (Gram Panchayat) level, outperforming vegetation index-based models that were trained directly on the observed yield data. Our methods and findings can guide efforts to design smart phenology-based index insurance and target yield monitoring resources in smallholder farming environments.","id":"1543272093"},"keywords":["index insurance","crop yield","APSIM","leaf area index","phenological monitoring"],"sieverID":"b8d2efc4-d0b8-4b16-b2ff-a3dbdd242811","pagecount":"38","content":"Titles in this series aim to disseminate interim climate change, agriculture and food security research and practices and stimulate feedback from the scientific community.Agriculture plays a critical role in supporting livelihoods and food security for rural households across the developing world (Castañeda et al., 2018). Designing strategies to protect farmers against crop losses caused by adverse weather conditions such as droughts or floods has become a key priority for governments and donors, particularly given expected increases in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events in the coming decades due to climate change (Afshar et al., 2020). One of these strategies is to provide smallholder farmers with agricultural insurance, which offers financial protection from losses associated with extreme weather. In recent years, several agricultural insurance programs have been rolled out at scale, and large amounts of money have been invested in these programs. For instance, in the monsoon season of 2019, India's national insurance scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), covered more than 33.5 million hectares of land through subsidized crop insurance, with gross insurance premiums amounting to more than USD 3 billion. 1In developing countries, the main type of crop insurance being offered to smallholder farmers is index-based insurance. Unlike traditional insurance schemes, which is based on the direct verification of crop yield losses for each insured field, payouts from index insurance are made on the basis of an empirical relationship between a proxy index and expected yield losses (Dalhaus & Finger, 2016). Proxies used include weather indices, satellite vegetation indices, or area-yield indices, whereby yields are measured for a sub-sample of fields through crop cutting experiments (CCEs) to estimate an average yield over a given region, and payouts are made when these average yields fall below a threshold that is based on historical yields for the region. Using an objective observable index in claims settlement helps provide more timely payouts and reduces costs of loss verification for insurers, making coverage more affordable for farmers and potentially improving farmers' willingness to pay for insurance (Kos & Kloppenburg, 2019). Uptake has been generally low, though, in part due to high levels of basis risk, that is, a mismatch between the index -and thus insurance payouts -and actual yield losses (Clement, Wouter Botzen, et al., 2018).One component of basis risk is design risk, which arises from limited data availability (Hellin et al., 2019). In particular, the limited availability of observed yield data inhibits the identification and definition of reliable weather and vegetation indices that accurately predict yield losses. Whilst this is not a limitation for area-yield index insurance, high costs of conducting representative samples of CCEs in heterogeneous smallholder farming environments can lead to biased estimates of average yields, and thus basis risk. Another important driver of basis risk relates to the temporal specification of the variables used to predict crop yields. Most index-based insurance schemes trigger payouts based on indices that are defined over fixed calendar periods, often relating to the average timing of key phenological stages in a given agricultural system (Enenkel et al., 2018;Miller et al., 2020;Vroege et al., 2019). In reality, the timing of a crop's sensitivity to weather may vary significantly across fields due to differences in management practices such as variety and sowing dates, as well as meteorological conditions, which affect rates of crop development (Van Oort et al., 2011). Failure to consider this heterogeneity may lead to inaccurate estimation of yield losses and basis risk (Bucheli et al., 2020;Ceballos & Robles, 2020).In an effort to address these challenges, we analyze to what extent the integration of crop models and phenological monitoring can help reduce these design and temporal basis risk, respectively. Biophysical crop simulation models can be leveraged to generate larger synthetic yield datasets, which can then be used to train weather-or satellite-based index models (Bandara et al., 2020;Blanc, 2017;Yin & Leng, 2020) or support spatial targeting of limited numbers of CCEs that can be conducted as part of area-yield insurance products. However, to date, this approach has not been widely applied in the context of index insurance design, with limited evidence about its performance at spatial scales relevant for insurance applications (e.g. field, farm or village) or in comparison with index models derived empirically from available observational yield datasets. Approaches to reduce temporal basis risks have focused on developed countries, where detailed phenological monitoring networks exists (Dalhaus et al., 2018). In contrast, there has been limited attention on how to embed phenological information in the design and implementation of index insurance in smallholder environments, for example through use of satellite or in-situ phenology monitoring systems or technologies (Hufkens et al., 2019;Parkes et al., 2019).We address these knowledge gaps through a case study on rice yield estimation in the state of Odisha, India, an area of extensive rainfed rice production, where agriculture is highly exposed to risks posed by monsoonal rainfall variability. We demonstrate how the integration of crop models, phenological monitoring through satellite remote sensing, and machine learning techniques can support the design and implementation of smart phenology-based index insurance products at spatial scales relevant for smallholder communities. Our findings highlight the opportunity for robust and scalable yield estimation by combining satellite data with machine learning and crop modelling. We show that this approach can significantly outperform models that rely solely on satellite imagery. At the same time, our results demonstrate several remaining challenges that need to be addressed in order to accurately and reliably estimate yields at plot scales in smallholder farming environments.In the following subsections, we outline our methodological approach to estimate rice yields.In Section 2.1 we provide information about the case study area, including key characteristics of agricultural production in Odisha. In Section 2.2, we describe the modelling approach used to develop a database of synthetic yield data for our study area, followed in Section 2.3 by the statistical techniques used to relate simulated yield data to relevant crop, phenology, and weather conditions. In Section 2.4, we discuss the process for validating statistical models against both synthetic and observed yield data. We also contrast performance of our models with estimates of yields derived directly through regression analysis using satellite vegetation indices.Our analysis focuses on rice yield estimation in the state of Odisha in eastern India (Figure 1).Agricultural production in Odisha is dominated by small-scale farmers, with most rice production occurring during the summer monsoon season (Kharif). Rice production in the region is mainly rainfed, reflecting the relatively limited access to affordable and reliable irrigation water supplies in eastern India. Monsoonal rainfall variability is therefore a key production risk for many farmers. For example, a late onset of the monsoon leads to delays in rice transplanting, resulting in yield losses due to use of older seedlings and exposure to end of season temperature stress (Balwinder-Singh et al., 2019). Similarly, a lack of access to irrigation limits farmers' ability to protect crops against dry spells during the season, which can have damaging impacts on yields if droughts occur around critical development stages such as anthesis and grain filling (Cornish et al., 2015).To support our analysis of alternative yield estimation approaches, observed yield data were collected through CCEs for a total of 80 paddy rice fields located in two blocks of Jajpur district, Odisha. Yield data were collected in late 2019, following the end of the 2019 summer monsoon season that was characterized by above average rainfall and early starting time. Rice fields were sampled from 20 Gram Panchayats (GPs)-clusters of nearby villages-as GPs are the primary spatial unit to estimate area-yields in the context of the Indian Government's National Crop Insurance Program (PMFBY). In each of the selected GPs, field staff would randomly select among consenting farmers the fields of 5 farmers for seasonal monitoring. Monitoring was done through smartphone images of the crops, and at the end of the season, as the crop had reached maturity, field staff collected yield data through CCEs. Field sizes range from 375 to 800 square meters (mean of 630), which are typical of smallholder farming in eastern India. Designing index insurance products requires establishing a relationship between crop yields and one or more predictors (that is, the variables used to operationalize the insurance 'index') that can be monitored and observed at a lower cost than would be required to manually verify yields directly through surveys or CCEs. However, limited availability of in-situ yield data represents a major barrier to estimating these relationships accurately and reliably. Resulting biases in the estimated relationships between yields and predictor variables or indices introduce basis risk. An increase in data availability could help address such basis risk. We therefore analyze whether index performance can be enhanced by relying on ensemble process-based crop simulations to generate synthetic yield data, representing yields across a range of potential weather conditions and agricultural management practices that would be infeasible to observe directly through in-situ data collection.To develop a database of synthetic yield data, through a process-based crop model-APSIM (Agricultural Production System sIMulator)-we simulate the response of rice yields across a range of potential weather conditions and management practices in our study area. APSIM's rice module, ORYZA2000, is a dynamic physiological model of rice development, which has been widely applied for studies of both rainfed and irrigated rice production systems across south and southeast Asia (Balwinder-Singh et al., 2016, 2019;Gaydon et al., 2017). Thus, the synthetic yield data go beyond the limited observation data stemming from the CCEs, which will be used only to validate the statistical models, not to train the statistical models.APSIM simulations consider a range of plausible weather and management practice scenarios observed in our study region. Specifically, we varied the parameters in the model specifying sowing dates (from 15 May to 15 Aug on one-week intervals), seedling ages (from 25 to 40 days on 5 days intervals), planting density (100, 150, or 200 plants per square meter), number of hills (from 30 to 45 hills on 5 hill intervals), and fertilizer amounts (50, 100, or 150 kilograms of urea per hectare) in accordance to information on typical management practices drawn from published literature (Balwinder-Singh et al., 2016, 2019) and state-level agronomic advisory documents (Dhaliwal & Kular, 2014). We carried out APSIM simulations for each combination of parameter values (2016 in total) for 100 weather years, resulting in a total of 201,600 unique yield simulations. Weather time series used in the crop simulations were developed using a weather generator (LARS-WG) and relying on 39 years of historical observed meteorological data between 1981 and 2020, obtained from ERA5 v5.1.3 (including daily minimum and maximum temperature, total precipitation, and solar radiation).For each simulation, we defined crop growth parameters in APSIM according to the dominant local rice cultivar -MTU7029. MTU7029 (often referred to as Swarna rice) is a long-duration variety, for which parameters in APSIM have been calibrated and validated previously by Balwinder-Singh et al. (2019). All simulations assumed that rice was transplanted into a clay loam soil -the dominant soil type for rice production areas in the region based on spatial analysis of soil texture data provided by SoilGrids (Hengl et al., 2017) -with hydraulic properties determined using pedotransfer functions (Saxton and Rawls., 2006). Specifically, the volumetric water contents used in our analysis for the lower limit, drained upper limit, and saturation levels were estimated as 18%, 32.3%, and 46.1% respectively, with saturated hydraulic conductivity assumed to be 20 mm/day and 1 mm/day for the top five and bottom soil layers (out of six), respectively, in line with APSIM guidelines for ponded transplanted rice simulations (Single season crop simulations -APSIM, n.d.).The variables that are used as predictors of yields in index insurance can vary in terms of the underlying type of data (such as various weather variables or indicators of crop development such as leaf area index) and the temporal period over which each predictor is aggregated (for instance, whether one uses the average for the entire growing season versus the average for a specific phenological stage), along with the spatial scale at which yields are estimated (plot versus village, GP or district aggregation).To assess the implications of these choices, we fit 28 alternative statistical models that vary in terms of the underlying assumptions about which variables and what level of temporal aggregation are most useful for explaining variations in the synthetic yield data generated by APSIM as described in Section 2.2 (Figure 2). Specifically, the 28 alternative model specifications developed consider different unique combinations of three potential meteorological and agronomic predictor variables (that is, temperature: T, precipitation: P, and LAI: L, resulting in seven unique predictor combinations of T, P, L, TP, TL, PL, and TPL), along with four different assumptions about the time period over which each predictor is aggregated for yield prediction on a given plot.The four different temporal specifications that we consider in our analysis include: ( 1  Each of the 28 models was fit using random forests (RF) (Breiman, 2001), a cumulative learning algorithm for regression and classification problems based on decision trees and bagging (bootstrap aggregation). Many studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the RF model in modeling agricultural biophysical processes, particularly those that are nonlinear (Everingham et al., 2016;Jeong et al., 2016;Sakamoto, 2020). During the training process, RF builds a 'forest' from regression trees that are developed from a bootstrap sample of input datasets. Each bootstrap sample contains two-thirds of the input dataset while the remaining samples that are not included in training, are used to validate the model and assess the importance of predictor variables. Once the model construction terminates, predictions can be done by considering the expected value of all individual predictions of regression trees in the forest. We performed this RF analysis using the randomForest package v 4.6-14 (Liaw & Wiener, 2002) in R, and considering the default parameters (e.g., number of trees) suggested by package developers in R environment (R Core Team, 2018).We first compared the ability of each alternative model design to reproduce synthetic yields simulated by APSIM, focusing on the R-Squared and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of yield estimates in comparison with the actual APSIM simulated yields. For this analysis, we split 201,600 simulated yield observations into training and validation samples through a random selection, considering 80% of the observations as training data and the remaining 20% of the observations as data not used during the development phase of the statistical models.After identifying the best performing statistical model for emulating APSIM simulated yields, we seek to evaluate the ability of this model to reproduce observed yields in our study area.To determine yields for each of the 80 unique fields in our observed yield dataset (Section 2.1), we obtained weather and crop development observations for the 2019 rice growing season over our study region. Daily time series of precipitation and temperature (minimum and maximum) were obtained from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset at 0.25° x 0.25° resolution (Hersbach et al., 2020). Timing of rice growth stages was determined from NDVI time seriesinterpolated from discrete values obtained from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery-for each of the 80 fields in our sample. Specifically, we assumed that the minimum NDVI value at the inflection point on the rising limb of the curve corresponds with the transplanting date, and that harvest occurs when the NDVI time series equals 0.25 on the falling limb. Timing of other growth stage transitions was determined based on typical time from transplanting to reach the start of each stage for Swarna rice: 41 days, 61 days and 75 days for start of panicle initiation, flowering and grain filling, respectively. LAI time series for each field were generated based on spectral band data obtained from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 imagery retrieved through Google Earth Engine (Gorelick et al., 2017). Estimates of LAI were generated for each cloud free pixel based on spectral band data provided by Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 imagery using an inverted radiative transfer model (RTM) (Jacquemoud et al., 2009). The RTM inversions were developed by running the PROSAIL model 5000 times to generate synthetic reflectance data for a range of possible combinations of rice canopy, leaf and soil properties (Table 1), following parameter ranges reported in previous applications for rice LAI estimation (Campos-Taberner et al., 2016). We use the simulated reflectance data to develop statistical models between the spectral bands collected by Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 to LAI using a procedure similar to the RF approach described previously in Section 2.3. To develop statistical models for LAI, we split data equally at random between training and validation. The validated RTM model is subsequently used to convert observed reflectance on a given field into a discrete estimate of rice LAI for each available cloud-free observation, which is then converted to a continuous LAI time series for each field by fitting a double logistic function. Estimated yields were compared with observed data from CCEs using R 2 , RMSE, and Normalized Room Mean Square Error (NRMSE) statistics at two spatial scales: (1) plot scale (80 observations), and (2) GP scale (20 observations, with an average of 4 plots per GP). As noted previously, the latter equates to a spatial scale similar to a cluster of nearby villages, which is the lowest level of governing institutions in India's administrative structure.Importantly, GPs form the primarily spatial unit for area-yield insurance within the Indian government's national crop insurance program, which at present relies on data from manual CCEs to verify crop yield losses and any resulting payouts to farmers. Understanding performance of our methods at this scale therefore is of particular importance for understanding potential opportunities and challenges for satellite data and crop models to help reduce costs and time associated with crop insurance in India. We first compare the performance of different model specifications (with varying predictor variables and varying levels of temporal aggregation for these variables) in terms of their ability to reproduce the synthetic yield data generated using APSIM. This is equivalent to selecting the best performing index for the design of an index insurance product. Figure 3 summarizes the performance (left: R 2 , right: RMSE) of each candidate model during validation against the validation data not used during training of the RF models.From inspection of Figure 3, two trends are apparent. First, the models more accurately reproduce heterogeneity in APSIM-simulated rice yields when considering greater temporal disaggregation of predictor variables (i.e., moving from left to right along a row in Figure 3).The greatest improvement in model performance is found when including predictor variables disaggregated by crop growth stage (DSTG models). The RMSE error across potential models reduces by 5% to 85% (with an average of 47%) and 8% to 80% (with average of 50%) when input variables are aggregated by fixed and dynamic growth stage as opposed to over the fixed and dynamic seasonal -FS and DS -models respectively. However, the reduction in RMSE in yield estimates from aggregating predictor variables over a dynamic aggregation approach compared to a fixed aggregation approach is much smaller (40-86% with an average of 60% across models considering different combinations of temperature, precipitation, and leaf area index predictors).The second noticeable trend from examining Figure 3 is that model performance improves by integrating multiple weather and crop predictor variables. A comparison of alternative model configurations using unseen validation datasets in Figure 3 (i.e., comparing across rows in each figure panel) shows that the best model performance in terms of both R 2 and RMSE is achieved when combining temperature, precipitation, and leaf area index predictors. Reliance on a single variable alone appears to reduce the capacity of our models to accurately capture the variability in crop yields simulated by APSIM. Leaf area index alone is found to be the least robust individual predictor of yields, with models based on temperature, precipitation, or a combination of these two variables generating significantly more accurate yield estimates. For example, for dynamic stage model specifications, the RMSE of models considering only leaf area index as a predictor is 572.9 kg/ha compared with 238.7 kg/ha for models including only weather predictors (temperature and precipitation) -an increase in RMSE of approximately 140% when only using leaf area index as a predictor of yields. For application in the context of agricultural insurance, it is important to assess the ability of statistical models to reproduce not only synthetic yields simulated by APSIM but also observed yield in real world smallholder farming environments. We therefore evaluate the ability of our We find that our statistical model, developed based on the synthetic yield data simulated using APSIM, explains around 54% of the variance in observed rice yields at GP level, with an RMSE of 546.27 kg/ha (Figure 4b and Table 2). Performance of yield estimation at plot level is lower, with our model able to explain approximately 26% of observed yield variability with an RMSE of 860.1 kg/ha (Figure 4a and Table 2). Model accuracy is lower when predicting observed yields than when predicting APSIM simulated yields, likely due to constraints imposed by the spatial resolution of weather data, gaps in LAI time series caused by cloud cover, and uncertainties in the underlying radiative transfer model used to translate spectral data obtained from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 into estimates of rice LAI during the season.However, an R 2 of 0.54 for GP-level yields suggests that such an approach may offer a useful tool for the design of index insurance products at this scale, for example in the context of supporting area-yield index insurance products within the Indian Government's PMFBY crop insurance program. As previously highlighted, a common challenge when developing and designing index insurance products is the limited availability of yield observation datasets to train underlying models that quantify yield losses based on proxy data. To evaluate the value provided by using crop models to generate larger synthetic yield training datasets, we compare the performance of our models reported in Section 3.2 with plot and GP level yield estimates derived using statistical vegetation index (VI)-based models developed by using observed yield data from CCEs. This is a common approach underlying design of many existing index insurance products in India and other parts of the world (Brock Porth et al., 2020;Kölle et al., 2020;Turvey & McLaurin, 2012), and, as such, understanding what -if any -improvements in accuracy are with larger RMSEs; on average, RMSEs are 12% higher than in the statistical yield model that we estimated from APSIM simulations.Moreover, VI-based models are also associated with higher levels of uncertainty depending on which data are included in model training (for instance, we find a 47.63 standard deviation of RMSE values of 1000 bootstrap EVI based yield estimations at the GP scale). Where the total number of yield observation data are limited, as is the case here, and is common in almost all smallholder environments, this result suggests that use of APSIM or other crop models can play an important role in improving the accuracy and robustness of yield-index relationships necessary for designing index insurance products, relative to satellite vegetation indices alone. Relative to other forms of insurance and risk financing, index insurance schemes can provide a relatively low cost and easy-to-implement solution to protect smallholder farmers against production risks posed by extreme weather events and climate change (Barnett & Mahul, 2007;Clarke et al., 2012). However, the value of these products for farmers and insurers is strongly predicated on the ability to base insurance payouts on index relationships that reliably and accurately quantify crop yield losses at disaggregated spatial and temporal scales (Clement, Botzen, et al., 2018).We show that combining crop modelling and satellite-based crop phenology measurements can provide a scalable solution for deriving the relationship between yields and proxy indices at spatial scales relevant for agricultural insurance. Our findings highlight that accounting for field-level heterogeneity in crop phenology and combining multiple types of predictor variables, including both weather and leaf area indices, can significantly enhance model accuracy, in particular when aggregating to spatial units larger than an individual plot; which is common for area-yield index insurance in smallholder farming systems such as those in our study area (Shirsath et al., 2019). It is also important to note in this regard that in the crop model simulations, we only used publicly available information on typical ranges of cropping practices and varieties to generate synthetic yield training data; we did not measure these variables to implement crop models at the plot level, which adds to the scalability of this approach.Our findings do not support a finding from previous research combining earth observation data and crop models: that yields can be estimated using either a single (peak or aggregated total) value of LAI for the season, or multiple LAI predictors that relate to specific satellite image dates but are not directly correlated with crop growth stage timings (Burke & Lobell, 2017;Jain et al., 2017Jain et al., , 2019)). Due to the lack of variation across space and time of our field level observations, we were unable to validate all model combinations and aggregation levels with field measurements. Nonetheless, the comparison of models derived from simulated data in terms of their ability to capture heterogeneity in simulated yields suggest that disaggregating predictor variables by crop development stages enhances the accuracy of predicted yields relative to simpler seasonal aggregation. This will be true especially when heterogeneity in phenology between fields and seasons is large due to differences in farm management practices, crop varietal choices, and weather conditions. We also find that insurance index performance can be improved further by combining LAI and weather predictor variables, which we attribute the ability of weather data (in particular temperature predictors) to capture crop yield losses associated with deficient grain filling or pollination that would not be fully captured by changes in LAI alone (Waldner et al., 2019).Although the value of phenology data for improving yield estimation and index insurance has been demonstrated previously (Conradt et al., 2015;Dalhaus et al., 2018;Ortiz-Bobea et al., 2019), these studies have focused on developed countries where extensive and longstanding phenological monitoring networks exist. We show that it is possible to replicate some of these improvements in yield estimation accuracy, and we highlight for smallholder environments the potential to reduce basis risk in index insurance using satellite-derived information on the timing of key development phases. The value of phenological information is largest when considering not only heterogeneity in the timing of the start and onset of the crop growing season but also in the timing of specific individual growth stages. This result is consistent with evidence suggesting that effects of extreme weather on yields of rice and other crops are strongly dependent on the timing of shocks during the season, with potential for larger yield losses if weather-related shocks occur during critical growth periods such as anthesis (Barlow et al., 2015;Cornish et al., 2015). Critically, only adjusting the seasonal time period for index insurance contracts -for example to account for potential impacts of delayed transplanting of rice in years for with late monsoon onset (Balwinder-Singh et al., 2019) -would fail to exploit the true value of phenological information for yield estimation.While our results suggest potential benefits of using crop model simulations to support the design of agricultural index insurance products, several approaches could be used to improve the accuracy of yield estimation at the plot level, which would aid both the design of plot-level index insurance and the accuracy of larger scale area-yield index insurance. For example, in this study we rely on a relatively simple satellite-based method for estimating intra-seasonal crop phenology. Integration of in-situ imagery, for example taken by farmers through smartphones at regular intervals during the season (Hufkens et al., 2019), could help to reduce uncertainties in satellite-derived of growth stage timings while also providing a supplementary source of information to help to validate fitted LAI time series. Such data would be especially valuable for crops grown during the rainy season, a period where substantial gaps in satellite imagery often occur due to high levels of cloud cover. In addition, in-situ imagery could provide a mechanism for detecting crop damage that may be difficult to reliably correlate with weather or vegetation indices, for example mechanical damage to crops caused by flooding, wind and hailstorms, or pests and diseases (Ceballos et al., 2019). These factors are a potentially important driver of errors in plot-level yield estimation, suggesting that integration of in-situ imagery should contribute to reduce basis risk especially at these finer spatial scales.A further factor that may explain the larger errors in yield estimations observed in our analysis at the plot versus GP scales is the coarse resolution of weather data available in our study region. The ERA-5 reanalysis dataset used in this study has a spatial resolution of 0.25 x 0.25 degrees (approximately 25km x 25km), which is sufficient to capture heterogeneity in weather conditions between GPs but not between individual plots within a GP. Given the important role of weather data in yield estimation (Section 3.1), this suggests that provision of finer resolution weather data could play an important role in supporting reductions in basis risk of index insurance products. However, development and validation of fine-scale weather data products remains challenging in many smallholder environments due to the limited density and completeness of in-situ weather records (Norton et al., 2013), in contrast to more extensive monitoring networks found in regions such as Europe and North America (Dalhaus & Finger, 2016).Finally, a key finding from our analysis is that the use of crop models provides added value for yield estimation beyond the use of statistical models based solely on satellite vegetation indices. Nevertheless, it is important to note that while our analysis considers two of the most commonly used vegetation indices for index insurance and yield estimation (NDVI and EVI), alternative types and combinations could have been used. For example, studies by Enenkel et. al. (2018)  (Enenkel et al., 2018), andMollmann et al., (2020)  (Möllmann et al., 2020) showed that developing more complex statistical models using multiple types of vegetation indices from different satellite datasets (e.g., Sentinel-1 or Sentinel-2) can yield more robust crop yield information. Hence, future research should seek to evaluate a broader range of vegetation index models to further explore the added value provided by integration of crop models alongside satellite and other data sources. Moreover, future analyses should also consider how trade-offs between the two types of methods are affected by the amount and completeness of observational yield data and satellite imagery used to train statistical VIbased models. We hypothesize that the added value of crop models will be highest in environments where observational yield datasets are smaller, where satellite imagery is strongly affected by cloud cover, and where small plot sizes pose a challenge for remote sensing with currently available resolutions of satellite imagery; each of these are common characteristics of smallholder farming environments that are the focus of this study.Index-based insurance provides a potential solution to transfer risks caused by crop failure away from smallholder farmers, providing farmers with a timely payout in the event of a poor harvest without the need for expensive manual verification of yields as in the case of traditional indemnity insurance. However, basis risk, that is, a poor correlation between actual yield losses and losses estimated based on the insurance index, remains a key challenge to scaling index insurance, reducing farmers' willingness to pay for insurance products and their ability to adapt to climate variability and change. In this study, we evaluate the potential to improve the accuracy of index insurance by combining process-based crop models, satellitederived phenological metrics, and geospatial weather data to design index insurance products, focusing on a case study of rainfed rice production in the state of Odisha in eastern India.We show that when accounting for field-level heterogeneity in crop development and timing of extreme weather events, it is possible to reliably estimate rice yields without the need for extensive observational yield training datasets, and without having to apply real-time datademanding plot-level crop simulations. Our analysis demonstrates that yield estimation is improved by considering both agronomic (i.e., leaf area index) and meteorological (i.e., temperature and precipitation) drivers of yield variability. Performance also increases when aggregating individual plot-level estimates to village or GP-level scales, suggesting that approaches proposed in this paper may have value in reducing reliance on the time and resource intensive CCEs that are typically used to support assessment of losses in area-yield index insurance products in India.Our findings further show that the accuracy of yield estimation by our preferred crop model and satellite information approach significantly outperforms models based solely on satellite vegetation indices and is consistent with existing research using crop models and satellite data","tokenCount":"5413","images":["1543272093_3_1.png","1543272093_13_1.png","1543272093_17_1.png","1543272093_22_1.png","1543272093_24_1.png"],"tables":["1543272093_1_1.json","1543272093_2_1.json","1543272093_3_1.json","1543272093_4_1.json","1543272093_5_1.json","1543272093_6_1.json","1543272093_7_1.json","1543272093_8_1.json","1543272093_9_1.json","1543272093_10_1.json","1543272093_11_1.json","1543272093_12_1.json","1543272093_13_1.json","1543272093_14_1.json","1543272093_15_1.json","1543272093_16_1.json","1543272093_17_1.json","1543272093_18_1.json","1543272093_19_1.json","1543272093_20_1.json","1543272093_21_1.json","1543272093_22_1.json","1543272093_23_1.json","1543272093_24_1.json","1543272093_25_1.json","1543272093_26_1.json","1543272093_27_1.json","1543272093_28_1.json","1543272093_29_1.json","1543272093_30_1.json","1543272093_31_1.json","1543272093_32_1.json","1543272093_33_1.json","1543272093_34_1.json","1543272093_35_1.json","1543272093_36_1.json","1543272093_37_1.json","1543272093_38_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"e0306dafe3227af84a285c3545053084","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/a74c7d00-82d9-4087-b11c-a3e57dcca172/retrieve","description":"South Asia is primarily an agrarian economy facing the five transitions of population growth, urbanization, increasing income, shift toward animal-based food, and climate change simultaneously. In the process of ensuring food sufficiency under the intertwined challenges posed by these ongoing transitions, the boundaries of natural resources have been violated with adverse impacts on the health of the ecosystem. The application of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is viewed as an important strategy for imparting resilience to the food system in addressing the interconnected issues of food security through improved productivity and adaptation to and mitigation of the impacts of climate change. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) South Asia, in collaboration with its national partners, charted out and pursued studies for the policy and institutions required in upscaling CSA for the extensive South Asia region taking these broad CSA objectives in consideration. The important subthemes of this report include prioritization of CSA technologies for different agroclimatic regions, government policies for CSA, index-based insurance and climate risk management, and climate-smart investment and its implications on food security and farmers’ income.","id":"-1982240984"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"391da12e-3ad3-4e1e-98c2-eecff723b396","pagecount":"37","content":"Background I. Climate change and food security in South Asia II. CSA and goals of CCAFS research program in South Asia III. Institutional and policy-related research gaps in CSA IV. IFPRI's role in implementing the CCAFS program in South Asia 2. Prioritizing Climate-Smart Technologies in South Asia I. Prioritizing climate-smart technology in the IGP II. Prioritizing CSA in tribal-dominated agriculture III. Climate-smart technology intensification in semi-arid regions IV. Adaptation to climate change-induced salinity intrusion in Bangladesh V. Gender-responsive approach of CSA prioritization 3. Government Policies and CSA in South Asia I. Unfolding government policies toward CSA II. Role and impact of development policies on adaptation and mitigation of climate change through CSA III. Impact of government policies on small farmers to reduce climate risk 4. Index-Based Insurance and Climate Risk Management I. Index-based insurance -a risk transfer instrument to promote CSA II. Experience with WIBCI in India 5. Climate-Smart Investment -Food Security and Farmers' Income I. Climate-smart investment planning model -Risk minimization approach II. Climate-smart investment planning model -Integrated modeling approach 6. Concluding Remarks and Way Forward I. Major achievements II. Embracing CSA friendly policy environment in South Asia III. A future vision for scaling up CSA• The prioritized CSA technology suites and the crop area under them change withtime. An analysis based on the application of CSAP in the state of Bihar showed that the proportion of technologies stacked in the optimal technology suite changed with time. There appears a trend toward more efficient technologies with higher unit costs as the state moves on the path to more sustainable development in a phased manner.• There is a considerable area under rainfed agriculture in semi-arid regions like Telangana. The productivity and profitability-based CSA technology prioritization may not work in these areas having extreme weather. The prioritization scheme must identify the most effective technologies to minimize farmers' risk. On-farm rainwater harvesting ponds together with solarized pumps and micro-irrigation were the preferred technologies in such situations.• Generation of the full benefits of CSA requires a technology package because single technology proves insufficient. This approach offers multiple choices, tagged with different costs and benefits, would improve the efficiency of resources and investment. It would be particularly beneficial in tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand which have low human development index and weak financial strength.• Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and the degree of preference and WTP were closely associated. The WTP of women for labor reduces at higher WEAI as they become more empowered and thereby exercise better control over their labor allocation for different farm operations.Implementation of technological innovations requires supporting policies and institutions to become part of development plans. Following interventions were found to influence CSA adoption.• Rationalization of subsidy and minimum support price policies: Business as usual policies, characterized by subsidized groundwater extraction, minimum support price for water-guzzling crops, and low level of CSA technologies were not sustainable, and it may burst the groundwater-based agro-economic bubble. Punjab, and similarly placed Haryana, have no option but to go for fast CSA outscaling to restore sustainability and profitability of farming.• Groundwater pricing: Priced groundwater coupled with high CSA adoption (as per the IFPRI's Sub-National Agricultural Policy (SNAP) model simulations) can cumulatively minimize water consumption by 15 billion cubic meters per year, and reduce 23 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 2018-19 and 2050-51.• Custom hiring: Several technologies like LLL, zero-till (ZT), and seed planters have only seasonal applications, and therefore establishment of custom hiring services should be facilitated to promote their adoption by small farmers.• Mainstreaming of technologies in development programs: The cost of technology has a great bearing on adoption. Therefore, climate-smart technologies in consonance with regional preferences may be included in ongoing government programs, allowing some of the private cost to be shared by the government.• Provisioning funds saved from reduced subsidies for incentivization of CSA technologies: The high-scale adoption of CSA technologies brings in a significant reduction in water, energy, and fertilizer consumption, all of which are highly subsidized. Estimate for Punjab shows that money saved due to reduced subsidy burden would be more than sufficient for incentivizing the adoption of CSA, with the additional advantages of restoring groundwater balance and reduction in GHG emissions.• Providing strength of economy and power of scale to small farm holders: Contract farming (CF) and Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) have proved helpful to small and marginal farmers by overcoming constraints of inadequate access to assets (land, water, and human capital), technology, infrastructure, and markets which are responsible for differential impacts of climate change.• Women participation in CSA: To promote faster adoption of agro-technology innovations among women farmers, agriculture extension workers and policymakers should emphasize technology attributes like labor-saving, for which women farmers show high preference.Resource-constrained small farm holders mostly depend on risk transfer and risk sharing safety nets for adopting CSA technologies on a scale. The following steps would help increase the penetration of insurance.• Establish the empirical relationship between insurance and CSA adoption: Insurance, a risk transfer mechanism, appears to be a desirable intervention for promoting CSA, particularly in low-income and highly vulnerable regions. The correlation between insurance and CSA adoption, though, remains to be empirically established.• Bundling insurance with other services: To reduce the cost of insurance operations in case of low-value but high-volume policies, as is the case with small farm holders, bundling with other value-added services improves economic viability. For example, bundling picture-based insurance (PBI) with plant-based advisories (PBA) improves the adaptive capacity of farmers and also helps lower insurance premiums.• Community-based insurance: Community-level weather index-based crop insurance (WIBCI) suits the small and marginal farmers better than the formal sector. It has been successfully implemented, but requires a large number of dedicated NGOs to cover the vast geographical area. • Increased investment in irrigation infrastructure: The frequency of droughts is set to increase under climate change in semi-arid regions like Telangana. Therefore, investment in irrigation infrastructure has to be a priority to reduce risk-return trade-off.• CSA can double farmers' income: The investment requirements in CSA technologies (including crop diversification, farm ponds, micro-irrigation, and conservation agriculture) in the state of Punjab would be less than the subsidy burden on account of water, electricity, and fertilizers, with additional benefits in terms of stabilization of groundwater table, reduced GHG emissions and doubling of farmers' income.• Investment in information networks needs to increase: The current density of information networks is low. As access to information is the key element in the adoption of new technologies, more investment is needed to strengthen the information network for increased access to farmers spread in far-flung areas.To sum up, it may be said that besides identifying location-specific appropriate CSA technologies, investments, and policies, the IFPRI South Asia Team on CSA has made a very useful contribution to CSA upscaling approach by developing two important toolsthe Sub National Planning Model (SNPM), and the CSAP toolkit -which has general applicability. The CSAP toolkit, in particular, can support developing countries in their preparation of National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) framework.The limitations of the present research include the non-uniform distribution and low density of study sites across South Asia, and crop production centricity to the exclusion of livestock, fishery, and post-production activities. Further studies are required to remove the aforesaid limitations as applicability of CSA technologies remain site and commodityspecific.The world is faced with the grave issue of food security owing to population explosion, changing diets, and the increasing demand for animal-based food to be met from the degrading and declining natural resources, which in turn are already tremendously strained due to progressive global warming. CSA is being advocated to meet these imminent challenges as an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural development under the new realities of climate change (Lipper et al. 2014) Climate change is a fact now accepted as impacting all sectors of the economy including agriculture. Its impacts are not felt uniformly across the world, with the irony being that most of the negative impacts are predicted to occur in regions where the increase in food demand would be highest by 2050. The projections of adverse impacts on agriculture for South Asia are quite alarming as it is home to more than 75 percent of the region's rural poor who are dependent on rain-fed agriculture, livestock, and forestry for their livelihoods.Climate-induced food insecurity will have far-reaching consequences on the stability of the countries of South Asia.Projections based on the application of IFPRI's IMPACT model and the Global Circulation Models (GCM) at 8.5 representative concentration pathway (RCP) and socio-economic pathway (SSP)2, implying medium challenge, indicate that the negative impact of climate change by 2050 could be as high as US$1.01 trillion for the next 40 years, with consumers bearing most of the costs due to increase in food prices (Pal et al. 2019). Farmers, though, stand to gain US$52 billion due to higher prices for their produce, which would more than compensate for the general decline in production. Food will become less accessible with increasing prices, especially for the poor, reducing the average per capita consumption of all food crops by 1.7 percent in 2030 and by 3.2 percent in 2050 (Pal et al. 2019).A look at the ramifications at the country level is warranted since there will be large spatial variations in impact. Bangladesh tops the list in respect of adverse repercussions, followed by India, Nepal, and Afghanistan. Cline (2007) projected in a study that agriculture output may fall by 22 percent in Bangladesh by 2080 without the benefits of carbon fertilization, and by 10 percent if the country can take advantage of carbon fertilization by creating additional irrigation facilities. The situation in Sri Lanka is only slightly better even with CO2 fertilization with an 8 percent decline. India's production in 2050 is projected to decline by 9.9 percent for food crops, 11.6 percent for cereals, 13.7 percent for fruits and vegetables, 7.2 percent for oilseeds, and by 2.7 percent for pulses. Roots and tubers production within the same period is projected to increase by 9.4 percent mainly due to favorable yield effects of climate change on this group of food crops.The climate crisis is a major threat to our food systems, undermining decades of progress in providing more nutritious diets to a growing global population (Climate action to transform food systems -CGIAR).A number of programs have been launched around the world, including across South Asia, realizing the extreme importance of keeping global temperatures under control for the sustained welfare of society. CCAFS, under the auspices of CGIAR, has been one of the important programs at the international level charged with the overall objective of harnessing the science and the expertise of CGIAR and its partners to catalyze positive change toward CSA, food systems, and landscape.CSA is essentially an integrative approach to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change that explicitly aims to achieve the following three objectives (CCAFS-Phase II 2016).• Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security, and development;• Adapting and building the resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and The CGIAR Research Program on CCAFS is a collaboration among CGIAR centers in which IFPRI was identified as a lead partner for scaling up CSA through policies and institutions. This program is aimed at prioritizing climate-smart interventions through decision support systems in partnership with the key stakeholders. It is also aimed at developing effective policies and innovative institutions to scale up the concept of CSA at regional, national, and sub-national levels.IFPRI-South Asia charted out and pursued the following studies keeping in view the broad objectives of the theme to realise the policies and institutions needed for upscaling CSA in the extensive South Asia region.• Prioritizing climate-smart technologies for crop agriculture. The aim was to analyze the feasibility of various technologies across different agro-climatic regions and their priorities.• Assessing farmers' preferences of climate-smart technologies across various regions. The plan was to prioritize technologies according to farmers' willingness to adopt climate-smart technologies for their farm activities.• Assessing the impact of climate-smart technologies on crop productivity and climate change adaptation. This involved preparation of case studies to assess the effectiveness and adaptability of climate-smart technologies during extreme climate events.• Developing a dynamic partial equilibrium model to analyze the impact of climatesmart technologies and investment to achieve the complementary objectives of improving farmers' income, resource use efficiency, and GHG mitigation for the agriculture sector.• Assessing the role of crop insurance policy to cope with climate risks.• Screening of existing policies within the context of CSA. The idea is to identify government policies that lead to adaptation and maladaptation to climate change, so that convergence among the policies can be done more scientifically to achieve the goal of CSA.CSA has the potential to deliver 'triple wins' by contributing to multiple objectives by sustainably increasing productivity and food security. The application of CSA technologies being context-specific has to be based as per the need on the ground, integrating agroclimatic and socio-economic conditions, governance arrangements, institutional structures, financing mechanisms, and adoption capacities of the farmers. The prioritization framework uses a four-phase approach including assessment of CSA technologies, identification of top CSA options, cost-benefit analyses, selecting a portfolio of CSA technologies and practices, and investment requirement. The prioritization in the present study was performed using two methodologies, the first being assessment of farmers' preferences of climate-smart technologies and the second being CSFI.These studies seek to investigate the potential technologies that would help farmers adapt and/or reduce the risk of climate change, the preferred technologies and/or interventions in regions differentiated in terms of their natural resource bases and socio-economic conditions, the willingness of the farmers to pay for the technological options and the necessary conditions for success in large-scale adoption of the different choices, and alignment of farmers' choices and WTP with government policies.The IGP has been identified as a region where climate change is projected to significantly impact agricultural productivity, adversely affecting the sustainability of the rice-wheat production system around which India's food security is hinged. Agriculture in this region is dominated by many marginal farmers and smallholders with varying levels of knowledge, skills, capital, and resource bases. It is hypothesized that farmers' choices can be ascertained through their WTP for climate-smart technologies and interventions, and the WTP is differentiated by the attributes of the technologies, agro-climatic conditions, and the backgrounds of the farmers. The WTP has been assessed by the two well-known methods of contingent valuation and stated preference, employing scoring and bidding (referred to as WTP) in eliciting farmers' preferences.The CGIAR's program on CCAFS is spread to several districts in the IGP. The districts of Karnal in Haryana (western IGP) and Vaishali in Bihar (eastern IGP), the key sites of the CGIAR Research Program, were selected for detailed study.The The preferences in the two regions have commonalities as well as differences in terms of both crops as well as non-crop-specific technologies.• LLL was the most preferred technology across the regions and crops, whereas zero tillage was the preferred technology only for wheat. LLL has also found favor in rainfed semi-arid regions of Karnataka.• Farmers in western IGP had a high preference for DSR and zero preference for SRI, while the case was just the opposite in eastern IGP.• Wheat-growing farmers in western IGP showed a marked preference for irrigation scheduling.• No-crop-specific interventions like weather advisory service and crop insurance were liked in both regions, but the order of preference for these interventions was high in eastern IGP.• All wheat CSA technologies can fully compensate for the yield and production losses of climate change. Among the single CSA technology suites, irrigation water and soil-fertility technology suites were simulated to be the best CSA technology suites. The stacked technology suite produced better outcomes than single CSA suites.• Rice CSA technology suites had high degrees of compensatory effects -most with more than 90 percent effectiveness -and can fully compensate for yield and production losses due to climate, all under high adoption rates. The irrigation water suite could fully compensate both for yield and production declines, while the soilfertility suite could fully compensate only for production decline.• CSA in rice and wheat that accounted for only a fraction of agricultural production could, at the most, compensate only up to 16 percent of the income loss and about 10 percent of welfare loss.The availability of new technologies alone was not a sufficient condition to bring about change. Effective institutions and sustained policy support to bring the technologies within the reach of farmers were equally important for technology adoption on a large scale. Following are the urgent action needed for upscaling CSA.• The cost of technology has a great bearing on its adoption. Therefore, climate-smart technologies matching regional preferences may be included in ongoing government programs, allowing some of the private cost to be shared by the government.• Access to information is a key element in the adoption of new technologies. There is a need to improve the density of the information networks through increased use of satellites and smartphones over large areas, covering larger numbers of farmers.• Several technologies like LLL, ZT, and seed planters have only seasonal applications, and custom hiring services could promote their adoption by small farmers.CSA requires a complete package of practices to achieve the desired objectives, but adoption is largely dependent on farmers' preferences, their financial capacity, and WTP. The present contingent valuation-based study on technology preferences provides an insight into how farmers view climate change and their response to this challenge. The assessment of farmers' preferences in both eastern and western IGP indicated that they had some knowledge of the potency of new technologies to help them achieve higher productivity and income.Traditional agriculture practices prevail in the tribal-dominated areas as the penetration of new technologies is still very low. The state of Madhya Pradesh, selected for study, has a large tribal population of 21 percent against the national average of 8 percent. It is premised that introduction of CSA technologies in these areas would enhance agricultural productivity and production in a climate-friendly manner. Toward this end, the four districts of Sehore, Jabba, Guna, and Sehdol, all having a significant tribal population and rated highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, were selected for ex-ante prioritization of CSA technologies. The potential CSA technologies were almost the same as for IGP except that the system of wheat intensification, involving manual sowing of a single wheat seed, and sprinkle irrigation were added. These technologies are not mutually exclusive and can be combined to create a technology package to achieve the goal of CSA. The prioritization was performed by simultaneous use of CSFI and the farmers' preferences assessment through the WTP method.In CSFI prioritization of technology package, its benefits need to be combined in a way that the technologies can be ranked by their level of feasibility, which varied with rainfall, irrigation, and various production inputs (Figure 1). The factor values describe the score for each input to construct an index, and the sum of the square of these scores equals 1. A variable with a positive factor is associated with higher influence in CSFI, while a negative value indicates low influence. For example, if all farmers of a region had access to irrigation facilities, the principal component analysis result may reflect negative for the water variable. All the potential technologies are not equally applicable or acceptable for all crops due to their varying requirements of cultural practices and water requirements. Technologies like LLL, INM, and salt and drought tolerant cultivars had feasibility across all crops, but DSR and SRI were applicable only in rice crops. Similarly, broad bed and furrow (BBF), zero/minimum tillage (ZT), and system of wheat intensification were wheat-specific technologies. The crop-wise feasibility and preferences in different tribal districts are shown in Table 1. The CSA technology basket generally contains numerous innovative items, but as seen from Table 1, their degree of feasibility (in terms of profitability) varies from region to region. The principal component analysis and assessment of WTP, when used jointly, do a better job in prioritizing climate-smart practices across various regions to achieve the goal of CSA.  The inferences emerging from the current study of a tribal area of Madhya Pradesh are as follows.• Rice-wheat zone: The out-scaling strategy of CSA should focus on laser levelling and zero tillage for higher production and resource conservation.• Soybean-wheat zone: The adoption of BBF would facilitate maintaining a better moisture regime and avoid drainage congestion in this zone having relatively lesser irrigation facilities.• Technology stacking: No single technology can generate the full benefits of CSA, and therefore technology stacking should be promoted to improve the efficiency of resources and investment.• Investment in irrigation tanks: In areas with low irrigation but high rainfall, investment in irrigation tanks would promote irrigation intensification without posing a threat to groundwater levels and resolve on-farm drainage congestion during monsoon.The simultaneous use of CSFI and farmers' preferences assessment through WTP method affords the development of more appropriate area-specific CSA technology prioritization.This study aimed at the prioritization of investments for scaling context-specific CSA technologies in a drought-prone area in the Telangana state of India. Agricultural productivity is highly vulnerable to climate change and frequent droughts given the state's location in the semi-arid zone.The allocation of the area to crops under CSA technologies varied across crops and the districts due to heterogeneity in the intensity of drought and adaptive capacity.Farmers' traditional practice (FTP): BBF and ridge and furrow were the preferred technologies for soybean, pulses, and maize. However, the simulation results showed that the crop areas under these technologies would get drastically reduced under extreme drought conditions.The farm pond technology would remain more effective for mango and tomato cultivation as the area under groundnut and maize, which ponds presently served on a scale, would decline in the future due to the increased frequency of droughts.Micro-irrigation: Drip irrigation technology would be more effective for cotton and groundnut cultivation in the case of extreme weather scenarios projected by simulation studies.Surface and groundwater contamination due to intrusion of seawater in aquifers and surface water bodies in coastal areas of Bangladesh and India is showing an increasing trend due to climate change, causing a decrease in net cropped area and productivity. This is putting the livelihood of a large section of people dependent on agriculture and fisheries in the densely populated coastal regions at risk. There are reports which warn that the risks associated with sea-level rise to people and ecological systems will get amplified due to global warming.IFPRI, in association with Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, initiated a study across three divisions of Barisal, Chittagong, and Khulna, where salinity intrusion was acute. The Institute's response to the salinity intrusion was in terms of developing and popularizing salt-resistant rice varieties. This study focused on analyzing the key determinants that affected farmers' decisions in adopting saline tolerant rice varieties, and the impact of adoption on crop yield and net income of the farmers. The study was based on a primary survey known as the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey, and used the logistic model to determine the main factors affecting adoption and its impact. Results showed that adopting saline-tolerant rice varieties raised crop yield by an average of 1.25 t/ha, and the farmers reaped a net income of BD Taka 12500/ha. However, it may be mentioned that salt-tolerant variety may be a good starting point, but a comprehensive strategy for outscaling CSA will have to include the following.• Development of multi-stress tolerant cultivars, which can withstand both abiotic and biotic stresses.• Salinity mapping of coastal areas for assessing the location-specific needs of cultivars according to the concentration and nature of salts. • Well-regulated brackishwater aquaculture • Tidal river management to remove drainage congestion in the delta region.• Coastal area water management revolves around farm ponds and sluice gates in the sea dykes. Farmers' organizations to regulate the sluice should be formed, based on catchment area and hydrological limit of sluice gates rather than the existing practices of administrative units.Adaptations to climate change and innovations for sustainable intensification of agriculture may have very different effects on farmers of both gender depending on technology and the local context. Further, there exists a huge difference in their power of decision-making. Women are very actively involved in farming in most parts of India, and therefore the knowledge of gender aspects of technologies and innovations are crucial to its adoption.A study revolving around a paddy drum seeder was undertaken in the state of Maharashtra to understand the specific attributes in a technology that causes differentiation in preference, and whether the degree of preference remains fixed or can change with the increase in decision power. Two analytical tools -discrete choices experiment-based WTP and WEAI -were applied to find an answer to the puzzle of differential response. The analysis revealed some very interesting aspects of decision-making in men and women farmers.• The women's preference for technology in labor-intensive operations like rice transplanting was influenced more by its drudgery reduction potential as compared to the cost of implements, as was the case with paddy drum seeder. This is reflected in higher marginal utility and higher WTP as compared to men, who had given more importance to crop yield and the lower cash cost of the implement. • The WEAI data showed that women had a significantly lower say than the men in household decisions related to farming, such as choice of crops, inputs to buy, and the adoption and purchase of new technologies and equipment. • The degree of preference and WTP were closely associated with WEAI. At higher WEAI, the WTP of women for labor-saving technology reduced as they became more empowered women, having higher control over their allocation of time to various activities.The agriculture extension workers and policymakers should emphasize technology attributes for which women farmers show high preference, like labor-saving, to promote faster adoption of agro-technology innovations among women farmers.Global climate change is going to have multidimensional impacts on nature and society.The effect of climate change on agriculture would be far greater than on any sector of the economy when looked in terms of the geographical expanse, size of the human population affected, and the degree of debilitating effect on means of livelihood. It therefore becomes urgent that the policymakers were made aware of the grave implications of impending changes that would be coming sooner than predicted (Cline 2007). It is not enough to articulate the policies in scientific jargon, but it becomes important to disaggregate the change geographically nearer home and present them in terms that the policymakers understand.Climate change transcended scientific discussions and became a political issue by the mid-1980s. The political cognizance of this issue led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and of the UNFCCC by 1992 (UN 1992). This spurred the national governments in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, to take notice of the changes. South Asia is a multination region and the political and administrative boundaries add a layer of complexity on the geographical and linguistic diversity, political structure and governance mechanisms, stage of economic development, socio-cultural context, and research capabilities. Some common features of the green revolution period agricultural development policies having bearing on CSA are summarized in Box 1.The South Asian countries have emphasized climate change adaptation in agriculture, unlike global climate policy where agriculture is not in focus. There may not be direct mention of policy in the absence of legislation, with adaptation strategies being referred to as action plans. These are currently the most common policy instruments for adaptation.Climate policy documents of all the countries make a special mention of attending to concerns of the farming community and rural poor as one of the guiding principles of climate policy.Subsidy remained the main mechanism for promoting adaptation in development programs.Policy statements are quite elaborate, but mechanisms to put them into practice were sometimes missing. However, adaptation and higher productivity translates into increased food security, more income, and a greater buffer against climate-induced fluctuations.The emphasis in India from 1965 until 2000 was on increasing agricultural production by harnessing the green revolution technologies (seed, water, and fertilizer). The policy shifted after 2000 to sustainable development, and the National Policy on Agriculture came into force in 2010. The climate-centric agriculture policies were further strengthened with the National Action Plan on Climate Change, of which the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) is one of the eight Missions. National policies for promoting the adoption of CSA technologies after green revolution are briefly summarized in Table 2. Online trading platform for agricultural commodities to facilitate farmers, traders, and buyers with online trading in commodities. For helping in better price discovery and providing facilities for smooth marketing of their produce Atal Bhujal Yojana -2019 Sustainable groundwater management in identified water-stressed areas through community participation and demand-side interventions Although climate resilience was not the explicit goal of these broad policies, each one of them had some element of climate-smart technologies (micro-irrigation, neem coated urea, water harvesting use, solar pumps, weather index-based insurance, among others) leading to a reduction in GHG emissions. Our studies at IFPRI indicated that the government in India was spending 15 percent of the total expenditure for agriculture toward enhancing resilience of agriculture to climateThe role of policies when mainstreamed in development programs is to facilitate the adoption of technologies and practices which increase production and productivity per unit land and applied inputs such as seed, fertilizers, and energy. This helps achieve the CSA objectives.The technologies need the wings of appropriate policies, institutions , and longterm funding to travel from labs to land faster than at business as usual speed.The development policies in respect of the three pillars of the green revolution (seed, fertilizer, and irrigation) led to a 60 percent increase in fertilizer use and a 35 percent increase in area under irrigation from 1990 to 2010 in India.• The resultant increase in food grain production and productivity were 40 percent and 46 percent respectively. This saved 56 million ha of land from being brought under the plough, validating Borlaug Hypothesis which postulates that increasing crop yields can help prevent cropland expansion and deforestation.• The carbon footprint of food grain production decreased by 25 percent (from1.2-to-0.9-ton CO2e/per ton of food grain) from 1990 to 2010.• The virtual mitigation due to productivity-enhancing policies during this period was of the order of 250 million tons CO2e (55 percent less than the estimated value of 430 million tons CO2e).• The water, energy, and minimum support pricing policies led to unsustainable exploitation of groundwater.The policies and action programs enshrined in National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and subsequent missions that followed NAPCC had a greater focus on resource (land, water, energy) conservation to move toward cutting emissions as per Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Climate resilience agriculture was not the explicit goal of these policies, but the Government of India has been spending 15 percent of the total expenditure for agriculture toward enhancing resilience on agriculture to climate change (Kishore et al. 2018). Of the total government expenditure toward CSA, 54 percent has been spent for nitrogen smart, 15 percent for weather smart, 11 percent for water smart, 11 percent for knowledge smart, 9 percent for crop smart, and the rest 1 percent for energy smart agriculture.Several post green revolution period policy reforms are of recent origin and their impacts are yet to be realized and evaluated. The preliminary assessment shows that PMSKY, NMMI, RKVY have been quite effective inasmuch as saving of production inputs (water, fertilizer, and fuel) and reduction in GHG were concerned. The combined effect of the policies resulted in savings of water by 2.2 percent, fuel by 3.1 percent, fertilizers by 5 percent, and a reduction in GHG emission by 3 percent.There is no unique definition for smallholder farming, except that limited access to land is a common identifying feature. However, in a broader sense smallholding farmers are characterized by smaller applications of capital but higher use of labor and other familyowned inputs with a low degree of commercialization. Most government policies are framed keeping their interest in view since more than 86 percent of farms in India fall under the category of small farms. It is mostly non-climatic factors such as inadequate access to assets (land, water, and human capital), technology, infrastructure, and markets which are responsible for differential impacts of climate change on small farmers so far as the impact of climate change on small farm holders is concerned.The government has introduced many policies such as credit facility at low-interest rates through 'Kisan Cards,' subsidy at differential scale for adopting CSA technologies like micro-irrigation, solar pumps, and zero-till machines. Still, the two important institutional arrangements, the FPOs and CF, remain the most important changes which have the potential to provide small and marginal farmers the economy and the power of scale.Farmer Producer Organizations: Registered as Producer Companies and Cooperative Societies, FPOs are grassroots level, farmer-managed, legal companies which aggregate the small producers' inputs and products and provide services like marketing, value addition, technological guidance, capacity building, and credit access. Studies show that the FPOs, whose number exceeded 7000 in 2020, were moving toward fully commercial forms of business and away from traditional production and welfare functions.Reducing the risk of production, price and marketing costs, financial support in cash and/or kind, and technical guidance to the farmers, CF has provided new openings to the small and marginal farmers. Several studies show that the annual income and material possessions of farmers adopting CF have increased.Agriculture is nature's most risk-prone industry, and the risks get magnified in tropical regions like South Asia. The weather represents the most important and least controllable source of risk which is set to magnify with the progressively increasing adverse climate change impacts. There are several options through which the farming community manages the production risks. Agricultural insurance, as a risk transfer mechanism, has come to be recognized as an important intervention overcoming the consequences of natural perils and has been part of CSA under the theme of safety nets.An insurance contract is more dignified and reliable than dependence on the ad hoc generosity of donors -Hari Krishna, Expert Workshop on Insurance Instruments for Adaptation to Climate Risks (2007), Ladenburg, Austria.The available crop insurance products fall into two broad categories: indemnity-based insurance products, which may be single or multi-peril crop insurance, and index-based insurance. Index insurance, which indemnifies the insured based on the observed value of a specified 'index' or some other closely related variable, has the benefit of minimizing the severity of adverse selection and moral hazard. The index-based insurance benefits from the expanding use of cutting-edge remote sensing for monitoring crop condition, increased density of automatic weather stations, and access to information through cell phones. PBI, which simplifies the assessment of loss, is an innovation which is affordable, comprehensive, and easy to understand (Ceballos et al. 2019). The PBI uses data science and image processing techniques to estimate losses from pictures uploaded by the farmers. It also makes it possible to bundle agro-advisories on climate-smart practices and other value-added services. The flip side is that payouts may not fully capture losses of an individual farmer's potential risk due to extreme climate events.Bundling picture-based insurance with plant-based advisories can improve their adaptive capacity and help to lower insurance premiums.-Ceballos et al. 2019In India, WIBCI has graduated from a pilot to a full-fledged insurance scheme. WIBCI has undergone several transformations since its inception in 2007 in terms of indices, trigger points, insurance premiums, and the current PMFBY avatar.India is a pioneer in introducing weather index insurance with several insurance providers, including the public sector company Agricultural Insurance Corporation (AIC) and wellestablished private sector companies like ICICI Lombard, IFFCO-Tokyo, and Bajaj Allianz. Considerable experience in operating a full-service model (AIC) as well as the Agent-Channel partner model is available.The PMFBY covered more than 57.8 million farmers in 2016-17, but the number declined to 47.9 million in 2017-18. What is surprising is that despite sustained subsidies, loan facilities at very low rates, low premiums, and involvement of the private sector, the take-up has been disappointingly low. Still, the community-based insurance as practiced by Dhan Foundation, BASIX, and ICICI Lombard has been very successful in the case of small and marginal farmers.Several studies to assess demand for insurance by the farmers and their WTP revealed that it varied between 20-30 percent and that too at very low premiums (Pal et al. 2019). These studies have further revealed that demand had a positive correlation with the level of education, size of farms, land ownership, and subsidy.IFPRI South Asia organized two regional workshops in Colombo ( 2013) and Kathmandu (2015), where experiences with agricultural insurances were shared, lessons learned were discussed, and future directions were flagged.• Insurance appears to be a desirable intervention for promoting CSA, particularly in low-income and highly vulnerable regions, but the shift to riskier, higher-yield production techniques -higher expected profits from ex-ante investment behaviour has not been established.• There remains a large gap between demand and supply of insurance products despite huge subsidies and entry of the private sector in agricultural insurance. The additional steps required to bridge the gap between demand-supply of insurance products needs to be investigated.• Community WIBCI was more effective than formal sector insurance in the case of small and marginal farmers, but out-scaling requires a large number of dedicated NGOs.• The low density of weather stations in the wake of high locally differentiated microclimates leads to low-quality insurance product with greater basis risk.Highlight: Bundling of value-added services at low cost may be adopted to reduce transaction cost in the case of low-value, but large numbers' insurance policies, as is the case in India and many African countries.Prioritization of investment in CSA technologies remains an important issue, though a complex context-specific process as CSA is associated with a wide range of technologies and practices. Implementation of CSA not only requires the identification of technologies but also that of investment necessary for executing the program. Farming is a smallholder's enterprise in India with limited financial resources. Therefore it is important to not only find the best suite of technologies, but also imperative to identify the best-bet CSA investments that ensure food security, bring in resilience in the food production system, and minimize emissions. Investment planning in this study was explored through risk minimization and integrated planning models.CSA builds the enabling conditions for a major transformation in agriculture and helps develop adequate financing streams adapted to the specific conditions of agriculture.The effective implementation of policies and investment strategies to scale up CSA is to a large extent dependent on the risk attitude of farmers. Therefore, optimal allocation of land and other resources across the crops and technologies ought to be guided by the riskreturn trade-off. Risk attitude determines a farmer's preferences among alternative farm plans based on expected income and the associated income variance. In this study, Minimization of Total Absolute Deviation (MOTAD) model with climate-smart technologies was used to assess its role in minimizing the trade-off under diverse weather scenarios. A district-level panel dataset of five years' cost of cultivation and crop production of 11 major crops under six different climate-smart technologies and FTPs from Telangana State was used. These data included a collation of official statistics on the cost of cultivation, focus group interviews with farmers over the years, and data from experimental plots operated by regional agricultural research stations. In addition to prioritizing CSA technologies based on their productivity and profit, the most effective technologies for crops by the district have been identified that would reduce risk to farmers' income. The Microsoft Excel-based optimization model developed in this study would also be a very useful investment planning tool for promoting CSA.• The drought frequency is set to increase, and risk-averse farmers sticking to traditional farming practices stand to suffer a loss of INR 15000/ha.• Adoption of CSA technologies would curtail this loss by 86.6 percent by limiting this income loss to only INR 2000/ha.• The probability of risk of losing farm income with CSA technologies is 21 percent as compared to 55 percent with FTP.• It would require about INR 2.8 billion investment on an annual basis in the event of increased frequency of drought to reduce risk-return trade-offs in the state of Telangana.• Amongst the CSA technologies, irrigation infrastructure with micro-irrigation at 46.5 percent and farm pond at 34.3 percent gets the lion's share of investment, followed by crop residue incorporation at 12.4 percent and machine transplanted rice at 3 percent.The productivity and profitability-based CSA technology prioritization may not work under extreme weather conditions. The prioritization scheme under these situations must identify the most effective technologies that would minimize farmers' risk.IFPRI-South Asia developed the SNAP model for the prioritization of technologies and the associated investment at the state level. The criteria for the selection of technologies chosen for investment were profitability, resource conservation potential, and emission reduction. The model was applied in the state of Punjab.Punjab, the flag bearer of the green revolution in India, is faced with fast degradation of natural resources (declining groundwater and salinization), stagnating agricultural productivity, and declining factor productivity. The states of Haryana and some parts of Rajasthan are facing a similar situation, which is projected to get worse with the onslaught of climate change. It is considered important to explore the possible pathways for adapting to climate change through scaling up CSA.The SNAP model, using a constrained linear optimization approach, simulated various counterfactual scenarios at three levels of climate-smart technology adoptions, namely low, moderate, and high. The CSA levels were differentiated in terms of irrigation infrastructure growth rate, the areas under solarized micro-irrigation and conservation agriculture, crop diversification, and manure management. The model was run under three different groundwater access policies of subsidized electricity, subsidized electricity plus metering for restricting groundwater supply, and zero subsidies on electricity. The SNAP was implemented with this setup using 2018-19 as base year to generate counterfactual scenarios through 2050.Conservation agriculture -minimum tillage, DSR, soil cover, and crop rotation/association -was the most apt suite of technologies. As crop diversification progresses with a reduction in area under paddy at a high level of CSA adoption, microirrigation occupied the position of most favored technology. The investment in scaling up CSA had high payoffs in terms of improving the farmers' income, regardless of groundwater access policies. Adjudged in terms of benefit-cost (B:C) ratio, the CSA_High scale was at the top with a B:C ratio of 2.62, followed by CSA _Moderate scale (Table 3).The investments related to market infrastructure, though lower than CSA adoptions, are considered essential for the success of CSA despite the lower B:C ratio of 1.4. Interestingly the annualized cost to implement CSA_High Scale is estimated to be around $1,070 million, which is lower than the state government's expenditure on electricity subsidy per year. Out-scaling of CSA technologies and adoption of associated policies offer multiple benefits like increase in farmers' income, reduction in groundwater pumping and GHG emissions, and employment generation.The SNAP model simulations show that investment in scaling up CSA, irrespective of groundwater access policy, had high payoffs in terms of improving the farmers' income. This increase is regardless of groundwater access policies (Table 4.) Reduction in groundwater pumping: The adoption of CSA technologies accompanied by restrictive groundwater policies led to saving in water consumption because the CSA technologies favored crop diversification. At moderate_scale CSA, the area under paddy, a water-guzzling crop, was down by 13 percent under free electricity policy, and reduced to 45 percent at high_CSA adoption. However, metering the water abstraction is difficult to implement as it would involve the installation of a large number of water meters and pose additional governance-related challenges. It is worth noting that savings from the electricity subsidies were significant under the priced electricity policy, and could be repurposed to incentivize the adoption of CSA technologies.The SNAP model simulations showed that the High_CSA adoption scenario coupled with priced groundwater policy could cumulatively reduce 23 million tons of GHG emissions between 2018-19 and 2050-51 in the state of Punjab.Groundwater metering policy leads to some fall in water extraction, but reduces farmers' income at the Low_CSA technology adoption compared to free electricity scenario. However, the loss of income gets minimized to only 0.2 percent under High_scale CSA adoption.The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, despite its reasonable high productivity of rice at 4.2 t/ha compared to the world average of 4.6 t/ha, domestically produces around 42 percent of its domestic demand for rice and imports the rest, mostly from India. There are indicators that the productivity of rice in Bhutan would go up under climate change while it will see a fall in India, and as a result global price for rice may rise. The Royal Government of Bhutan's Vision 2040 for the Renewable Natural Resource (RNR) Sector envisages food self-sufficiency by 2040. IFPRI made a scoping study and produced a preliminary report which indicated that the area under paddy was falling due to lack of irrigation and shortage of labor.It was found that self-sufficiency could be increased by almost 10 percentage points by bridging yield gaps that existed across the districts. Additionally, a significant increase in production could be achieved by bringing fallow dryland and wetlands under paddy cultivation. It would need stepped-up investment in the irrigation sector to bring more area under irrigation and farm mechanization to reduce labor requirements. Capacity building was the necessary prerequisite for implementing the suggested strategy. IFPRI Team, therefore, organized a capacity-building workshop for the task force members of the RNR Strategy 2040.CSA has emerged in the last decade as an important platform to simultaneously improve food security, rural livelihoods, and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. The studies at IFPRI South Asia, in a limited way, capture the essence of CSA and show how it can be upscaled through region-specific prioritized technologies and the policies needed for implementation. The major achievements and the scenario of changing policy environment are briefly recapitulated, and a way forward to meet future challenges is presented in this section.1. The CSAP toolkit, which has general applicability to explore a range of agriculture growth pathways to meet both food security and environmental needs, is a very useful new tool for planning the upscaling of CSA.2. Data-based identification of preferred single and tagged technology suites of CSA technologies for selected geographically spaced regions with differing agro-climatic and socio-economic situations would be useful in the propagation of CSA.3. Methodology for developing suggestions for policymakers and extension workers to focus on gender-specific technology attributes for popularizing CSA technologies among women farmers, if adopted, would increase women participation.4. Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of existing policies and institutions in India for achieving the three goals of CSA -food security, adaptation to, and mitigation of climate change -would be useful in redrawing CSA-friendly policies.5. Development of some preliminary estimates of the investment required for implementing CSA in selected states showed that investment in CSA was a better option than subsidies.The concept of CSA is positioned between science and policy. Implementation of CSA across the region lies in coordination of policies and programs that recognize the tradeoffs between food and environmental securities, and allow for reconciliation among the three objectives when there are conflicts.The government development programs and policies during the green revolution era emphasized increasing crop production. However, there is a clear perception now that food grain sufficiency has been achieved at the cost of degradation of natural resources, and therefore the policy environment has been shifting toward sustainable development.It is reflected in the adoption of the NMSA in 2010, which aimed at transforming agriculture into a climate-resilient and ecologically sustainable production system, attaining its fullest potential without compromising on food security. The PMKSY and Atal Bhujal address the issues of water resources. The solar mission and Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) have been launched to transform the energy sector, which has been a major contributor to GHG emissions. It is expected that in the new policy environment, knowledge generation, investment, and governance of agriculture and food systems would be speeded up to put CSA in top gear.The CSA has won global recognition as a means of transforming food systems under a changing climate. However, there remain considerable gaps in its theoretical understanding and the empirical pieces of evidence, which are needed for policymaking to effect large-scale implementation. This CSA project at IFPRI South Asia New Delhi has focused on the identification of promising CSA technologies and the needed policies in a limited time without having a country-wide comprehensive assessment of the socioeconomic situations, biophysical, and investment requirementsThe 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture foresees a very advanced agenda for CSA to include the study of land-use patterns and crop choices, safe operating spaces in the context of climate change, integration of private and public sector financing, changing the policy-portfolios, and the changes in socio-cultural and political outlook. The following are some of the suggestions for a way forward based on the experience in implementing the CSA program.Move up the food value chain: Food security cannot be ensured by introducing CSA in the food production system alone. It should encompass the entire value chain, and go for reshaping of supply chains, food retail, marketing, and procurement.The climate-smart village program in the country had some initial success, but there is an urgent need to upgrade this model by including off-farm operations by adopting the philosophy of agro-industrial watersheds.Mixed crop-livestock systems: Smallholders' agriculture in South Asia is a mixed crop-livestock farming system, but research so far is mostly limited to cropping systems.In the coming decades, livestock is going to become increasingly important for meeting food security challenges.Assessment of the perceptions of farmers and other stakeholders along the value chain, conditions for success and failure of interventions, enhanced understanding of the policy/institutional options in different agricultural production systems and socioeconomic conditions is required to enable scaling of CSA on a large scale.It can be said in conclusion that for CSA to achieve its three-fold objectives of food security, adaptation to, and mitigation of climate change, transformative changes are required not only in technologies and policies but also in models of governance and financing CSA programs on a scale.","tokenCount":"8371","images":["-1982240984_1_1.png","-1982240984_1_2.png","-1982240984_1_3.png","-1982240984_1_4.png","-1982240984_1_5.png","-1982240984_1_6.png","-1982240984_37_1.png","-1982240984_37_2.png","-1982240984_37_3.png","-1982240984_37_4.png"],"tables":["-1982240984_1_1.json","-1982240984_2_1.json","-1982240984_3_1.json","-1982240984_4_1.json","-1982240984_5_1.json","-1982240984_6_1.json","-1982240984_7_1.json","-1982240984_8_1.json","-1982240984_9_1.json","-1982240984_10_1.json","-1982240984_11_1.json","-1982240984_12_1.json","-1982240984_13_1.json","-1982240984_14_1.json","-1982240984_15_1.json","-1982240984_16_1.json","-1982240984_17_1.json","-1982240984_18_1.json","-1982240984_19_1.json","-1982240984_20_1.json","-1982240984_21_1.json","-1982240984_22_1.json","-1982240984_23_1.json","-1982240984_24_1.json","-1982240984_25_1.json","-1982240984_26_1.json","-1982240984_27_1.json","-1982240984_28_1.json","-1982240984_29_1.json","-1982240984_30_1.json","-1982240984_31_1.json","-1982240984_32_1.json","-1982240984_33_1.json","-1982240984_34_1.json","-1982240984_35_1.json","-1982240984_36_1.json","-1982240984_37_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"004c0c73c742c6341451614cc60dc9d1","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/f889e987-ec1e-47be-a265-2d7873c1ee3a/retrieve","description":"India comprises one-sixth of the world’s population and one-third of the global burden of undernutrition. Between 2006 and 2016, India made progress in reducing stunting among children below five years; the progress, however, was not uniform across all its states (Menon et al. 2018). There are interstate differences in stunting reduction despite a common national framework for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs. Given the paucity of insights on what factors drive successful change in nutritional outcomes such as stunting at the state level in India, we conducted studies in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu. In this report, we present an analysis of the change in stunting among children less than five years of age over a 24-year period in the state of Gujarat in India. We chose to study Gujarat—along with the states of Odisha (Kohli et al. 2017) and Chhattisgarh (Kohli et al. 2020)— because between 2006 and 2016, declines in stunting in these states, in absolute terms, were higher than the national average.","id":"-430154678"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"e41bfde9-b72f-4040-b0ab-8f05e9b488b5","pagecount":"56","content":"India comprises one-sixth of the world's population and one-third of the global burden of undernutrition. Between 2006 and 2016, India made progress in reducing stunting among children below five years; the progress, however, was not uniform across all its states (Menon et al. 2018).There are interstate differences in stunting reduction despite a common national policy framework for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs. Given the paucity of insights on what factors drive successful change in nutritional outcomes such as stunting at the state level in India, we conducted studies in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu. In this report, we present an analysis of the change in stunting among children less than five years of age over a 24-year period in the state of Gujarat in India. We chose to study Gujarat-along with the states of Odisha (Kohli et al. 2017) and Chhattisgarh (Kohli et al. 2020)-because between 2006 and 2016, declines in stunting in these states, in absolute terms, were higher than the national average.Our key goals were to: 1) examine changes in child stunting, known determinants of stunting and key health and nutrition interventions between 1992 and 2016; 2) assess the contribution of diverse determinants and intervention coverage changes to the changes in stunting between 2006 and 2016; and (3) interpret the changes in the context of policies, programs and other changes in the state.Using diverse sources of data, in this report we synthesize insights on how state-level leadership, policies, programs, and other changes across society came together to support the changes seen in child growth outcomes over this period. Based on a rapid analysis of more recent trends, we also offer insights on actions that are needed to support achievement of state nutrition goals.We used a variety of data sources and research methods. Using multiple rounds of data from surveys, we developed a 24-year (1992-2016) timeline of changes in stunting and its known determinants. Specifically, we analyzed four rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-1992(NFHS- /1993(NFHS- , 1998(NFHS- /1999(NFHS- , 2005(NFHS- /2006(NFHS- , 2015(NFHS- /2016) )  (IIPS 1993;1999;2006;2016) and the Annual Health Survey (where necessary). First, we examined the data on stunting reduction, changes in known drivers of undernutrition, and intervention coverage changes descriptively. Next, we used regression-decomposition analysis to examine the contributions of changes in known determinants of stunting between 2006 and 2016. We conducted a literature review to assess changes in policies and programs pertaining to key drivers of nutrition between 1992 and 2016. The literature review had two objectives: to construct a policy timeline and analyze policy changes over the period of stunting reduction, and to gather additional literature to support overall analysis and interpretation. We conducted stakeholder interviews to supplement our analysis and to add experiential insights on potential reasons for changes in key programs and policies. We integrated insights from all these different sources of information to interpret what drove change and what contributed to that change in Gujarat. Finally, we briefly juxtapose the findings on positive change against the most recently available data on nutrition in Gujarat.Gujarat, a state in western India with a population of 60 million people, is one of the country's high-income states. Economic growth was primarily driven by the state's services and industries. Despite this, for several years Gujarat's progress on nutrition was slow, especially compared to On a positive note, there was a substantial decline in the disease burden among children. The proportion of children with diarrhea declined from 20 percent in 1999 to 10 percent in 2016 and the proportion of children with acute respiratory infections declined substantially from 11 percent in 1998 to 1.4 percent in 2016.Between 1992 and 2016, there were improvements in some of the underlying determinants of nutrition in Gujarat. State infrastructure improved, including roads, electricity, drinking water, and sanitation facilities; by 2016, 95 percent of households had electricity and 87 percent had access to improved drinking water sources, however only 56 percent of households were using improved sanitation facilities. There have also been only modest improvements in determinants pertaining to women's status, including education and age at marriage. By 2016, only 26 percent of women had 10 or more years of education and 48 percent of women still got married earlier than the legal age of marriage. The decline in early marriage is parallel to improvements in education.The coverage of nutrition-specific interventions has improved steadily over time, with significant change between 2006 and 2016. Some notable successes in coverage include:Pregnancy care: The proportion of women who had 4 or more antenatal care (ANC) visits increased from 51 to 70 percent. While there was a 5 pp decline (from 82 to 77 percent) in the receipt of iron and folic acid (IFA) supplements during pregnancy, there was a 12 pp increase in the consumption of IFA supplements for 100 or more days. The proportion of women receiving food supplements nearly tripled, from 18 to 55 percent.Delivery/birth care: Improvements have been steady for interventions such as delivery in health facilities and births assisted by a health professional, reaching 90 percent coverage in 2016. There was a quadrupling in the proportion of women receiving food supplements during lactation (11 to 48 percent). A similarly remarkable increase was observed in the receipt of food supplements for children below three years. Although between 2006 and 2016 there was a significant increase in the number of children receiving vitamin A supplementation, the coverage remains less than 75 percent. Over that period, there was limited progress in immunization rates; in Gujarat in 2016, only one in two children had been fully immunized and hence it remains a matter of concern.Our regression decomposition analysis indicates that improvements in health and nutrition services (14 percent), improvements in socio-economic status (SES) (12.8 percent), maternal BMI (4.9 percent) and maternal education (5.6 percent), hygiene (9.6 percent), improved village sanitation and increased access to electricity (7.2 percent), and access to health insurance contributed to actual changes in stunting among children 6 to 59 months of age. Unfortunately, our analysis only explained 60 percent of the actual change seen in stunting over this period; this suggests that there are additional factors which are not captured in this analysis.Based on these findings, we prioritized three areas for deeper policy and stakeholder analysis: 1) advancements in nutrition and health services; 2) improvements in SES; and 3) improvements in care for women.Advancements in nutrition and health services: Until the mid-2000s, Gujarat followed the national mandate for health and nutrition programs. In 2005, however, state leaders were shocked at the malnutrition status (as indicated by the NFHS-3). Finding it unacceptable, they began to implement measures to address it. Malnutrition became a prominent topic within the public discourse and key public figures became catalysts for change (Fiedler et al. 2012). In 2012, to provide strategic direction for implementation of programs, the Gujarat is one of the states that benefited the most from the economic reforms that were launched in India between 1991 and 1992; sectors in which the state's performance exceeded that of the rest of the nation included forestry and logging, manufacturing, electricity, gas and water supply, transport, storage, trade and hotels (Dholakia 2007). In 2005, Gujarat was one of the fastest growing states in the country and its growth was driven mainly by services including trade, transport, storage, communication, financial services, real estate, professional services, and industry including mining, manufacturing, utilities, and construction. The proportion of the population that was below the poverty line (BPL) declined from 38 percent in 1984 to 17 percent in 2012. However, poverty rates are higher than 20 percent in some parts of the state, and even higher than 30 percent in some eastern districts (World Bank 2017). A few respondents also mentioned economic progress as the key underlying contributor to progress on nutrition; progress was linked to investments in infrastructure which in turn helped improve access to services.Improvements in care for women: Women's education, age at marriage/childbirth and empowerment are recognized as important contributors to women and child nutrition. However, progress for women has been mixed in Gujarat. The proportion of women with more than 10 yearsStories of Change in Nutrition in India: How Stunting Declined in Gujarat Between 1992 and 2016 xi of education is below the national average in 2016. Although there was a decline in the proportion of women between 20 to 24 years getting married before the age of 18, still, 48 percent of women were married before 18 even in 2016. In rural areas, there was a sharp decline in women's participation in the labor force between 2005 and 2012 from 62 to 38 percent (World Bank 2017).The state government, however, has implemented programs such as Mahila Samakhya Programme to improve women's status and established a semi-autonomous Gender Resource Centre (GRC) under DWCD, as a nodal agency for all gender-related initiatives. According to one stakeholder, in 2006 the GRC, with the support of NGOs, played a leading role in the development of the Nari Gaurav Niti, the Gujarat state policy for gender equity.Several stakeholders observed that dairy cooperatives and self-help groups have played an important role in improving women's status in the state. The network of women's dairy cooperatives became a significant contributor to women's development. Women's dairy cooperatives became platforms for spreading nutrition awareness and for increasing access to maternal and child health and nutrition services; they also supported the economic empowerment of women and their families.Although Gujarat witnessed remarkable improvements in child nutrition between 2006 and 2016, progress stalled between 2016 and 2019. This is illustrated by a stagnation in stunting prevalence (38.4 percent in 2016 and 39 percent in 2019) and a mixed picture on trends in IYCF practices. Improvements in household conditions continued, however, as did the decline in early marriage and women's education. On a promising note, however, coverage of health and interventions improved, suggesting that administrative capabilities, systems strengthening and a general commitment to improve direct nutrition programs remained stable. However, since improving nutrition outcomes requires actions across multiple sectors, all-out efforts are needed to invest in creating enabling household environments for good nutrition.The analysis of factors contributing to change in nutrition outcomes, determinants and programs together with the new findings of the NFHS-5 mean this is an important time to accelerate actions to meet nutrition targets. There remains a clear and immediate need to close lingering gaps in coverage of interventions across the 1000 days, using data strategically to focus actions, close equity gaps and strengthen quality of programs, where needed. Efforts are also needed to understand and address specific constraints around infant and young child feeding, especially complementary feeding practices. Despite impressive improvements in household living conditions (electricity, water, sanitation), social determinants such as girls' education and early marriage need to now be prioritized.Gujarat is a diverse state that covers a range of agro-ecological and economic characteristics; several districts have progressed while others lag. Since change has not been uniform, an equityfocused effort to address program reach and quality as well as underlying social determinants must be part of the overall nutrition strategy. Given the apparent stalling of progress in the 2016-2019 timeframe, there is no time to lose in accelerating actions across sectors to tackle malnutrition.In recent years, there has been an increase in global attention and political commitment to reducing undernutrition, as well as a demand for guidance on how to effectively translate nutritionrelevant policies into impacts on the ground. This has been marked by the launch of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement in 2010, the 2008 and 2013 Lancet Nutrition Series, the 2013 Nutrition for Growth Summit, and the 2014, 2015, and 2016 WHO Global Nutrition Reports. Given the investments that have already been made into improving nutrition, and the considerations for future investments, there is a need for learning that draws on the experiences of nutrition leaders, program implementers, and policy makers; their experiences and insights need to be used to shed light on what has or has not worked to improve nutrition outcomes in different contexts.In 2012, the global community committed to a set of six nutrition targets to improve maternal and child nutrition, which were to be achieved by 2030. These targets include achieving a 40 percent reduction in the number of stunted children, a 50 percent reduction in anemia among women, a 30 percent reduction in low birth weight, no increase in the prevalence of childhood overweight, an increase in the rate of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) to at least 50 percent, and a reduction of wasting to less than 5 percent and its maintenance at that level. There are interstate differences in stunting reduction, despite a common national policy framework for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs. There are interstate differences in stunting reduction despite a common national policy framework for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs. To our knowledge, there are only three subnational studies of drivers of change in nutrition outcomes in India where several policy and programmatic drivers of change in nutrition outcomes have been identified (Haddad et al. 2014;Kohli et al. 2017;2020). Given the paucity of insights on the factors driving successful change in nutritional outcomes, including stunting at the state level in India, we conducted studies in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu.In this report, we examine the story of change in stunting over a 24-year period in the state of Gujarat. We chose to study Gujarat-along with the states of Odisha (Kohli et al. 2017) and Chhattisgarh (Kohli et al. 2020)-because between 2006 and 2016, declines in stunting in these states were higher than the national average in absolute terms.Gujarat is situated on the west coast of India and accounts for 6 percent of the area of the country; it includes 26 districts,1 which are subdivided into 226 blocks or taluka, 18,618 villages, and 242 towns. Gujarat is home to more than 60 million people, or 5 percent of India's population. With 37 percent of its population living in urban areas, it is one of the most urbanized states in India.In terms of its economy, infrastructure, industrialization, and governance, Gujarat is better positioned than many other states. Using diverse sources of data, we synthesized insights on how state-level leadership, policies, programs, and other changes across society came together to support the changes seen in child growth outcomes over this period and to offer insights on actions that are needed in looking ahead toward the achievement of national nutrition goals.We used a variety of data sources and research methods. Using multiple rounds of data from surveys, we developed a 24-year (1992-2016) timeline of changes in stunting and its known determinants. A list of indicators was identified based on UNICEF's conceptual framework (Figure 1); this included nutrition outcomes, determinants (immediate and underlying), and interventions:• Nutrition outcomes: stunting;• Immediate determinants: women's BMI, fertility rates, infant and young child feeding (timely initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, timely introduction of complementary foods, meal frequency), and health indicators (incidence of diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, and access to oral rehydration solutions); • Underlying and basic determinants: women's education, women's social and economic empowerment, access to sanitation, electricity and drinking water, access to ICDS and health centers, and population below the poverty line; • Nutrition-specific interventions: coverage of interventions during pregnancy, delivery, infancy, and childhood that are aimed at improving immediate determinants.Specifically, we analyzed four rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-1992/1993, 1998/1999, 2005/2006, 2015/2016) (IIPS 1993;1999;2006;2016) and the Annual Health Survey (where necessary). First, we examined the data on stunting reduction and changes in known drivers of undernutrition descriptively. Next, we used regression-decomposition analysis to examine the contributions of changes in known determinants of stunting between 2006 and 2016; this combines the analysis of differences in means of the explanatory variables (X) between 2006 and 2016 and regression estimates of the coefficients associated with these variables (ΒX) from a pooled regression model. If, for example, a determinant has a large regression coefficient (\"marginal effect\") and a large change in its mean over time, then this determinant will play a large role in explaining stunting reduction over time. This method has been used widely in previous studies to examine changes in undernutrition in Nepal (Headey and Hoddinott 2015;Cunningham et al. 2017) and in other countries (Headey 2013). The decomposition analysis combined the marginal effects of the determinants of stunting estimated from national data, and changes in means of determinants in Gujarat over time.We conducted a literature review to assess changes in policies and programs pertaining to nutrition between 1992 and 2016. The literature review had two objectives: to construct a policy timeline and analyze policy changes over the period of stunting reduction, and to gather additional literature to support overall analysis and interpretation. To construct a policy timeline and analyze policy changes between 1992 and 2016, we reviewed government program documents, key development plans, national policies, strategies, and reports. We searched electronic databases including Google Scholar and PubMed, as well as program-relevant websites.We conducted 17 stakeholder interviews with government officials, academicians, and civil society members (Table 1) to supplement our analysis and to add experiential insights on potential reasons for changes in key programs and policies. Interviews were conducted in English and in Gujarati and transcribed into English; they were then analyzed for themes reading across the interviews. Finally, we integrated insights from all these different sources of information in an effort to interpret what drove change in Gujarat and what contributed to that change.  The decline in underweight was very modest, from 43 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2016; it was higher than the national average (37 percent). There has been a slow decline in the prevalence of wasting in the state. It dropped from 24 to 20 percent between 1992 and 1999 and then remained stagnant at around 19 percent until 2006; by 2016 it had again increased to 27 percent. Progress on all anthropometric indicators of child nutrition then stalled between 2016 and 2019 (Box 1).Anemia among women remains a significant public health challenge in Gujarat. Between 1998 and2006, the prevalence of anemia among women of reproductive age (WRA) and pregnant women increased. Among WRA, anemia prevalence declined marginally between 2006 and 2016 (60 to 59 percent); during the same period, it declined from 67 to 60 percent among pregnant women. Anemia prevalence among children below 3 years of age declined from 70 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2016. Gujarat experienced a major decline in infant mortality rate (IMR) between 1992 and 2016, from 68 per 1,000 live births to 30; it is currently lower than the all-India average of 34.  The immediate determinants of child nutrition include women's nutritional status, child feeding practices, and childhood illness. These determinants remained stagnant from the early1990s until the early 2000s. Between 2006 and 2016, there was improvement in women's health, infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices, and child health, all of which are important immediate determinants of child nutrition. During this period, the proportion of women with low BMI declined from 41 to 29 percent and fertility rates declined from 2.4 to 2 percent. More work is needed to ensure that women remain physically healthy, that is, of appropriate BMI and non-anemic. Increase in overweight among women is an emerging challenge; according to NFHS-4 data in Gujarat, 24 percent of women of reproductive age were overweight, with a BMI greater than 25. This challenge is likely to increase in a rapidly urbanizing Gujarat.Early initiation of breastfeeding was low and declined between 1992 and 2006; greater improvement was observed, however, between 2006 and 2016, during which it increased by 23 pp (29 to 52 percent). In that decade, progress was also made in exclusive breastfeeding, which increased by 8 pp (48 to 56 percent) (Table 3). There are, however, lingering gaps that need attention. Complementary feeding (CF) remains a major challenge. The timely introduction of complementary foods declined between 2006 and 2016 (from 59 percent to 52 percent). In that same decade, there was only a marginal improvement in dietary diversity, and in 2016 less than 15 percent of children consumed the recommended number of food groups for their age. There was a steep decline in minimum meal frequency from 42 to 34 percent. This calls for an examination of reasons for poor IYCF practices.On a positive note, there was remarkable improvement in morbidity of children; in 2016, less than 10 percent of children had experienced diarrhea in the two weeks prior to the survey. The proportion of children with ARI symptoms also declined (Table 3).  Most of the underlying determinants of nutrition have improved, but areas of concern still exist. The proportion of women who are literate increased from 49 percent in the 1990s to 71 percent in 2016; however, in 2016, only 26 percent of women in Gujarat had 10 or more years of education (Table 4). This suggests the need for greater investment in women's education. The proportion of women 20 to 49 years getting married before 18 years of age declined marginally between 1998 and 2006, but between 2006 and 2016, there was a remarkable decline (50 to 34 percent) (Table 4). At the same time there was only a 7 pp decline in the proportion of women 20 to 24 years getting married before 18 years of age. Even so, 48 percent of women got married before 18 in 2016; this clearly needs immediate attention (Figure 4). The reduction in early marriage among 20 to 24 years women (7 pp) is in parallel to improvements in attaining 10 or more years of education (9 pp). Similar parallel trends were observed among women of 15 to 49 years.Over the last two decades, state infrastructure has improved, including roads, electricity, drinking water, and sanitation facilities. Between the 1990s and 2016, the proportion of households with access to improved drinking water, electricity and sanitation facilities increased, with 87 percent of households having access to improved drinking water. Particularly between 2006 and 2016, there has been an increase in access to improved sanitation facilities (Table 4); however, 43 percent of households still do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. The proportion of households below the poverty line has declined, with only 17 percent of households below the poverty line in 2012 (Table 4).    5).Between 2006 and 2016, there has been a remarkable increase in the proportion of institutional deliveries (from 57 to 90 percent) and professionally assisted births (from 67 to 88 percent). Receipt of food supplements during lactation more than quadrupled, increasing from 11 to 48 percent between 2006 and 2016. Similar increase was observed nationally. Even so, further improvements are needed in the coverage of food supplementation during lactation.There are gaps in the coverage of interventions during early childhood. The coverage of immunization remained stagnant from the 1990s and only 51 percent children were fully immunized in 2016. Between 2006 and 2016, there was a remarkable increase in the coverage of vitamin A supplementation and food supplements for children (Figure 5).  There was a 13 pp decline in stunting in Gujarat between 2006 and 2016, making it one of the leading states in India in stunting decline. Our analysis indicates that improvements in health and nutrition services (14 percent), improvements in socio-economic status (SES) (12.8 percent), maternal BMI (4.9 percent) and maternal education (5.6 percent), hygiene (9.6 percent), improved village sanitation and increased access to electricity (7.2 percent), and access to health insurance contributed to actual changes in stunting among children 6 to 59 months of age. At the same time, our analysis only explained 60 percent of the actual change seen in stunting over this period; this suggests that there are additional factors that could be contributing to the changes which are not being captured in this analysis. Based on this analysis, we selected priority areas for policy analysis and stakeholder interviews to understand what factors could have contributed to 1) advancements in nutrition and health services; 2) improvement in SES; 3) improvements in care for women. Gujarat stunting 6 to 59 months percent and the overall DWCD state budget increased by 892 percent. In 2007, Aapno Taluko Vibrant Taluko (ATVT) was initiated to decentralize and promote local ownership of administration at the taluka (lowest administrative) level for rapid decision-making and better supervision of ICDS.In 2010, the state DWCD released guidelines for a fixed day of the month (fourth Friday) celebration of Anna Prashan Diwas (initiation of complementary feeding) at AWCs. The guidelines included recipes for complementary foods. Between 2014 and 2016, several initiatives were undertaken under the Chief Minister's leadership, under the auspices of the Gatisheel Gujarat (Dynamic Gujarat) program.The National Nutrition Policy was accepted by the Government of India (GOI) in 1993; only a few years later, in 1998, Gujarat introduced its own state nutrition policy. Between 1990 and 2000, the DHFW initiated centrally funded programs that targeted lactating and pregnant women (Safe Motherhood and Child Survival Programme) and children (the Universal Immunization Programme). In 1997, the World Bank-funded Reproductive Child Health Programme Phase-1 (RCH-I) was launched nationwide-including in Gujarat-to bring down IMR and MMR and to increase coverage of antenatal care, institutional delivery, and immunization of children.In 2005, at the national level, the Reproductive and Child Health Programme Phase-2 (RCH-II) was launched to ensure a decline in total fertility rate (TFR), IMR, and MMR. At the same time, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched to provide accessible, affordable, and quality healthcare to the rural population.At the state level, structures were set up to ensure that health program goals were achieved. In 2005, Gujarat instituted the state health mission with the goal of reducing IMR and MMR, and a State Program Management Unit was established as its secretariat. The State Health Society (SHS), headed by the Chief Secretary, was formed as a central planning, coordinating, monitoring, and financing unit; all the other societies in the purview of DHFW were consolidated under this one unit. In 2015, the Gujarat government undertook the state-level implementation of the National Urban Health Mission; its earlier urban project was subsumed into it. The State Health Society, the state health mission, and district-level missions and health societies were then reconstituted.Several programs were initiated under the NRHM; these included the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) to promote institutional deliveries, facility-based integrated management of neonatal and childhood illness, and home-based newborn care. In 2005, under the Chiranjeevi Yojana program, the Government of Gujarat Health Department piloted a public-private partnership (PPP) to contract private health providers to provide delivery care to the poor in rural areas. Private practitioners (obstetricians and gynecologists) were reimbursed for conducting institutional deliveries and for providing immediate postpartum care to BPL women. The pilot was launched in five backward districts: Banaskantha, Dahod, Kachchh, Panchmahal, and Sabarkantha; in 2006, it was scaled up to the entire state. An evaluation of the scheme in Dahod showed that it effectively targeted the poor for whom it was meant and that there was a general satisfaction with the scheme, although its utilization by the poor varied (Bhat et al. 2009).In 2007, Mamta Abhiyan was launched in Gujarat to facilitate convergent actions between the DWCD and the DHFW. It was a fixed-day, fixed-place, once-a-month program where auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) jointly offered antenatal and postnatal care, immunization, and growth monitoring services. Under this program, UNICEF supported a pilot in Valsad District which aimed to align the geographic areas of ICDS and health, facilitate the coordinated delivery of health, nutrition, and development services, and improve their coverage; after the success of this pilot, the synchronization of geographic boundaries for ICDS and health service delivery was implemented throughout the state. Primary Health Center and AWC staffing was organized such that there was a cohesive ICDS and health team for each cluster of villages.In 2009, the Bal Sakha Scheme was introduced; under this scheme, private pediatricians provided care to underprivileged newborns during their first month of life (Gujarat, Health and Family Welfare Department 2019). In 2010, the tracking tool E-Mamta was launched to identify and fill gaps in maternal and child health services in both urban and rural areas. In 2014, the state initiated a medical scheme called Mukhyamantri Amrutum Yojana to provide cashless, quality medical and surgical treatment to BPL families.In 2012, the Gujarat State Nutrition Mission (GSNM), led by the DHFW, was set up to establish a platform for coordinating and integrating the efforts of key government departments concerned with nutrition, health, education, and water and sanitation; its aim was to prevent and reduce malnutrition among adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, and children below six years of age (with a special focus on the first 1,000 days). The GSNM strategy focused on preventive and curative approaches to alleviating malnutrition. Preventive aspects included community mobilization, behavior change communication, and awareness campaigns with a focus on the promotion of critical nutrition and health interventions. The curative approach focused mainly on the management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and moderate acute malnutrition (MAM), the functioning of Nutrition Rehabilitation Centers (NRCs), joint organization of Mamta days, and micronutrient supplementation. The preventive aspect of malnutrition control is under the purview of the DWCD. With UNICEF's support, SAM and MAM management were given considerable attention in the state and both community-based and institution-based rehabilitation protocols were developed.Multiple initiatives were put in place to ensure pregnancy care, safe deliveries, and emergency care. The Mamta Ghar (birth waiting home) was introduced to provide high-risk pregnant women from remote areas with a place to stay such that they could have ready access to care when required. The Mamta Doli initiative was introduced to reduce transportation-related delays in reaching health facilities for deliveries; this was implemented in collaboration with village health and sanitation committees. The intent of both programs was to reduce MMR.Overall, Gujarat used opportunities that arose from the expansion of national-level programs to strengthen state systems; it then introduced innovations to improve the coverage of interventions. Among the stakeholder interviewed, primarily senior government officials and development partners, noted multiple factors contributing to building ICDS and health programs in Gujarat. These included leadership, funding, innovations, champions of nutrition, and partnerships with academia and NGOs (Table 8).Stakeholders mentioned that political and bureaucratic leadership facilitated program implementation. In 2005, state leaders were shocked by the malnutrition status as indicated by the NFHS-3; they found it to be unacceptable and began to put in place measures to address it effectively. The topic of malnutrition became a prominent issue within the public discourse and key public figures became catalysts in the improvement of nutrition status (Fiedler et al. 2012). Capable and sensitized bureaucrats were able to effectively use resources from the NRHM and set up systems. RCH-I, RCH-II, and NRHM resources were used to expand coverage, increase human resources, improve infrastructure (including that of AWCs and village health centers), improve training, and provide flexi-funds to block-level officials for investment in innovations. Several stakeholders emphasized that for many schemes the state government used its own funds to augment those from the center; financial support was also extended by industrialists to run hospitals and for the adoption of a cluster of health or Anganwadi Centers. Several stakeholders identified Dr. Amarjeet Singh and Dr. Vikas Desai as being champions for improvements in nutrition, noting that they had played a key role in ensuring the prominence of nutrition in health programs and that they had provided leadership in the immediate implementation of programs. Bureaucratic stability also facilitated implementation. One respondent commented that, \"even if senior-level officials (secretaries, commissioners) change, the next level (deputy directors as in DWCD); or additional/joint Directors in DHFW do not change frequently; [they are]-in fact are quite stable in their positions for reasonable periods of time; hence actual field-level functioning is not much affected.\"Implementation systems were strengthened as well. One stakeholder mentioned that in 2001, unlike in many other states, Gujarat had instituted a training cell in the ICDS. Over the years, trainings were streamlined, biometric technology was used to track attendance, and resources and infrastructure for training improved. Implementation also improved; vacant positions were filled, and new posts were created as the health and nutrition programs expanded. Several stakeholders mentioned innovative schemes initiated between 2000 and 2010 that had improved access to care; the Chiranjeevi Yojana was cited in particular as being a scheme that increased the proportion of safe deliveries through improved access of the poor to specialized care by obstetricians. In a unique state-level effort led by the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, fortification of oil with vitamins A and D ( 2005) and fortification of wheat flour with iron and folic acid (2006) were initiated; this was first done in the open market and subsequently fortified flour and oil began to be used in ICDS and mid-day meal food supplementation. Steps were taken to ensure that oil fortification could be implemented. Emphasizing the leadership role of the secretary of the Department of Food, Civil Supplies, and Consumer Affairs, Mr. S. K. Nanda, one stakeholder stated that, \"Bureaucrats sometimes blame the political wing for not being able to work; here was a leader who successfully overcame hurdles from the food industry and ensured that micronutrient fortification of foods became mandatory.\"There was a lack of consensus among stakeholders as to whether ICDS had worked well under DHFW or whether moving it to DWCD had in fact been beneficial. Stakeholders in the DWCD perceived that the migration of ICDS from DHFW to DWCD facilitated the development of AWC infrastructure and increased efforts to increase coverage of services; stakeholders in the DHFW, however, perceived that implementation had been better when ICDS was part of the health department. One stakeholder commented that, \"When [services] are administratively under two different departments, there is a breach in continuity of services; coordination suffers; after all, beneficiaries are common to both.\"Convergence between ICDS and DHFW continued, however; it was facilitated by programs such as Mamta Abhiyan and IMNCI. Reflecting on how IMNCI strengthened coordination between AWWs and ANMs, one respondent commented that, \"Both health workers and AWWs are coming to the same center to learn about IMNCI. Medical college teachers are teaching them. IMNCI was a big boost, a policy change, something substantial to actually show integration.\" Stakeholders also mentioned that as ICDS was a new department under DWCD, the leadership enthusiastically supported the expansion and quality of ICDS and its programs through allocation of resources.Partnerships with NGOs and academia facilitated the strengthening of programs. Between 2000 and 2016, the government had set up mechanisms for systematically engaging NGOs as partners in the implementation of its programs and for support to women's empowerment initiatives. A state NGO cell was set up in the DHFW under the state health mission. An NGO coordinator oversaw coordination and implementation of RCH (and later NRHM) interventions (Gujarat, Health and Family Welfare Department 2018) and the DWCD handed over to the NGO the management of a cluster of AWCs along with financial resources.The state government encouraged partnerships with academic institutions, including departments of preventive and social medicine (PSM) and departments of food and nutrition. Program support units were established in all the PSM departments; they received state resources to help the government with research, monitoring, and technical expertise. The Department of Foods and Nutrition, M.S. University of Baroda, has provided technical support to both DHFW and DWCD, especially for anemia control and ICDS interventions, while the Department of Food Science at the Anand Agricultural University has functioned for many years as one of the state's Anganwadi Training Centers. Various mechanisms for improved monitoring and service provision were also initiated, including regular program reviews by the chief secretaries.Gujarat is one of the states that benefited the most after economic reforms were introduced in India in 1991/1992. After the reforms, the state performed better than India's other states in a number of sectors, including forestry and logging, manufacturing, electricity, gas and water supply, transport, storage, trade and hotels (Dholakia 2007).In 2005, Gujarat was one of the fastest growing states in the country and its growth was driven mainly by services and industry. From 2005 onward, poverty reduction occurred at a rate faster than the national average; even though it was declining sharply, however, it was still behind other advanced states (World Bank 2017). The proportion of population below the poverty line declined from 38 percent in 1984 to 17 percent in 2012 (ibid). Although Gujarat is one of the states where the proportion of poor people is relatively small, there are parts of the state where more than a third of the population is below the poverty line; the eastern districts of the state, particularly, have high rates of poverty (ibid).A few respondents mentioned economic progress as being the key underlying contributor to overall progress, including in nutrition. Progress was linked to investments in infrastructure, which in turn helped improve access to services. One respondent commented, \"increase in income does not automatically mean that family nutrition will improve. For example, in Khera, dairy farmers sell milk and buy consumables rather than better food for children or healthcare\". Another mentioned that, \"economic development also has a costlook at the increase in overweight and NCDs [noncommunicable diseases]. Unless it is accompanied by awareness, it may not benefit as expected.\"Women's education and empowerment are recognized as being important contributors to women and child nutrition, and the Government of Gujarat has implemented programs to improve these aspects. The Mahila Samakhya Programme, which began in Gujarat in 1989, was geared toward improving women's education and upliftment. The program provides access to financial and legal training and also makes other resources available to women (India, Ministry of Human Resource Development 2016). An evaluation of this program in 2014 revealed that it had been successful in mobilizing socially marginalized women and supporting women's education; it was also noted that Gujarat was one of the states that had been successful in implementing this program (Indian Institute of Management 2014). While the program was losing its importance in other states, Gujarat invested its own resources and continued it.In 2004, Gujarat established a semi-autonomous Gender Resource Center (GRC) under the DWCD which had a mandate to do training, advocacy, and research. The GRC collaborates with academic departments and NGOs on gender-related issues and programming in general, raising issues on behalf of underprivileged women; it also coordinates the efforts of different sections of society and the government and acts as a nodal agency for all gender-related initiatives in the state. According to one stakeholder, in 2006 the GRC played a leading role (with the support of NGOs like CHETNA) in developing Gujarat's policy for gender equity, the Nari Gaurav Niti.Overall, there has been mixed progress for women in Gujarat: MMR has improved and is now lower than the national average; the proportion of women with more than 10 years of education is below the national average; between 2005 and 2012, there has been a sharp decline in women's participation in the labor force (particularly in rural areas) from 62 to 38 percent (World Bank Gender Brief).Several stakeholders observed that dairy cooperatives and self-help groups have played an important role in improving women's status in the state. The network of women's dairy cooperatives became a significant contributor to women's development. Women's dairy cooperatives became platforms for spreading nutrition awareness and for increasing access to maternal and child health and nutrition services; they also supported the economic empowerment of women and their families.Prior to 2000, there were frequent changes in Gujarat's state leadership. For two months in 1996, President's rule was imposed, but stability was then achieved between 1996 and 1998. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in 2000 and continues to be in power until now. Although there have been changes in chief ministerial leadership during this period, the party has remained in power in the state, lending it political stability. Despite frequent transfers of senior bureaucrats such as commissioners and secretaries, there has been stability in terms of deputylevel officials in state departments and district-level officials; as a result, to a large extent program implementation continues as planned.In addition to political leadership, steady implementation of programs and policies has been supported by bureaucratic leadership in the state's Department of Health and Family Welfare, Department of Women and Child Development, and in the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs. Several stakeholders considered Dr. Amarjeet Singh to be a dynamic leader who facilitated the implementation of various programs under the DHFW.In the decade between 2006 and 2016, Gujarat was one of the states with the highest decline in stunting in absolute terms, and the decline was higher than the national average. Higher declines in stunting were observed among older children (6 to 23 months and 24 to 59 months) compared to children 0 to 5 months; this highlighted that for outcomes such as stunting, improvements accumulate over the early part of the life course and are more visible in these older infants. Our analysis indicates that improvements in health and nutrition services, SES, maternal BMI and maternal education, hygiene, village sanitation and electricity and access to health insurance contributed to actual changes in stunting among children 6 to 59 months of age.Programmatic expansion took place at the national level between 1990 and 2000; both ICDS and health programs took initiatives to improve coverage of nutrition and health interventions. Gujarat adopted these expansions and strengthened delivery systems to improve safe motherhood; it focused on strengthening antenatal care and on increasing institutional deliveries and the coverage of immunization programs. In 2005, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched to extend the coverage of services to rural areas, and Gujarat launched the state health mission to support state-level implementation. Until the mid-2000s Gujarat followed the national mandate; in addition, between 2005 and 2015, Gujarat implemented several state-level innovations to improve delivery care for the rural poor and for women in remote areas, to ensure the continuity of services for women and children, and to ensure convergence between the Health Department and the ICDS Department.Together with national program expansion and state innovations, there was an expansion of health and nutrition interventions, with champions for nutrition in other sectors playing a key role in ensuring attention to nutrition. Partnerships with NGOs and academia further facilitated the strengthening of programs. This expansion and strengthening of services took place under the direction of capable and sensitized bureaucrats who were able to use resources effectively and set up efficient systems. Resources from national programs were used to expand coverage, increase human resources, improve infrastructure and training, and provide flexi-funds to block-level officials for investment in innovations. Particularly between 2005 and 2015, changes in stunting resulted from a convergence of multiple factors; these included improvements in the coverage of health and nutrition interventions, in the economy, and in maternal factors. To continue its progress on stunting, the state must focus on improving coverage of all health and nutrition interventions along with quality and equity and it must continue to improve maternal determinants such as age at marriage, education, and health. The IYCF practices, particularly complementary feeding practices, are also suboptimal and need immediate attention.   On December 11, 2020, the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) factsheets on 22 Indian states were released, including on Gujarat (IIPS 2020). The data released to date tell a sobering story about child undernutrition. In Gujarat, the change in stunting among children below five was negligible between 2016 and 2019, increasing by 0.5 pp (38.5 to 39 percent). This indicates a stalled progress at the outset, but it requires an in-depth analysis to identify reasons for lack of progress and to identify actions for improvements.Between 2015 and 2019, there was a decline in all the infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices except for exclusive breastfeeding. Early initiation of breastfeeding had declined by 24 percent and timely introduction of complementary foods had declined by 14 percent. There was only a marginal change in the proportion of children receiving an adequate diet, and the prevalence rate was unacceptably low at less than 6 percent. Maternal underweight declined by only 2 pp, and overweight among women remained nearly stable changing by only 1 pp (24 percent in 2015 to 23 percent in 2019).Over the years between 2016 and 2019, major underlying determinants of nutrition also improved.In 2019, 74 percent households used improved sanitation facilities, 22 percent of women 20 to 24 years got married before 18 years, and 34 percent of women 15 to 49 years had 10 or more years of education. Nearly 98 percent households had access to an improved drinking water source in 2019.Coverage of all health and nutrition interventions, however, improved in  9).The prevalence of wasting among children was very high across all the districts (greater than 15 percent), with the highest prevalence in The Dangs (41 percent) and the lowest in Junagarh (17 percent) (Figure 10). Among the districts comparable between 2016 and 2019, wasting increased in Anand, Banaskanth, Dahod, Gandhinagar, Mahasena, Navsari, and Tapi Districts. These changes, however, should be interpreted in the context of the differences in the timing of data collection in 2016 (January to June) and 2019 (June to November). The data collection time in 2019 coincides with the monsoon season, which has implications for child morbidity and wasting.The increase in wasting prevalence in these districts is likely due to seasonal effects and needs further investigation.The prevalence of underweight was alarmingly high in the state, at 30 percent or higher in most districts; the highest prevalence of underweight was in The Dangs (53 percent) (Figure 12). Among the districts that were comparable, between 2016 and 2019, underweight increased in Anand, Banaskanth, Bharuch, Dahod, Gandhinagar, Navsari, Patan and Tapi Districts. In 2019, Surat had the highest number of underweight children in the state (Figure 13).All three anthropometric outcomes increased in Dahod, Gandhinagar, and Tapi Districts. Ahmedabad, Dahod, and Surat Districts are also among the top ten districts with the highest burden of stunted, wasted, and underweight children. This is indicative that the eastern region of the state needs particular attention.  Prevalence of anemia across the life stages had increased in the state. Anemia among nonpregnant (Figure 14) and pregnant women (Figure 16) was particularly high among the districts in the eastern region. Among children 6 to 59 months, prevalence of anemia was alarmingly high across the state (Figure 18); more than 60 percent of children were anemic in all districts. In Aravali, Narmada, and Panchmahal, more than 90 percent children were anemic. Ahmedabad and Surat have the highest burden of anemia across all three groups. These high prevalence rates of anemia are a huge public health concern and require an urgent and deeper investigation of causes and potential solutions.      The proportion of women with low BMI was variable across districts and ranged between 16 percent in Porbandar and 39 percent in Dohad. Among child-feeding practices, there was a high interdistrict variability in the early initiation of breastfeeding (EIBF), ranging from 17 to 56 percent.In Devbhumi Dwarka and Porbandar, the prevalence of EIBF was higher than 50 percent. Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) varied among districts, ranging from 36 to 88 percent. Of the 33 districts, EBF prevalence rates could be calculated only for 21 districts, as in the remaining districts, fewer than 25 children were measured. In ten of these districts, EBF was higher than 50 percent. Appropriate complementary feeding practices was very low in all districts, ranging from 0 to 16 percent. In Mahesena and Navsari none of the children received an adequate diet. On a positive note, among the districts comparable, between 2016 and 2019, there was a 14 pp increase in the proportion of children receiving adequate diet in Porbandar (14.5 percent) and The Dangs (16.5 percent) Districts.Morbidity among children was low in Gujarat. The proportion of children with diarrhea in the 2 weeks preceding the survey ranged from 2 to 17 percent. In 19 of the 33 districts, the prevalence of diarrhea was lower than 10 percent. The proportion of children with symptoms of acute respiratory infection (ARI) in the 2 weeks preceding the survey ranged from 0 to 3.9 percent; only in 5 districts was the prevalence of ARI more than 2 percent. Among the districts comparable between 2016 and 2019, there was an increase in the prevalence of diarrhea in Gandhinagar (12 pp) and Mahesena (9 pp) and prevalence of ARI in Dahod (1 pp), Navsari (3 pp), and The Dangs (2 pp). The data collection time in 2019 coincides with the monsoon season, which has implications for diarrhea and therefore requires further scrutiny.Across districts in Gujarat, there was variability in women's age at marriage and education status. The proportion of 20 to 24 years women who were married before 18 years was between 7 to 49 percent. In 8 districts, more than 30 percent of women were married before 18 years. The proportion of 15 to 49 years women who had more than 10 years of schooling was between 18 and 48 percent. In 19 of the 33 districts, less than a third of women had attained 10 or more years of education. In Banaskantha, Kheda, Panchmahal, Patan, and The Dangs Districts, more than 30 percent were married before 18 and less than 30 percent of women had received more than 10 years of education. Among the districts comparable between 2016 and 2019, in 3 districts (Narmada, Dohad, Amreli) there was a decline of approximately 1 to 7 pp in the proportion of women attaining 10 years of education; in Gandhinagar District, however, there was a 11 pp increase. Both women's age at marriage and education need immediate attention. It is plausible that ensuring higher education for women could help delay marriage until women are over 18 years. Across all districts, more than 90 percent of households had improved drinking water source. The proportion of households using improved sanitation facilities varied among the districts, ranging from 36 percent in The Dangs to 87 percent in Ahmedabad.In 26 of the 33 districts, more than 60 percent of households reported using improved sanitation facilities. Among the districts comparable between 2016 and 2019, 9 districts had remarkable improvements in sanitation. In The Dangs, households using improved sanitation improved from 19 to 72 percent and in Tapi, it increased from 39 to 70 percent. In Gujarat, in nearly all districts, more than 90 percent of households have access to electricity.As in 2016, the coverage of nutrition-specific interventions varied by district in 2019. The coverage of antenatal care (four or more ANC visits) ranged from 56 to 95 percent; in most districts, the coverage was higher than 70 percent and in 8 districts it was 90 percent or higher. Remarkable improvements were observed in the coverage among some of the districts comparable between 2016 and 2019; there was 52 pp increase in coverage in Amreli. In some other districts, however, substantial declines were noted. This mixed coverage requires further investigation to unpack the reasons for decline and address them immediately. The coverage of protection against neonatal tetanus was high across districts and ranged between 73 and 98 percent.The coverage of deliveries in health facilities and births assisted by a health professional was high and there was limited interdistrict variability. The proportion of mothers receiving postnatal care within two days after delivery ranged between 78 to 98 percent. A health check-up for children in the first two days after birth was high as well across the districts and ranged between 73 and 99 percent.Coverage of full immunization varied across the state, ranging from as low as 43 percent in Banaskantha to as high as 97 percent in Tapi. In 21 districts, more than 75 percent of children were fully immunized. The coverage of vitamin A supplementation was high, ranging from 75 percent in Banaskantha to 97 percent in Porbandar. In 26 of the 33 districts, more than 80 percent children among 9 to 35 months had received vitamin A supplementation in the previous six months. Navsari, Surat, and Valsad had more than 90 percent coverage of both full immunization and vitamin A supplementation.Overall, the coverage of nutrition-specific interventions is high. The trajectory of improvement of interventions needs to continue and deeper analysis to identify reasons for decline in coverage of some interventions in some districts is much needed.Gujarat, a state in western India with a population of 60 million, is one of the country's high-income states. Between 2006 and2016, it has shown one of largest declines in stunting, both in absolute terms and compared to the national average. Our analysis indicates that improvements in health and nutrition services, SES, maternal BMI and maternal education, hygiene, village sanitation and electricity and access to health insurance contributed to actual changes in stunting among children 6 to 59 months of age. These changes could be achieved with a vision, intent, financing, and building capabilities. Finally, developments that supported the improvements in nutrition were enabled by a stable political environment, capable leadership at the departmental levels and stable district-level leadership.Gujarat witnessed a stalling of progress in stunting prevalence between 2016 and 2019. A mixed picture emerged on trends in IYCF practices. Improvements in household conditions continued, particularly in sanitation. The scope for improvements in women-level factors including age at marriage and education remains. On a promising note, coverage of health and interventions improved, suggesting that administrative capabilities, systems strengthening and a general commitment to improve direct nutrition programs remained stable.To continue its progress on stunting, the state must focus on improving coverage of all health and nutrition interventions along with quality and equity and it must continue to improve maternal determinants such as age at marriage, education, and health. The IYCF practices, particularly complementary feeding practices, are also suboptimal and need immediate attention.In an era of commitment by India to global nutrition targets, it is an opportune time for Gujarat to accelerate actions necessary to meeting its nutrition targets. The huge gaps in IYCF practices, women's education (especially girls' education at the secondary level) and early marriage need to be urgently prioritized. Gaps in the coverage of interventions also need to be addressed; these include ANC during pregnancy and childhood immunization.Finally, the substantial interdistrict variability across most determinants and interventions highlight the importance of taking a strong district-specific focus. Across the state, there are contextual differences between the districts, including topography, type of population, and infrastructure. This kind of variability calls for investments in deepening the understanding of district-level factors and identifying strategies to bridge gaps in the multiple determinants of undernutrition. Additional analytic work is necessary in each district to further understand the contextual factors and to develop tailored strategies for addressing the various determinants that can in turn deliver improvements in nutrition.","tokenCount":"9108","images":["-430154678_1_1.png","-430154678_1_2.png","-430154678_1_3.png","-430154678_1_4.png","-430154678_1_5.png","-430154678_1_6.png","-430154678_1_7.png","-430154678_2_1.png","-430154678_15_1.png","-430154678_20_1.png","-430154678_22_1.png","-430154678_24_1.png","-430154678_32_1.png","-430154678_42_1.png","-430154678_42_2.png","-430154678_43_1.png","-430154678_43_2.png","-430154678_43_3.png","-430154678_43_4.png","-430154678_44_1.png","-430154678_44_2.png","-430154678_44_3.png","-430154678_44_4.png","-430154678_45_1.png","-430154678_45_2.png","-430154678_46_1.png","-430154678_46_2.png","-430154678_46_3.png","-430154678_46_4.png","-430154678_47_1.png","-430154678_47_2.png","-430154678_47_3.png","-430154678_47_4.png","-430154678_48_1.png","-430154678_48_2.png","-430154678_48_3.png","-430154678_48_4.png"],"tables":["-430154678_1_1.json","-430154678_2_1.json","-430154678_3_1.json","-430154678_4_1.json","-430154678_5_1.json","-430154678_6_1.json","-430154678_7_1.json","-430154678_8_1.json","-430154678_9_1.json","-430154678_10_1.json","-430154678_11_1.json","-430154678_12_1.json","-430154678_13_1.json","-430154678_14_1.json","-430154678_15_1.json","-430154678_16_1.json","-430154678_17_1.json","-430154678_18_1.json","-430154678_19_1.json","-430154678_20_1.json","-430154678_21_1.json","-430154678_22_1.json","-430154678_23_1.json","-430154678_24_1.json","-430154678_25_1.json","-430154678_26_1.json","-430154678_27_1.json","-430154678_28_1.json","-430154678_29_1.json","-430154678_30_1.json","-430154678_31_1.json","-430154678_32_1.json","-430154678_33_1.json","-430154678_34_1.json","-430154678_35_1.json","-430154678_36_1.json","-430154678_37_1.json","-430154678_38_1.json","-430154678_39_1.json","-430154678_40_1.json","-430154678_41_1.json","-430154678_42_1.json","-430154678_43_1.json","-430154678_44_1.json","-430154678_45_1.json","-430154678_46_1.json","-430154678_47_1.json","-430154678_48_1.json","-430154678_49_1.json","-430154678_50_1.json","-430154678_51_1.json","-430154678_52_1.json","-430154678_53_1.json","-430154678_54_1.json","-430154678_55_1.json","-430154678_56_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"086e42fd77f7ff46b2795fcee7a8c418","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/001d8d45-acda-4158-97f2-aebc47eab9b4/retrieve","description":"The agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus came to prominence in 2011. With 1 billion people continuing to suffer from food insecurity, and with vitamin and mineral deficiencies compromising the nutrition and health of billions of people, the international development community began to ask how much more could agriculture do to improve human wellbeing if it explicitly included nutrition and health goals? What kind of changes could maximize agriculture’s contribution to human health and nutrition, and how could improved human health and nutrition contribute to a more productive and sustainable agricultural system?","id":"1405174907"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"a574d6bf-09b0-435d-947b-045f8aa4104a","pagecount":"8","content":"T he agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus came to prominence in 2011. With 1 billion people continuing to suffer from food insecurity, and with vitamin and mineral deficiencies compromising the nutrition and health of billions of people, the international development community began to ask how much more could agriculture do to improve human wellbeing if it explicitly included nutrition and health goals? What kind of changes could maximize agriculture's contribution to human health and nutrition, and how could improved human health and nutrition contribute to a more productive and sustainable agricultural system?1Although the agriculture, health, and nutrition sectors all seek to improve human well-being, agriculture has rarely been explicitly deployed as a tool to address nutrition and health challenges. With agriculture moving higher on the global agenda, in part because of volatile food prices, there is growing recognition that it is an opportune time to bring together the agriculture, nutrition, and health sectors and unleash the potential of agriculture-as a supplier of food, a source of income, and an engine for growth-to sustainably reduce malnutrition and ill-health for the world's most vulnerable people (see Box 6).organized by IFPRI and its 2020 Vision Initiative in New Delhi (http://2020conference.ifpri.info/). At this conference, participants took stock of available knowledge on the interactions among agriculture, nutrition, and health; explored opportunities for enhancing nutrition and cutting health risks along the value chain; identified key levers and incentives for leveraging agriculture; and assessed critical research and action gaps. Ultimately, they catalyzed a process to reimagine how to make these linkages work better to enable more nutrition-and healthfriendly agricultural investments (see Box 7).Agricultural Research Takes on the Nutrition and Health Challenge John McDermott, CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health M alnutrition and disease are wide- spread and persistent global challenges. Agriculture is central to both, but agricultural growth alone has been insufficient to achieve targets for reducing malnutrition and improving health, such as United Nations Millennium Development Goal 1 on underweight children or Millennium Development Goal 4 on child mortality. One-third of children in South Asia are underweight, and more than 33 percent of childhood deaths in low-income countries are linked to undernutrition, most significantly in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. To enhance the agricultural contribution, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has developed a program to research agricultural actions for improving human nutrition and health. 1  This new research program, launched in January 2012, has four interlinked components. One integrates agriculture, nutrition, and health programs and policies, while the other three components focus specifically on developing agricultural solutions that improve nutrition and health:• Production and distribution of more nutritious staple crops, biofortified with pro-vitamin A, iron, or zinc, to address the most severe micronutrient deficiencies• Improvement of value chains to increase foods' nutritional value from production to consumption, including food-value-chain analysis and development done by other CGIAR programs• Reduction of the risk of agricultureassociated diseases by enhancing food safety and controlling zoonoses as well as emerging diseases, and by mitigating diseases associated with agricultural intensification Research outputs will contribute to development impacts along three pathways: improving the nutritional quality and food safety of food value chains, providing knowledge and technologies to improve the performance of agriculturenutrition-health development programs, and providing knowledge and evidence for improved policymaking and investment decisions.For better nutrition and health for the poor, agricultural researchers will need to work closely with nutrition and public health researchers and link with food-value-chain actors, development program implementers, and policymakers. Behind these partnerships will be a fundamentally new perspective on agrifood system research and development, including• looking beyond food production to processing, distribution, and consumption through deeper engagement with the private sector and other valuechain actors;• taking a more integrative view through joint efforts of agriculture, health, and social development sectors using new metrics and tools for joint planning and assessment; and• focusing on the perspective of the poor-by, for example, assessing livelihood and risk tradeoffs rather than using the standard hazard-avoidance perspective.This new agricultural research program will focus on South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Through investing in new tools, approaches, and evidence to usefully guide agricultural policy and practice, the CGIAR expects to have a major impact on enhancing agricultural contributions to global, regional, and national efforts to accelerate better nutrition and reduce agriculture-associated disease burdens among the poor.  (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016), developed by the Uganda National Planning Authority in collaboration with several ministries, with a strong message to the public on what foods to grow to avoid malnutrition. Malawi organized a groundbreaking national conference in September 2011 that brought together policymakers and planners in the agriculture, nutrition, and health sectors to coordinate and integrate their activities to help agriculture in Malawi contribute to the health and nutrition of the population.In late 2010 a road map was produced for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement-a broad partnership of international and donor organizations.2 The movement gathered considerable momentum during 2011 when the road map began to be translated into action. By January 2012, 24 high-burden countries had committed to the SUN movement and begun setting nutrition goals and targets. More than 100 organizations around the world have endorsed T he 2011 \"\"Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health\" Conference, organized by IFPRI and its 2020 Vision Initiative, had significant useful effects on participants, in addition to informing global discourse and potential new initiatives. Conferees learned how to advance an integrated approach to agriculture, nutrition, and health more effectively in their respective workplaces. While most conferees arrived already believing the sectors should be viewed and managed jointly rather than in isolation, their attendance strengthened these opinions-as shown by pre-and post-conference surveys. Conferees gained valuable new information and connected to a wider set of cross-sector networks.The 2020 Conference also produced measurable impacts on public and professional discourse. Between October 2010 and May 2011, the international journalists invited to the conference wrote 33 stories about the conference, and 25 other media stories were published in English, French, and German. Significant institutional reporting on the conference included 22 stories presented in various donor and stakeholder outlets. This media coverage helped increase the visibility of conference themes. Google searches at regular intervals revealed a significant uptick in the Internet presence of the conference's central theme; the average number of retrieved web pages containing the phrase \"linking agriculture, nutrition, and health\" increased from about 9,300 in the preconference period to more than 13,500 in the post-conference period.Finally, surveys and interviews revealed that this New Delhi conference inspired or supported a range of important initiatives, including follow-on meetings and consultation; efforts to contact government decisionmakers on agriculture, nutrition, and health issues; new initiatives by donors; and even some provisional programmatic and institutional change. One immediate, tangible impact was a decision by the Canadian International Development Agency to give an additional US$6-10 million grant to the HarvestPlus project on biofortification. In addition the conference further strengthened the agriculture, nutrition, and health themes in the new CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health, an international initiative to create a network of educational institutions working in the areas of agriculture, nutrition, and health. China's State Food and Nutrition Consultation Committee vowed to create a food safety and nutrition development institute as well.The durability and extent of such changes during the longer term will depend in part on whether IFPRI commits resources to sustained leadership in the areas of agriculture, nutrition, and health outreach and policy research. 1 energy and essential nutrients. But to get access to food, people do not necessarily need to produce it themselves; they can also buy it. The agricultural system may help increase people's access to food by allowing them to produce more food (if they farm themselves) or by lowering food prices or raising their incomes (if they purchase food). By improving their access to food, agriculture has the potential to greatly improve people's nutrition and health. At the same time, some agricultural conditions and practices can lead to disease and poor health for both farmers and consumers.3 For example, agricultural practices may increase farmers' risk of becoming infected with animal diseases, expose farmers to dangerous pesticides, or introduce toxins into foods.In many agrarian countries, agricultural growth is more effective in reducing undernutrition than growth in other sectors. However, the composition of agricultural growth, the distribution of this growth, and the conditions under which such growth takes place all matter. Growth in agricultural subsectors where poor people are engaged, such as staple crops, contributes more to reducing poverty and increasing calorie intake than growth in, for instance, export crops. Later in the development process, growth in other sectors besides agriculture becomes more important in improving food and nutrition security. Yet neither agricultural growth nor nonagricultural growth alone is sufficient to reduce child undernutrition or micronutrient malnutrition-complementary programs in nutrition, health, water and sanitation, and behavior change communication also need to be implemented and targeted to vulnerable populations, especially women and children.4The links among agriculture, health, and nutrition often work differently for men and women. In many parts of the world, men and women spend money differently: women are more likely to spend the income they control on food, healthcare, and education for their children. Increased equality between men and women can translate into greater agricultural productivity. If this productivity is accompanied by more income and strong bargaining power for women, it can result in better health and nutrition.Opportunities to improve nutrition and reduce health risks exist all along the agricultural value it. The movement supports national governments in developing and operationalizing nutrition-sensitive national plans and aligns financial and technical support for nutrition. A large part of the SUN movement's approach consists of incorporating specific pro-nutrition actions into other areas such as food security, agriculture, and health.Other initiatives included the United Nations high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases in September 2011. This meeting involved only limited participation by the agriculture sector, but the declaration that resulted from the meeting noted the need for a whole-of-government approach that includes the agriculture sector. With its report Bringing Agriculture to the Table: How Agriculture and Food Can Play a Role in Preventing Chronic Disease, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs provided clear analysis and recommendations on how agriculture can contribute to better health.Despite opportunities to improve health outcomes through the agriculture nexus approach, involving the health sector in the discussions has been challenging (see Box 8). One of the key barriers to collaboration between the agriculture and health communities is a lack of common metrics. Therefore, in May 2011, IFPRI and the Leverhulme Center for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health brought together health and agriculture experts to find common ways of measuring the health outcomes of agriculture interventions.Building on the momentum of the 2020 Conference, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) developed a major new research program called \"Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health,\" which was launched in January 2012 with the overarching aim of improving the nutrition and health of poor people by exploiting the many synergies between agriculture, nutrition, and health (see Box 6).In many ways, the links among agriculture, nutrition, and health are already at work, but the synergies may not always be optimal. Agriculture is the primary source of food to meet people's need for chain. A value-chain approach to development can incorporate nutrition goals and thereby make nutritious foods more available and affordable for the poor. This approach starts by looking at every component of the food supply chain from field to fork-including production, postharvest processing, marketing, and trade-and determining where value for nutrition can be integrated. The food value chain also involves many hazards-microbiological, physical, and chemical hazards, as well as occupational hazards-that pose challenges for producing and consuming safe food. Policymakers are increasingly using risk analysis to help them decide on regulatory and other actions to reduce health risks along the food value chain.5Many interventions are being tried to understand and deal with these challenges. Examples include biofortification (the breeding of new varieties of food crops with improved nutritional content); schemes to increase household production and consumption of micronutrient-rich vegetables, fruits, and animal-source foods; local production of foods for school feeding programs; and projects to integrate agriculture, nutrition, and healthPublic Health and Agriculture: Working Together Kabba t. Joiner, Helen Keller International T he agriculture and health sectors have long been separated by fundamentally different societal functions and institutional organization. However, both health and agriculture representatives made a marked effort to bring the two sectors closer together in 2011, forming some promising links between agriculture and health organizations. Programs that have emerged more recently in Sub-Saharan Africa include the Baby Friendly Community Initiative in The Gambia, Millennium Villages in Mali, Gardens for Health in Rwanda, and Agriculture for Children's Empowerment in Liberia.Agriculture can make both direct and indirect contributions to health. Growth in agriculture leads to increased rural income, which is positively related to better health status when community health infrastructure is financed by profits from agriculture. Sustained agricultural development can indirectly lead to significant progress in rural health. In particular, if women's incomes grow, they use healthcare services more frequently, which improves maternal and child health.Agriculture can contribute to public health directly through improved agricultural products. In general, improving diets-by improving food productsreduces the burden of chronic diseases. Integrating the agriculture and health sectors also improves food safety by making it possible to establish better surveillance systems from farm to table. But more can be done than just growing better-quality crops. For a long time, agriculture was not considered a primary weapon in the elimination of micronutrient malnutrition. Food systems were developed with little attention to balanced nutrient requirements that support good health and well-being. Now HarvestPlus and other organizations are addressing this issue through the breeding of mineral-and vitamin-rich crops, such as orangefleshed (that is, carotene-rich) sweet potatoes and high-iron pearl millet.Collaborations between the agriculture and health sectors can lead to substantial improvements in diet quality in developing countries, but they can flourish only if certain human and institutional challenges are overcome. Representatives from both sectors need to• take cross-sectoral action at the community level;• increase funding in units of the health sector that can work with agriculture;• create formal arrangements, assign responsibilities, and develop skills for intersectoral negotiation and decisionmaking;• establish reliable communication and links among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in both sectors;• ensure mutual consultation in priority setting and activities like data collection; and• strengthen human capital in both sectors by reviewing curricula or by exchanging staff and sharing facilities.Decisionmakers in agriculture and health should push for more innovation and cross-sectoral participation to produce better outcomes. They must go off the beaten path in order to maximize the benefits from their collaboration.services.6 So far, however, there is little concrete evidence on how agriculture-nutrition linkages work. One crucial task then is to compile the evidence base on these links. Many more studies are needed on the nutritional impacts of agricultural interventions, more nutrition-relevant data need to be generated and collected, and nutritional indicators should be included in evaluations of agricultural programs.The 2020 Conference highlighted four important sets of tools that could help to leverage agriculture for better nutrition and health. Economic levers include, at the broadest level, agricultural growth or overall economic growth (with the caveat that growth alone is not enough to solve the nutrition problem). \"Fat taxes\" and \"thin subsidies\" have the potential to influence people's economic access to healthy foods in industrial counties, but more targeted approaches to improving poor people's diets may be more appropriate in developing countries. Social levers involve bringing people together across sectors and within communities to jointly work toward improving nutrition and health. Governance levers require government leadership at all levels-from national to provincial to local. Changes in policies and programs are not enough to get people in different ministries and institutions to work together-it is important to devise incentives to get them to do so and to devote the time and resources necessary to work across sectors. Science and technology levers require not only allocating more resources to general agricultural research and development to keep the pipeline for innovation, discovery, and dissemination full, but also targeting more resources specifically to nutrition-and health-relevant research, such as work on nutrient-rich vegetables and other crops and livestock.A number of recurring themes7 emerged during the 2020 Conference and are engaging the international community:1. Improve investments by making existing ones more nutrition-and health-friendly, prioritizing and scaling up successes, and generating new ones that exploit the links among agriculture, nutrition, and health. 9. Correct market failures by using public policies such as investments, subsidies, education, trade, and tax policies, as markets alone may not achieve socially optimal agriculture, nutrition, and health outcomes.10. Look at food systems, not just agricultural systems; consider all the stages from field to fork; and be sensitive to the sustainability of natural resources.11. Proactively engage the health sector and find ways to reach out and include the health sector in agricultural activities.12. Recognize that women are at the nexus of the three sectors and direct policies and programs to women to simultaneously strengthen agriculture and enhance nutrition and health.The nexus approach is spilling over to other sectors. The food-water-energy nexus gained a great deal of attention in late 2011 with the Bonn2011 Nexus Conference (see Box 9). In an increasingly interlinked global environment, a nexus approach to agriculture offers considerable potential to improve nutrition and health, to manage natural resources more sustainably, to improve people's livelihoods, and to support more inclusive economic growth. Looking ahead, it is important to build an evidence base that will improve understanding and help identify viable opportunities to strengthen linkages across sectors and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. ■Food, Water, and Energy: Understanding the Nexus Claudia Ringler, IFPRI D uring the last few years, the cross- sectoral linkages on the supply side of agriculture have become more apparent as key agricultural inputs have grown scarcer and more expensive. Key among these linkages are those of agriculture and food with water, land and energy resources, and environmental/biodiversity outcomes. The food-water-energy nexus has come to the forefront in discussions at several international forums in the run-up to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that will take place in Brazil in June of 2012. One such forum, the Bonn2011 conference on \"The Water, Energy, and Food Security Nexus: Solutions for the Green Economy,\" concluded that \"achieving water, energy and food security, and consequently reducing hunger and eradicating poverty, is a central future challenge that is possible to overcome, even under difficult and challenging global economic conditions.\" 1  Much work has been done on water and food interlinkages. Water supply is essential for food production, which depletes about 80 percent of global freshwater withdrawals annually. Population growth, economic growth, urbanization, and industrialization have fueled increasing water scarcity, putting as much as half of all global grain production at risk of insufficient water resources by 2050. 2 Increasingly it is not only water availability that is being compromised, but also water quality. Investments in the sector have been insufficient in most developing countries to meet growing demand for clean and safe water.Less is known about the interlinkages between energy and food and among energy, water, and food. However, the growing interdependence of food and oil prices as a result of increased energy use in agriculture and the growing share of foodcrop use as biofuels have made the need for joint policy development apparent. Higher energy prices have driven up food prices and reduced the availability of land and water for food production (due to competition from expanded biofuel production). At the same time, poor people's access to sufficient food, water, and energy remains unacceptably low, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.These linkages thus demand holistically developed programs and policies. This is particularly crucial because food production will need to increase substantially in the next four decades to meet growing demand. To achieve food security without compromising sustainable water and energy supplies, improved policies, institutions, and investments should include the following principles:• develop clear national food and nutrition policies that take into account the consequences for water and energy;• reduce water, food, and energy subsidies that lower resource-use efficiency and have adverse impacts on the poor and the environment;• maximize complementarities between public and private stakeholders in food, water, and energy provision;• promote resource-use-efficient technology development and dissemination, particularly technologies the poor can afford;• promote tenure security for both water and land;• focus and strengthen crop and other agricultural research at the foodwater-energy nexus (for example, drought-tolerant, high-yielding, nutrient-use-efficient crops); and• create markets and trade solutions that ensure least-cost input flow for farmers and consumers.If food, water, and energy connections remain unaddressed, global food security will not be achieved, particularly for the rural poor.","tokenCount":"3452","images":["1405174907_1_2.png","1405174907_8_2.png"],"tables":["1405174907_1_1.json","1405174907_2_1.json","1405174907_3_1.json","1405174907_4_1.json","1405174907_5_1.json","1405174907_6_1.json","1405174907_7_1.json","1405174907_8_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"40eb5c01fc36cd3048766e132f494d25","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/be20ad02-e6f2-4a92-b2cb-6c0d3b0df3d3/retrieve","description":"","id":"2039962847"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"68cb6da4-6e9c-4d00-86fd-4b1c546ef037","pagecount":"4","content":"t his brief focuses on one type of infrastructure investment- rural roads. Participatory poverty assessments have long identified remoteness and isolation as critical components that prevent inclusive growth. Although it is widely assumed that investments in rural roads encourage inclusive growth, there is little evidence about how these impacts occur or what their determinants are. This brief addresses the issue based on a study of empirical evidence from a cluster of case studies drawn from past Asian Development Bank operations. The objective of the study is to help improve the design of rural road projects to achieve sustainable benefits for the poor. Because pragmatic recommendations need to capture the real-life impediments that often plague project design assumptions, the study focuses narrowly and deeply on selected case study villages within a project area. This approach enables an understanding of the factors that influence rural road impacts on inclusive growth.The study was carefully designed to maximize the use of both qualitative and quantitative information. It did not assume an automatic link between rural roads and poverty reduction, but considered the multifaceted impacts that determine how people respond to improved rural roads and how this shapes their livelihood constraints and opportunities. Three countries-Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka-with two projects in each, were selected. For each project, a project site with a road and a control site without a road were identified. Cumulatively, the cluster of field sites selected covered a broad range of both physical and nonphysical factors likely to condition the context for rural road interventions. From each project, a road segment was selected as a case study area. Road segments in districts where the incidence of poverty was high were purposely selected during this process, because the focus of the study was the impact of roads on poverty and inclusive growth.  The study reveals that the poor and very poor inhabit a localized, walking world and make little use of medium-or long-distance transportation links. Of more importance to them are the paths, tracks, culverts, and access routes in and around their village on which they rely to reach water, firewood, fields, and local employment opportunities. Saving time in their within-community travel is important to them. Intermediate modes of transport that help them increase their carrying capacity are also useful to save time for more productive work. Incremental benefits to them are more likely to come from better access to nonmotorized transport and greater ability to cross waterways to help in their daily routine tasks. Therefore, increasing their within-village mobility is as important for poverty reduction as providing access to markets outside the village. The time savings will allow the poor and very poor to be more productive and generate small savings to explore opportunities outside the village.Inside the community, the survey shows that women are much more likely to travel for health purposes (55 percent compared with 5 percent for men), either for themselves or, more frequently, to accompany children. Women are also much more likely to travel for provisions within the community, with 46 percent of responses, compared with 17 percent for men and 18 percent shared by both.Men are more likely to travel for crop processing (53 percent, compared with women's 14 percent and 17 percent shared), and social travel within the village is largely shared. In travel outside the community, these patterns are broadly replicated. For various tasks, men are more likely to have access to private means of transport like a bicycle, three-wheeler, or motorcycle. Women are more likely to travel on foot to fulfill tasks, or use public transport like a bus or truck. The opportunities for men to travel outside the village and to take up outside work are reinforced and perpetuated by traditional gender roles in the study sites, with women responsible for household tasks and men for productive or economic tasks.Figure 1 shows the modes of transport for buying provisions, a common task, for each group in the project sites. The very poor rely much more on walking than do the better off. The latter are more likely to have access to private motorized means (motorcycle or three-wheeler) or to a car or van. Interestingly, the poor are more likely to use a bicycle, whereas bicycle use among the very poor is negligible. The very poor's heavy reliance on walking is reflected in other tasks too, such as obtaining health services, going to school, and selling products.Most of the journeys made by the rural poor are for subsistence and household tasks, rather than for activities that are directly economically productive. For the rural poor, access to local facilities and the primary transport network is critical during times of need. The very poor lack both time and energy, and factors that either reduce or exacerbate these deficiencies have a critical bearing on poverty.Survey responses among different socioeconomic groups in the project locations show clearly how the use of transport services differs (Figure 2). Among the very poor, 47 percent say that they use transport only occasionally because they have little need to travel outside the community, compared with 21 percent of the better-off and 30 percent of the poor. The very poor do not have sufficient funds to travel to the outside market for slightly cheaper food items and therefore rely on the village store for day-to-day needs.The case studies show little evidence that the very poor increase their travel outside the community in search of job opportunities or for any other reason following road rehabilitation. A traditional assumption is that poor people's lack of agricultural assets, particularly land, makes them more likely to seek employment outside the community and that road access helps this effort substantially. Labor markets in remote rural areas are imperfect, however, and finding job opportunities is difficult, particularly where there is a lack of information. This lack of information and inability to command rights over work opportunities are themselves a function of poverty. Better-off households are much more likely to have access to information on well-paid, or stable, outside employment, whereas the poor and very poor have access only to temporary, seasonal, and unskilled work opportunities, which are usually poorly paid. But where the economic conditions are right, better basic road access can affect the local wage-laboring and trading prospects of the poor and thus enable them to benefit from wider processes of increased agricultural commercialization and trade. In the study areas, a few households graduated from poor to nonpoor status because of the opportunities that the road provided. These households usually had some skills (carpentry, sweet making) to sell or had a temporary injection of funds to start a small business. In general, the benefits of better roads (to all socioeconomic groups as a whole) are highly evident when project villages are compared with control villages. Average travel time is often half or less for project households than for control households for all types of activities. Owing to difficulties of access, control site households must often wait and combine a number of important tasks into one trip to avoid spending long periods of travel for one purpose only. In response to questions about their primary purposes for travel and how often they travel outside their village, respondents in project sites and control sites had different priorities. Control households travel more frequently for crop processing and for selling their produce than do project households, suggesting that (1) primary agricultural activities are more important in the control areas, which may lack alternative livelihood opportunities; and (2) because of better access, many of the services that come directly to the project site are not available in the control site.Survey data also show that project communities appear to have better access to safe sources of drinking water and better sanitary and toilet conditions. This advantage may be a function of the general increased level of development of project over control sites (itself a function of better access to roads, communications, and opportunities). It also reflects the better accessibility of state services and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to communities; roadside communities are more likely to have services provided under these schemes. How equitably the benefits of these roads are distributed within communities, however, is a separate issue.The development of small businesses in the project communities shows that road investments have had significant indirect impacts on the general level of economic development in each of the study locations. Improved roads and better ability to transport goods provide opportunities for those who can afford the investment to start a small store in the village or sell goods in a nearby market center. They also save people time in their previous occupations, allowing those who have the necessary skills and savings to invest in other small businesses. Among project case respondents, 64 percent observed that the number of small businesses in the community had increased since the road was built or rehabilitated. Of those who had a business before road rehabilitation, 55 percent believed that the project had a positive effect on these enterprises. Of the 17 percent of project respondents who had started a business since road rehabilitation, 69 percent said that the road was a factor in their deciding to start the business.Improvements in income were a key area of inquiry for the household survey. Across all study communities, the better-off have both diversified and increased their income more than the poor and very poor. Those reporting no change were higher among control group (58 percent) than project (47 percent) respondents. Among all project site respondents, 23 percent reported receiving less income from agriculture and more from other sources, compared with 14 percent of control site respondents. About 22 percent of better-off households reported increasing both agriculture and other sources of income, whereas more than 50 percent of both poor and very poor groups reported no change at all in sources of income.In practice, those who are most secure and have savings may be able to make the best use of the opportunities brought by better roads. The better-off have surplus funds to invest in trading, have an agricultural surplus to sell, or have a network of connections and relationships outside the community enabling them to take advantage of trading or working opportunities. In fact, case study evidence suggests that better rural roads allow those with some savings to diversify into activities with substantially better returns. People engaged as salaried workers in nearby town centers rely on a regular and rapid link and so benefit substantially from the efficiency and cost savings in commuting.The rural roads studied provided an important economic safety net by allowing for alternative livelihood opportunities. An alternative income stream, even if temporary or seasonal, is still important for household food security. A good road surface and the guarantee of all-year accessibility are important prerequisites for the development of any kind of regular enterprise.Undoubtedly, in all case study projects, the poor and very poor benefited substantially from social impacts of rural roads through access to state services in areas such as health, education, agricultural extension, and provision of information. Roads allow regular contact with the outside world and bring remote areas within the purview of the state and other networks (Figure 3). Such improvements reduce the perception of isolation and remoteness among the poor and very poor.The study shows that the context within which economic impacts take place is often determined by conditions such as climate, agricultural potential, spatial position, proximity to networks, and world market commodity prices, as well as social structure and concentration of assets. For example, a slump in commodity prices can cause the poor and very poor, being risk averse, to concentrate on subsistence food production rather than cash crops. Although road development cannot affect these conditions, carefully considering them during project identification and design would enable project designers to better assess the potential for such projects to reduce poverty and to consider possible complementary measures to increase positive impacts.The prevailing social structure and concentration of productive assets also have an enormous bearing on determining how impacts occur in each of the study locations. The concentration and distribution of land is particularly important and largely outside the area of influence of a road project. Understanding asset ownership and the distribution of benefits from roads, however, can help project designers design complementary measures.Road development can lead to more inclusive growth, but ensuring that it does so entails deviating from traditional road investment projects in several ways:• Use labor-based construction to provide the seed capital for poor people to start a business or to break the debt cycle and sell to traders outside the village.• Base decisions about road access on the need for inclusive growth and not on how politically influential the community is.• Ensure that minor maintenance is not neglected either because of lack of funds or because it is not highly visible.• Clarify who is responsible for maintaining project roads and where funds will come from.Roads are clearly a critical enabling condition for improvement of living conditions in rural areas. But there is no guarantee that economic benefits will be distributed in an inclusive manner between the poor and nonpoor in communities. The poor and very poor primarily benefit from road improvements indirectly, through better access to state services and other services and through opportunities for alternative livelihoods, where conditions are right. The poor can also benefit broadly from improvements to the rural economy through increased opportunities for agricultural wage labor, where preconditions are favorable. The study confirms that better rural roads are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for graduating from poverty. There is little evidence that roads directly reduce poverty among the very poor. The ability of the poor and very poor to make significant economic use of the road depends on their asset base, their entitlements to resources, and the opportunities they can command, as well as the passage of time. In a few instances, the poor who have invested savings in a small business or used their skills have graduated from poverty, using the benefits from the road.The ability of the rural road projects studied to affect the distribution of assets and the skills capacity of the poor was limited and largely outside their scope because of external and structural conditions. Nevertheless, recognizing how assets are distributed is important both for understanding how benefits will accrue and for planning complementary measures to enable those who lack assets to benefit from the investment. Given the right complementary activities, projects can broaden livelihood opportunities. The poor need support to make use of the opportunities that rural roads may bring. Multifaceted projects are thus needed to address inclusive growth effectively.Simply improving a road is not enough; the poor also require support in being able to make use of it. This support can come in many forms:• For the poor to travel for productive purposes, the provision of transport services must be linked to some livelihood and income diversification activity, which builds on or supplements their existing subsistence activities.• Integrated projects need proper preparation to be effective and sustainable. Mechanisms should be institutionalized to ensure that the poor themselves are involved in many aspects of the investment design (but not engineering design), implementation, and operation and maintenance.• Interventions should also concentrate on removing the access and mobility constraints of the poor in their existing livelihoods, and thus making investments in tracks, paths, culverts, and crossings, as well as improving intermediate (nonmotorized) means of transport that benefit the poor.• The poor are generally risk averse and will not engage in a new activity if they know that the road on which it depends will not be maintained periodically. Devolving responsibility for road maintenance to local communities, particularly for basic rural roads, can ensure both that the poor receive benefits through direct employment and that local communities are stakeholders in the road serving their area.• Another important way to achieve direct benefits from rural road investments is through direct employment of the poor in labor-based road construction. Experience from Africa and Asia shows that, given a sufficiently long period of employment on the road, the poor can accumulate capital to invest in alternative livelihood opportunities and move out of poverty. n ","tokenCount":"2694","images":[],"tables":["2039962847_1_1.json","2039962847_2_1.json","2039962847_3_1.json","2039962847_4_1.json"]}

data/part_2/2720113299.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"afb59842599c5fe0135c36868f4e5354","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/bc365dfd-6b2c-4057-83c4-da478b46f003/retrieve","description":"The 2005 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Burkina Faso is an agricultural-focused SAM and, as such, it is mainly elaborated from the Agricultural Supply and Use Table (ASUT) for the same year. The matrix is then complemented with other sources of data including the 2005 National Supply and Use Table (NSUT), the 2005 Integrated Economic Accounts Table (IEAT), 2003 household survey data, and 2006-08 agricultural survey data. The SAM subsequently presents in its detailed structure 132 accounts of goods and services, of which 47 are agricultural products, and 74 accounts of activities. The factor account consists of three categories of agricultural workers and two types of capital, distinguishing between agricultural and non-agricultural capital. The accounts for the institutional units distinguish between four representative categories of households, one Government account, two accounts of financial and non-financial corporations, and one account of non-resident institutions or Rest of the world (ROW).","id":"1068231328"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"90d11c69-dfe4-4bfd-a5ef-c6fa18c9bbd3","pagecount":"17","content":"AGRODEP Data Reports are designed to document AGRODEP datasets. They are created to help AGRODEP members understand the technical aspects of the data. The Data Reports have been peer reviewed but have not been subject to a formal external peer review via IFPRI's Publications Review Committee; any opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of AGRODEP.Lacina Balma is a consultant in Macroeconomic and Fiscal Management for the World Bank.Dramane Bako is a statistician and works for the Partnership Development Agency at the prime minister office in Burkina Faso.Barbi Kaboré is a statistician at the Institut National de la Statistique el de la Demographie, Burkina Faso    In recent decades, Burkina Faso has engaged in significant economic reforms with the support of the international community in a bid to face its financial and fiscal imbalances. The objective of the Burkina Faso's in this area is to strengthen food security by increasing agricultural production and raising the incomes of smallholder farmers. Therefore, there is need to better understand the role of the agricultural sector, as this is the primary sector of the economy. In 2005, the General Directorate for the Promotion of Rural Economy (DGPER) set up a cell whose mandate is to steer and monitor impact analysis of agricultural policies on food security and households' living conditions. Some analytical tools have been made available and include inter alia an agricultural supply and use table for 2000, a social accounting matrix for 2000, and an agricultural general equilibrium model. All of these were updated for 2005.The 2005 SAM was put together by a team consisting of officials from the national accounting services of the Ministry of the Economy and Finances and from the General Directorate for the Promotion of Rural Economy. The team defined a methodological framework, collected data, and made refinements where necessary before building the SAM. The objective of this report is to present the methodological framework followed in building the SAM, as well as the data sources used.The rest of the document is structured as follows. Section 2 is devoted to outlining the structure of the SAM and of the data issues. Section 3 exhibits the methodology followed in building the SAM, while Section 4 outlines the resultant SAM. In Section 5, we look at the challenges encountered; Section 6 concludes.The 2005 Social Accounting Matrix has been guided by concerns expressed by the General Directorate for the Promotion of Rural Economy. The first concern included establishing a consistent macroeconomic framework which could be used for impact evaluation of public policies. The second concern consisted of creating a tool deemed adequate to address questions related to agricultural value chains; this required disaggregating activities and products in the SAM as much as possible and paying more attention to the level of disaggregation of government income sources. Finally, concerns were put forth regarding the role of the government in the agricultural sector; therefore matrix needed to come with an appraisal of the impact of public investments on agricultural production as well as on other social sectors.In order to account for these needs expressed by the government, the following components were emphasized while building the 2005 SAM: Highlighting all tiers of the agricultural value chain as long as data were available. Bringing out the income level of the first stakeholders in the agricultural sector, namely rural households compared to groups of urban householdsThe following accounts represent as close as possible the economy of Burkina Faso: the accounts of activities, of production factors, of institutional units, of investment and saving, and of rest of the world. Source: AuthorsWhile building this SAM, we followed the reference harmonized system classification codes adopted by the member States of AFRISTAT. This harmonized system is based on the Classification of Industries of the Member States of AFRISTAT (NAEMA) and of the Classification of the Commodities of the Member States of AFRISTAT (NOPEMA).The construction of the SAM relied on the 2005 Agricultural Supply and Use Table (ASUT) without any alteration; this table covers in detail the agricultural value chain from production activities through processing activities to commercialization. This initial nomenclature was then broadened to include the other industries in the economy in order to maintain the completeness of the SAM.The accounts of commodities have been defined in such a way that they match the classification of the accounts of industries by aggregating the commodities by activities according to the NOPEMA and the NAEMA. Therefore, the account of industries exhibits 74 sectors, of which 48 agricultural sectors, broadly speaking, and 26 are other sectors of the economy.The structure of the production factors in this SAM did not change from those of the 2000 SAM. 1 We can distinguish between agricultural factors and non-agricultural factors as shown below. The Burkina Faso's national household survey was conducted in 2003 by the National Institute of. This is the last household survey available that covered household expenses and incomes at the time of building this SAM. The incomes and expenses data allowed us to split the household sector as much as possible, as presented in Section 2.1.1.3.The General Directorate for the Promotion of Rural Economy (DGPER) conducts a yearly permanent agricultural survey which allows it to assess the production of the agricultural campaign over each year.Further information on households and farming have been collected through the agricultural census conducted from 2006 to 2008. While this census data was not completed in time to be included in this SAM, the DGPER already had data on characteristics and household assets that were usable for the construction of the SAM.Once all the required data are put together and the framework is duly set up, the next step consists of building the SAM. The following methodology was followed: Consolidating the national supply and use table and the agricultural supply and use table ; \n\n Filling out the table of the accounts of goods and services ; Filling out the table of production factors compensations ; Factoring in income distribution between institutional sectors ; Filling out the table of the intra-institutional income distribution ;The next sections present an in-depth outline of this methodology.With two supply and use tables, the first one pertaining specifically to the agricultural sector and the second one taking a national perspective, it was necessary to consolidate both tables into one single framework. The National Supply and Use table (NSUT) lays out the balance between supply and use of all products and groups of products throughout the whole economy, while the ASUT lays out the same balance in a detailed way for primary products and their derivatives.The consolidated table allows us to paint an exhaustive picture of the national economy, as well as a detailed presentation of the balance between supply and use and the accounts of activity, goods, and services with a focus on agricultural sectors. It is balanced up to 4,956 billion CFA francs in the supply and use sides. Source : SAMThe consolidated SUT allows us to fill out the table of the accounts of goods and services. The account of industries, the intermediate consumption table, trade margins, final consumption, investment (GFCF+ inventories), exports, imports, and taxes net of subsidies on products stem from the consolidated table as well. However, it is worth mentioning that the distribution of the final consumption between households and groups of households (rural poor, urban poor, rural non-poor, and urban non-poor) stems from budget shares taken from the 2003 households' survey data.The value added is distributed between labor and capital after deduction of taxes net of subsidies on operating surplus. Then each sectoral value added is obtained from subtracting the other taxes net of subsidies on production. As for the labor factor compensations and the other taxes on production, the information stems from the consolidated table.It is important to mention that for the agricultural sectors, all the compensations are allocated to the agricultural labor inputs in the SUT. The remaining value added is then distributed between selfemployment and agricultural capital. The agricultural net operating surplus is estimated using the ratio of consumption of fix capital to value added. Then it is straightforward to estimate self-employment by deduction. The 2003 household survey data finds that 98.3% of labor in the livestock sector is compensated. This means that the compensation of labor in the livestock sector represent 98.3% of the total income from the agricultural labor factor income, including self-employment. Therefore, by deduction, selfemployment in this sector represents 1.7% of the total labor income. The net operating surplus is obtained by balance once the earned labor and self-employment are estimated.Using the 2003 household survey data, it is possible to figure out the relative shares of each household group's income related to each type of income. These shares were then used to break down factor income among household groups. To better track revenue flows between institutional sectors, we built the sub-matrices of \"which to whom\" on the basis of the national accounts. Four main sub-matrices were constructed following the four operations below: Property income (D4) ; Income taxes (D5) ; Contributions and social benefits (D6) ; Other current transfers (D7).Table 8 traces the flow of income between different institutional sectors. Source: SAMThe account of savings puts together all savings from institutional sectors (households, government, and rest of the world) necessary for sectors in quest for funding sources. For the rest of the world, the account of savings represents its current account balance,2 which is its ability to invest abroad if it is positive or its inability to invest if it is negative; in this latter case, it must resort to foreign savings. This account received the greatest adjustment to allow the balance between resources (income) and uses (expenditures).The SAM presents 132 accounts of goods and services, of which 47 are agricultural products, and 74 accounts of activities. The factor account consists of three categories of agricultural workers and two types of capital, distinguishing between agricultural and non-agricultural capital. The accounts for the institutional units distinguish between four representative categories of households, one Government account, two accounts of financial and non-financial corporations, and one account of non-resident institutions or rest of the world.The construction of this SAM was quite challenging. Technical issues we encountered are related to a highly aggregated data at the industry and commodities levels. To address this issue and provide a more detailed table, we used the ERETES 3 database and then adjusted it to match the required format of the SAM.Other challenges inherent to this work include inter alia the non-availability of capital spending by destination, which made it difficult to track investment spending (irrigation schemes, support to the producers, technical assistance, etc.) in the agricultural sector.This report has documented the 2005 SAM for Burkina Faso. The task was conducted using a two-step process. The first step consisted of pinning down the methodological framework and gathering the required data. The second step consisted of building the SAM itself. In its detailed form, the SAM has 132 accounts of goods and services, of which 47 are agricultural products, and 74 accounts of activities.The factor account consists of three categories of agricultural workers and two types of capital distinguishing between agricultural and non-agricultural capital. The accounts for the institutional units distinguish between four representative categories of households, one Government account, two accounts of financial and non-financial corporations, and one account of non-resident institutions or rest of the world.- ","tokenCount":"1893","images":["1068231328_1_1.png"],"tables":["1068231328_1_1.json","1068231328_2_1.json","1068231328_3_1.json","1068231328_4_1.json","1068231328_5_1.json","1068231328_6_1.json","1068231328_7_1.json","1068231328_8_1.json","1068231328_9_1.json","1068231328_10_1.json","1068231328_11_1.json","1068231328_12_1.json","1068231328_13_1.json","1068231328_14_1.json","1068231328_15_1.json","1068231328_16_1.json","1068231328_17_1.json"]}

data/part_2/2852947236.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"76e7c29e47117aae4b622d9078fa8bd1","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/e2af7515-e719-41ae-8cdc-b6fff95fd507/retrieve","description":"Current trends in demography, agricultural production and rural environment in the developing countries suggest that so-called marginal lands must play a larger and probably growing role in food supply and economic development for the foreseeable future. To fulfill this critical role, public policy towards these lands needs to be revised. A key policy focus should be to strengthen incentives for local land users to not only maintain, but to improve the natural resource base for food and fiber supply. Such land-improving investments\" are needed to reduce production and subsistence risks and permit more intensive use without degradation. Under population and market pressure, one can expect an endogenous process of intensification, through land improvements, tenurial and institutional changes and \"re-ordering\" of the landscape. But this process is not automatic. Factors influencing the pace and scale of land transformation include: farmer knowledge of degradation of the degrading resource; incentives for long-term investment; capacity to mobilize resources for land investment; level of economic returns to such investment; and factors affecting the formation and function of local groups to help mobilize resources and coordinate landscape-level change. Current policies often work to constrain, rather than support, this process. New research is needed to support policy change for \"marginal\" lands.","id":"1411330494"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"821792f5-f9c5-4775-85ad-d00cf42a1eb2","pagecount":"39","content":"Current trends in demography, agricultural production and rural environment in the developing countries suggest that so-called \"marginal lands\" must play a larger and probably growing role in food supply and economic development for the foreseeable future. To fulfill this critical role, public policy towards these lands needs to be revised.A key policy focus should be to strengthen incentives for local land users to not only maintain, but to improve the natural resource base for food and fiber supply. Such \"landimproving investments\" are needed to reduce production and subsistence risks and permit more intensive use without degradation.Under population and market pressure, one can expect an endogenous process of intensification, through land improvements, tenurial and institutional changes and \"reordering\" of the landscape. But this process is not automatic. Factors influencing the pace and scale of land transformation include: farmer knowledge of degradation of the degrading resource; incentives for long-term investment; capacity to mobilize resources for land investment; level of economic returns to such investment; and factors affecting the formation and function of local groups to help mobilize resources and coordinate landscape-level change. Current policies often work to constrain, rather than support, this process. New research is needed to support policy change for \"marginal\" lands.The past 50 years saw dramatic increases in agricultural production in the tropics, to accommodate rising urban food and export demand and the consumption and livelihood needs of growing rural populations. This unprecedented growth in production has resulted from four phenomena: expansion of the agricultural frontier; declining use of fallow within settled agricultural systems; use of industrial farm inputs (chemical fertilizers, pesticides, tools and machinery), and improved plant seeds suitable for their use; and land-improving investments, particularly irrigation and drainage.Most public policy and investment were oriented to better endowed agroecological areas with high agricultural potential. Policymakers and donor agencies at the national and international levels were attracted to these areas by their higher marginal returns to investments, by their relatively well-endowed infrastructure that facilitated the flow of modern inputs and the capacity of these areas to supply food to growing urban areas, and by the greater political clout (in terms of money, numbers, and organization) of farmers in these areas. (See Eicher and Staatz 1984 for a history of the evolution of development thinking.)Despite the massive evidence of new settlement, the long-term development strategy for so-called \"marginal lands\" --lands unsuitable for continuous tillage or lands where there were major constraints to economic use of industrial inputs --was seen to be depopulation through migration to economic growth centers in urban and high potential areas. In the short-and medium-term, \"equity\" concerns prompted a minimal level of investment in infrastructure, market development, and social services, and extension, but rarely at levels sufficient to generate sustainable growth in rural livelihoods.This strategy can no longer be considered viable. Many of the high potential areas are now suffering from various forms of environmental stress (for example, waterlogging and salinization of irrigated land, fertilizer and pesticide contamination of water, increasing pest resistance and resurgence, soil erosion, and habitat loss) which, together with tapering yield potential (perhaps even declining potential -see Pingali et al. 1990), casts serious doubt on the ability of these areas to continue to meet growing food needs on a sustainable basis. Short of major biotechnology breakthroughs, many of today's marginal lands will be required to play an increasing role in meeting national food needs.This will be especially true in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the shares of high-potential and irrigated lands are much lower to begin with.Population growth and poverty in many marginal lands has also reached the point where serious resource degradation is occurring. Until quite recently, natural resources were generally abundant in these areas, and damaged resources had time to recover (for example, the long fallows in shifting cultivation). Moreover, many of the more fragile lands were not even farmed in the past, or were only farmed extensively. Today, they must support moderate to high population densities, providing not only increasing amounts of basic foods, but also fuelwood, water, housing, etc. The resilience of these ecosystems is also suffering, particularly their ability to recover after stress events like droughts.In the long term, migration and economic diversification will be needed to provide a better balance between people and natural resources in marginal areas, but current growth trends in population and non-farm employment are such that the absolute number of agriculturally dependent people will continue to grow in many of these regions for some decades yet. For all these reasons there is, therefore, an urgent need to increase the productivity of marginal lands, and to diversify the sources of rural livelihood of local populations.We have learned many valuable policy lessons from promoting agricultural development in high potential areas. But there are likely to be significant differences in policy strategies, investment priorities and institutional arrangements in the fragile lands.In this paper we present a conceptual framework for considering sustainable agricultural development in fragile lands, focusing on incentives for maintenance and investment in the natural resource base (cropland soils, pastures, trees, local water systems).The following section presents some empirical results from recent research which documents sustainable intensification processes in marginal lands. Section 3 discusses the key incentives which must be present for farmers to make investments in their resource base, and the common distortions of policies on those incentives. The concluding section highlights some of the major research questions for agricultural and natural resource economics.The current debate about natural resource policy in agriculture has been triggered by widespread reports of land degradation, for example, rangeland degradation in Africa associated with the demise of tribal councils; soil erosion on sloping lands in Southeast Asia; and the extensive deforestation of agricultural landscapes in formerly forested parts of south Asia and Ethiopia. In many cases, public concerns have been raised mainly when the effects of degradation are felt in urban areas or regions of irrigated agriculture (for example, population movements or siltation of dams). Some forms of degradation, such as avalanches on steep slopes of the Himalayas or desertification in some of the African drylands, have been found through recent research to be due to unavoidable natural phenomena or climatic cycles, rather than induced by human action, yet still require some response.While we believe that large-scale land degradation is a very real phenomenon, its short-and long-term economic implications are less clear. Most of the resources used by the inhabitants of fragile, rainfed areas are renewable, and their degradation is not an inevitable consequence of agricultural development. Degradation typically occurs when people find it more profitable to manage resources in unsustainable than sustainable ways.Not all resource degradation is bad. Conversion of forest to agriculture may be essential for achieving sustainable livelihoods for growing populations. If appropriately farmed, deforested land need not be degraded. Some forms of degradation are also reversible (for example, soil nutrient depletion), and it may sometimes be rational to \"mine\" resources for limited periods of time and then to reinvest in them at a later date.Some resources also have substitutes, so their degradation is not essential for sustainable development (for example, agroforestry can replace forests or communal woodlands as a source of fuelwood).From an economic perspective, degradation must therefore be defined relative to the optimal use of a resource from a social or communal point of view, and it is bad only if it is excessive relative to that optimum. That is, we generally need to be concerned about socially \"inappropriate\" degradation, not with degradation per se. In some cases, \"inappropriate\" resource use may mean that insufficient new investment is occurring (for example, in planting new trees) compared to the socially desired levels.From an ecological perspective, we also need to be concerned about the degradation of habitat for wild flora and fauna, as well as for human populations. It is possible for highly sustainable systems, from the perspective of human livelihoods, to be characterized by ecological conditions which radically alter habitats. Where habitat conversion is occurring over large areas, such as to threaten species viability, protection of biologically viable areas for habitat may be justified. In other cases, minor modifications in resource management (for example, the maintenance of patches of natural vegetation as a corridor for wildlife movement) can be integrated into land use systems to improve wildlife habitat or other ecological features. In theory, if the \"existence value\" of species associated with threatened habitats is fully recognized and factored into the decisions of resource users, then socially \"inappropriate\" degradation will not occur. But this kind of full pricing rarely occurs, and some form of public regulation is generally needed to protect endangered species.Induced innovation theory (Boserup 1965;Ruttan and Hayami 1984) suggests that degradation may be self-correcting, as resource scarcity or rising private and/or social costs from degradation induce the development and use of new agricultural and resource management practices. Ruthenberg's (1980)  to depend primarily on resources which have been substantially modified by human management. The level of resource supply for human use (NR3) achieved after the period of innovation is higher than the initial level (NR2), though all the ecological services provided by the original resource configuration may not be maintained.This model suggests that there may be a range of possible interpretations of resource degradation. If observations are made while the resource cycle is in period A, degradation is likely to be not yet economically important. In period B, significant economic costs are occurring, but the benefits to resource users of taking action for rehabilitation are not yet evident. During period C, there is still evidence of a degraded resource, but the benefits of rehabilitation have become attractive and innovation and investment are actively taking place to raise the total supply of products and services provided by the resource.This expected pattern of resource degradation and rehabilitation will not always occur. A wide range of conditions may inhibit the innovative responses of periods C and D, resulting in the delay of rehabilitation efforts (trajectory II) or continued degradation (trajectory III). Such \"inappropriate\" degradation may occur where individuals cannot or do not optimize returns to their resources (for example, due to inadequate information) and/or because there is a divergence between private and social interests (for example, externalities or inappropriate public policies). Policy action to resolve these incentive problems can be a key to accelerating endogenous processes of transition into periods C and D. These factors will be further discussed in section 3.An example of this sequence can be seen in a recent case study in the semi-arid highlands of Kenya. This documented, through aerial photography and secondary data, the transformation of Machakos District since the 1930s (Mortimore and Tiffen 1993).The area had a high prevalence of soil erosion, pasture degradation and deforestation with very low agricultural productivity and income, and was considered at the time to be populated well above its carrying capacity. By 1990, however, population had increased five-fold, and the resource base had not only been rehabilitated, but the value of agricultural output per head (at constant prices) is estimated to be three times larger than it was then. This is despite considerable population movement into more marginal agricultural zones. There was widespread tree-growing; most agricultural land has been terraced; many new agricultural technologies were in use; and average income had gone up. The process of agricultural innovation was associated with innovations in local institutions and educational opportunities.The authors attribute this largely endogenous transformation principally to local land use innovations, local institutional development, good roads, opportunities to grow high-value products for the nearby Nairobi market, and access to capital for land-related investments (terracing, tree-growing, live fencing, water harvesting, etc.) from off-farm income. The study emphasizes that land resource management was intimately tied to overall development processes.Another case in Kenya illustrates historical changes in tree cover. The study was undertaken in two districts near Lake Victoria, a mid-altitude region where the climate was sub-humid, with poor soils. It traced the history of Luo farmers' use and management of tree resources since their early migration to Kenya, using archival materials, anthropological accounts, aerial photography, oral history, and household surveys (Scherr 1993). The author found that contrary to the perception by outsiders, that the Districts were suffering from extensive deforestation, in fact the tree cover in agricultural areas in the 1990s was significantly greater than earlier in this century.The area in natural woodlands and woody fallows has been much reduced, due to land-clearing for settlement and agriculture. Farmers' tree-growing strategies have evolved together with the broader land use system. When practicing shifting cultivation and livestock herding in the 1600s and 1700s, farmers depended upon gathered tree products.The development of settled, fallow-based agriculture in the 1800s brought new uses for trees in crafts, fencing and land demarcation, and the domestication of valued indigenous fruit and timber species.As farms were brought under permanent cultivation in the 1900s, and fallow areas began to disappear, tree protection and transplanting of wildlings became common. New commercial fruit and timber species were introduced, although these were planted in very low densities. With agricultural commercialization and intensification, and rapidly increasing population densities after the 1940s, tree product scarcity increased further and farmer treeplanting was widespread, especially for construction materials.By the 1970s and 1980s, degradation of land resources in general had led to reduced crop yields and subsistence scarcities. Agroforestry strategies have been oriented to intensification, with most new trees being established in or around cropland, and the use of new species appropriate to intensive intercropping. With the rise of local and regional commercial markets for tree products, tree-growing has become a cash strategy for many farmers as well as a strategy for obtaining key subsistence products. The importance of trees in enhancing food security has grown, with the use of windbreaks, green manure, fruit production and mulch. At the same time, trees have offered a low-cost means of improving human habitat, through privacy hedges, shade and aesthetic plantings around homesteads.A third recent study undertaken in ten agricultural regions of Ghana, Rwanda and Kenya documented the dynamic evolution of property rights over cropland with increasing population density and market integration (Migot-Adholla, et al. 1991;Place and Hazell 1993). As in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, full ownership rights over land traditionally reside with the community in the study regions, and individuals have a more restricted set of rights to use the land, exclude others from it, or transfer rights to it. A key issue is whether these restrictions on land rights limit farmers' incentives to make land-improving investments, including conservation measures, that only pay off in the longer term. The lack of full ownership rights, and hence the ability to mortgage land, may also constrain the availability of credit for land-improving investments.Based on detailed farm surveys, land rights were found to vary widely from one location to another, and even across parcels operated by the same farmer. However, many parcels (nearly two-thirds of the parcels at one site) were fully privatized, including the right to sell without permission from kin or village elders, indicating an important departure from the traditional tenure system. Privatized parcels were concentrated in areas with higher population density or greater commercialization of agriculture, or both, supporting the hypotheses that land rights evolve toward greater privatization in response to increased land scarcity (see also Cohen 1980;Boserup 1981;Noronha 1985;and Bruce 1988).After controlling for differences in land quality and household characteristics, Place and Hazell found few significant relationships between land rights (including, in Kenya, the possession of a current land title) and the incidence of land-improving investments, the use of yield-enhancing inputs, or access to formal credit. Nor was the productivity of land found to be significantly affected by land rights. It would appear that, because land rights do evolve in response to increasing land scarcity, then there are other more binding constraints on agricultural productivity, such as lack of improved technology or inadequate access to credit.The study provides little support for ambitious land registration and titling programs in the kinds of regions that were studied, at least not until other more binding constraints on agricultural development have been overcome. But there are circumstances when titling might be worthwhile: for example,When the indigenous tenure systems are absent or very weak. This is frequently the case in land settlement areas, but it can also arise elsewhere following periods of major economic or political upheaval, particularly if traditional lines of authority have been severed.In areas where the incidence of land disputes is high. This may occur in areas where What role did public policies play in these \"success\" stories of intensification? In Machakos and western Kenya, outside agents introduced new crop and tree species, acting mainly to accelerate already on-going processes of land use intensification. Economic growth outside the region, together with improvements in communications, created opportunities for rural households in these \"marginal areas\" to accumulate capital for land investment through off-farm employment or sale of higher-value products. Local farmers' groups were instrumental in mobilizing capital and labor for small-scale farm investment, marketing and land rehabilitation. NGOs and some government agencies were able to work with these groups to enhance their effectiveness. Income diversification strategies were actively pursued for both agricultural and non-agricultural income, and in the evolution of property rights which provided access to a range of land types.It also appears that the policy context contributed to effective adaptation. In Machakos, this took the form of infrastructure investment, economic linkages of urban development, and various programs which supported local capital accumulation. In western Kenya, better access to selected tree germplasm and technical information, encouraged agroforestry, particularly under conditions of weak agricultural prices and limited income diversification opportunities. In the case of land tenure change, the principal contribution of government seems to have been one of limited intervention.Where governments did intervene, they did so in ways that threatened to undermine the indigenous tenure systems (for example, by nationalizing land in Ghana and Rwanda).Fortunately, although laws were enacted, they were not enforced in rural areas.This evidence and others like it (see, for example, Conroy and Livinoff 1988;Chambers et al. 1989) suggest that there are real potentials for growth, resource The evidence suggests some common strategies, which differ in important ways from the agricultural development strategies which have found success in high potential areas. From a technical perspective, intensive monocultures of annual crops are not likely to be viable in the long-term. Rather, more diverse cropping systems appear to be more stable. Key elements will be the integration of perennial plants which provide continuous ground cover (grasses or creeping legumes), canopy cover (tree crops, agroforestry mixtures), or live barriers (contour hedgerows) to protect fragile soils. Other strategies will be more efficient and reliable under harvesting and integration of livestock and green manures into farming systems to maintain soil fertility. (See, for example, Altieri 1989 and Gliessman 1990 for reviews of the scientific foundations of regenerative agriculture; useful reviews and syntheses for applied work my be found in the ILEIA Newsletter series 1985 to present.)High within-and between-field diversity in biophysical conditions calls for more micro-site specific land and water investments. Overall, land investments to improve response to more intensive inputs are a critical element. The chronic lack of capital calls for more divisible types of investments and incremental approaches to land improvements.Reliable non-agricultural sources of income will be a critical component of stable livelihood systems for most farmers. However, because agricultural growth is the prime driving force behind the rural non-farm economy (Haggblade, Hammer, and Hazell 1991), interregional migration and remittances are likely to provide the most important sources of non-farm income for many marginal areas, at least during the initial stages of regional economic development.From an institutional perspective, development strategies are constrained by the almost definitional marginality of the zones. The institutional presence of many national agencies is likely to remain limited relative to high-potential areas, so that development efforts must rely more heavily on local and regional action. Because of this, national agencies may need to modify their agenda, so that their more limited resources are used more strategically, rather than simply to provide an inadequate level of conventional services. At the same time, more effective political integration of fragile lands populations is essential to command a more reasonable share of national investment resources, and possibly more importantly, to orient policies for urban and high-potential areas in ways that provide the most effective development linkages for fragile lands.As indicated earlier, understanding and appropriately modifying household and community-level incentives to reduce the socially inappropriate degradation of resources will often be the key to achieving necessary investments in natural resources for sustainable agricultural development. Table 1 summarizes key types of incentives, along with the common disincentives which prevent or slow down the necessary adaptation to more sustainable farming systems, and some policy approaches which can be used to address them.Some forms of resource degradation are easily observed (for example, deforestation), but some are only visible after long periods of time (for example, loss of soil fertility) or at sites removed from the source of damage (for example, river pollution or destruction of beneficial species).Farmers and other users of natural resources may, therefore, be poorly informed about the damage that they cause, even when they have to bear the costs themselves. Lack of knowledge may be a particularly important constraint under conditions of recent settlement, where settlers are unfamiliar with the environment, or during periods of rapid land use change. In social systems with weak communications links and infrastructure, new information about effective resource Farmers' incentives to invest in maintenance or improvement of the natural resource base will be critically affected by the economic importance of that resource to their livelihood. Degradation of resources considered of marginal economic importance is not likely to be a concern, much less a priority. If, due to externalities, the degradation is important to other groups, use of subsidies or other external incentives may be needed to encourage investment. Regulations may also be used, but without a supportive incentive structure, may be difficult or costly to enforce.Farmers will invest in the resource underpinning agriculture only if farming is a critical part of their livelihood strategy. Research in fragile agricultural areas consistentlyshows the importance of non-farm and off-farm income sources to livelihood security. In Niger, for example, 60% of average farm household income in the Sudano-Sahelian and 51% in the Sudano-Guinean zones derived from non-farming activities (Hopkins 1993, pp. 105-111). An investment in tree-growing, soil improvement, water harvesting, etc.would have to compete in terms of returns to household labor and/or cash with alternative artesanal, trade or wage activities. In Central America, largeholders may hold land for speculative or social purposes, while depending for income on urban activities; resource degradation would present little economic cost.Even where farmers are dependent for livelihoods primarily upon farmland, they may take a strategic approach to land investment. Higher quality or nearby plots may be selected for high investment in soil amendments, trees, terracing, etc., while a deliberate decision is made to allow (or even actively manage) resource degradation in other plots.Thus farmers have been reported to accelerate soil erosion in steep, difficult to work plots, to accumulate soil in flatter plots below. Organic residues may be collected from far plots for concentration in near plots, as in Nigerian homegardens.Policy interventions to influence these trade-offs may be tricky, involving difficult-to-implement instruments such as land taxes, land management requirements and interventions in labor markets.Investments are by definition long-term activities. Farmers will only make those investments where they have a long-term perspective and feel confident they will receive expected benefits.There is evidence that much rural resource degradation is associated with conditions of acute livelihood insecurity. Famine, war or economic crises, which disrupt normal food and income sources, may force farmers to adopt very short-term strategies, intensively harvesting food, fodder or saleable products from natural fauna or flora in a manner which depletes or seriously erodes the resource (for example, felling of trees for charcoal, accelerated soil erosion due to removal of vegetative cover from cropfields by over-grazing). The very poor and landless may depend upon such strategies for their livelihood even in good agricultural years. Development strategies are needed which offer some 'insurance' against disaster, and strengthen alternative income sources to supplement or replace agriculture (for example, public employment programs).Farmers may have a long-term planning horizon, yet face high uncertainty as to whether long-term benefits will actually materialize. Where unusual short-term profit opportunities, involving resource depletion, arise (for example, sharp and temporary increases in prices of agricultural or gathered products), farmers may decide that current opportunities are not worth sacrificing for future production which may receive much lower prices.Farmers may also be influenced by the high risk agricultural environment prevalent in most fragile lands. Even where investments in the natural resource base raise the long-term average income, they may not reduce high variability in income unless accompanied by other complementary investments. The risk of facing several bad agricultural years immediately following a major investment, may (with discounting) result in negative expected returns, even if returns in later years are very attractive. This highlights the importance of land improvements to reduce risk and variability.If farmers do not have assured and long-term access to the resources they use, they may not bear the full cost of resource degradation, nor are they confident of receiving the benefits associated with investment in sustainable resource management. Under these circumstances, they are more likely to pursue unsustainable practices. This may result from lack of clear allocation of rights over resources (whether to individuals or groups), rental or other arrangements which reduce long-term interest in resource condition, or from migration patterns which result in only temporary settlement in a particular site. In extreme cases, for example, open access areas, a \"mining\" mentality can arise. Resolution of these problems may require the reform or regularization of property rights, including land tenure, access to communal resources, and resolution of land use conflicts.Because of the complexity of livelihood strategies and high variability, it is essential that farmers have a great deal of flexibility in farm management. Considerable research indicates the high farm costs associated with inflexible management rules and regulations for soil conservation, tree management, etc. While some regulation may be necessary, as part of natural resource management policy, these should be designed flexibly, be focused on outcomes (for example, in terms of soil loss or ground cover) rather than activities (for example, so much land terraced), and with low transaction costs.An obviously critical incentive for farmers to invest in long-term land improvement in fragile lands is that returns from those investments must be economically attractive.Much current resource degradation can be attributed to poor economic returns associated with land conservation investments. In some cases, this reflects real long-term opportunity costs, but in many others it reflects short-term technological constraints, externalities and other market failures, or policy distortions.Poorly designed, or inappropriately used agricultural, livestock and forestry technologies can lead farmers to increase production in ways that degrade natural resources. Better technologies and management practices may be available, but may be more costly, lower yielding or knowledge demanding, and hence less likely to be adopted by farmers. Weak institutional development may, in some cases, explain farmers' failure to undertake key natural resource-conserving or improving investments, even where these would be attractive to the farmers. Constraints include high transaction costs where communication is poor or population densities are low. Government regulations may restrict the formation of local groups, for political reasons, or burden fledgling organizations with complex reporting or budget rules. In areas of recent settlement, high in-migration or active labor migration, it may be difficult to form cohesive groups for action.Also important are improvements in basic government institutions and services, which have the advantage of relative permanence. A critical feature of institutional strengthening, however, is to orient public institutions to provide services to local institutions and encourage local initiative, rather than attempt to substitute for them in activities for which local organization is more efficient.Constraints to group action often arise when the costs of environmental degradation are borne off-farm (for example, pollution of rivers and groundwater, soil runoff, destruction of beneficial species), or when benefits of resource investment are freely enjoyed by non-investors (for example, protection from a community shelterbelt). These \"externality\" problems can undermine incentives to use more sustainable technologies and management practices, even when available.Use of taxes, subsidies or government-imposed regulations to correct for market failures is unlikely to be practical. To overcome these constraints may require improved organization of farmers and rural communities--sometimes by strengthening indigenous or formal institutions, sometimes by promoting new institutions. Policies can be devised to enhance the functioning of local organizations, by reducing transaction costs, loosening controls, training and other support for young organizations, and technical support for local and regional resource planning and conflict resolution (Savenije and Huijsman 1991).It is not likely that a \"magic formula\" will emerge for sustainable development in fragile lands. This is a long-term investment challenge, one which must also be complemented by supportive demographic policies. Solutions will also have to be sitespecific given the diverse agroecological and social conditions found across fragile lands.As the discussion above makes clear, however, current policies frequently contribute to problems of degradation, and pose constraints even to farmers and other resource users who are willing to work for resource conservation and enrichment. The first order of business is to identify those conditions, and explore practical policy alternatives.Some key topics call for research attention (for a more extensive treatment of research needs, see Winpenny 1990, andVosti et al. 1991). In most fragile areas, policymakers need a clearer identification of who the principal resource users are, and what their actual (as opposed to theoretical) incentives are for investment and disinvestment in important natural resources. There is still relatively little known about farmers' and community perceptions of resource degradation, their understanding of the ecological processes involved when production systems change, or their strategies of adapting to degradation. Policymakers also need empirical evidence of the costs of resource degradation at the farm, community and regional levels, and realistic estimates of the costs and benefits of resource rehabilitation, for different actors.natural resource management in the fragile lands, and consider policy options which will have more positive effects on livelihoods and resources in those lands.Finally, we need to know much more about the political economy of control and decisionmaking of natural resources in fragile lands. Issues of resource access remain critical to the livelihoods of the poor and a primary area for policy action.To answer these questions, policy researchers will find it useful to draw upon the insights and empirical findings not only of economics, but also of other disciplines which have examined resource management and intensification, such as agricultural history, geography, anthropology, and human ecology.Fragile lands development in the tropics --for sustainable livelihoods, without ecological disaster--will be one of the prime challenges of the next century. The agricultural economics profession should be able to contribute significantly to this objective, through a major empirical research effort on patterns of resource degradation and enrichment, through documentation and analysis of the \"success\" stories, through rigorous analysis of incentive issues at the farm and community levels, and by reiterating the value of policies which facilitate and support dynamic adaptation at the local level, rather than impose external solutions by fiat.","tokenCount":"5188","images":[],"tables":["1411330494_1_1.json","1411330494_2_1.json","1411330494_3_1.json","1411330494_4_1.json","1411330494_5_1.json","1411330494_6_1.json","1411330494_7_1.json","1411330494_8_1.json","1411330494_9_1.json","1411330494_10_1.json","1411330494_11_1.json","1411330494_12_1.json","1411330494_13_1.json","1411330494_14_1.json","1411330494_15_1.json","1411330494_16_1.json","1411330494_17_1.json","1411330494_18_1.json","1411330494_19_1.json","1411330494_20_1.json","1411330494_21_1.json","1411330494_22_1.json","1411330494_23_1.json","1411330494_24_1.json","1411330494_25_1.json","1411330494_26_1.json","1411330494_27_1.json","1411330494_28_1.json","1411330494_29_1.json","1411330494_30_1.json","1411330494_31_1.json","1411330494_32_1.json","1411330494_33_1.json","1411330494_34_1.json","1411330494_35_1.json","1411330494_36_1.json","1411330494_37_1.json","1411330494_38_1.json","1411330494_39_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"389f2ca0ba7e21a707e5fff20b285bd3","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/4bc484ae-3303-494a-aff7-1a2a7fa1e486/retrieve","description":"Two fundamental global economic tendencies have caused a shift in interest towards promoting rural agroenterprises and agroindustrialization to combat rural poverty. Increasing income levels and demographic changes, i.e. increased female labor force participation, has fueled demand for high-value and processed products. Structural adjustment and liberalization policies have reduced barriers to trade globally and allowed markets to reach even the most isolated rural areas.","id":"1442977500"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"7024078a-eb12-4e56-9f42-be3befe1855c","pagecount":"5","content":"Two fundamental global economic tendencies have caused a shift in interest towards promoting rural agroenterprises and agroindustrialization to combat rural poverty. Increasing income levels and demographic changes, i.e. increased female labor force participation, has fueled demand for high-value and processed products. Structural adjustment and liberaliza-tion policies have reduced barriers to trade globally and allowed markets to reach even the most isolated rural areas.Together, these trends are fueling a process of agroindustrialization that is transforming agriculture in the developing world, most visibly in Asia and Latin America, with Africa beginning to show similar effects. Agroindustrialization brings major opportunities but also many challenges, especially to poor farmers and small agroenterprise entrepreneurs, most notable of which is equitable distribution of benefits.The agroindustrialization process has three main characteristics.1. Growth in off-farm agriculture-related activities, such as the supply of farm inputs or the processing, distribution, and sale of farm products. The suppliers, farmers, and distributors form supply or product chains.2. Increased level of integration among actors in the supply chain, ranging from loose coordination to contracting, and even outright ownership.3. Changes in products, technologies, and market structures accompany these shifts in number and integration of actors.Market orientation means adjusting production processes and products to respond to specific consumer demands and market signals and trends. Although many small farmers in developing countries will continue to grow subsistence crops, increased production for the market is the trend in many countries. What small farmers grow and how they grow them are increasingly determined by what urban consumers want.Agroindustrialization processes are often accompanied and stimulated by liberalization of economic policy. This means that agroindustries -and the producers supplying them -must be competitive internationally to survive. To be competitive, agroindustries typically work only with farmers who produce the best quality products at the lowest possible cost. Often, the competitiveness of the agroindustry is strengthened through strict grades and standards, imposed on their farmer-suppliers through contracts. In negotiating and enforcing those contracts, power relationships between agroindustries and farmers -especially small and poor farmers -tend to be highly asymmetric, favoring industry.Agroindustrialization processes are often accompanied by privatization of land and other natural resources. The rationale is to facilitate the development of markets that permit transfers of assets toward the highest productivity uses. Typically, this situation has meant a net transfer of productive assets from small farmers and poor rural communities to commercial growers and large-scale corporations, both domestic and multinational.Where customary rights and communal ownership are important, the shift to private property may disadvantage those whose access rights are not recognized under the new regime. To the extent that these people are more marginalized in a society, there is the risk of widening existing inequalities. Similar patterns can be observed with shifts away from traditional labor exchanges toward wage labor.Where the costs of accessing markets are high due to poor infrastructure, inadequate technology, or information barriers, collective action can help small producers be more competitive. A study of Associative Peasant Businesses in Chile found that cooperation benefited producers in markets where transaction costs were high and where product differentiation was important. In traditional markets for undifferentiated crops, no benefits to association were found. Associations were also found to be good vehicles for introducing new managerial and farming practices that enhanced farm profitability. Only about a fifth of these small farmer associations achieved their objective of helping their members participate in new markets, despite extensive government support.The reasons for their many failures included, among others, their inability to:• develop and enforce adequate systems of rules to direct relations among the members and between each of them and the organization; • establish effective networks with public and market agents; and • become competitive in the market in which they operate.Cooperation can enable farmers to be more competitive.More striking than the changes in agricultural products and practices is the integration that has occurred in agroindustry over the past decade. The rise of mega-processors and retailers has resulted in very little produce being traded on the open market. A striking example is the rise of supermarkets in Latin America, which in a decade moved from 10-20 percent to 50-60 percent of the retail food sector. Collective action can sometimes allow producers to re-balance market power relationships and gain bargaining power in negotiations with big buyers.A driving force behind this integration is the need to coordinate the timing and quality of purchases, and deliveries along the supply chain. Perishability was behind early integration, but other factors relating to economies of scale in the management of information about consumers and their preferences, for example, reinforced the trend.In agricultural production, the increasing use of contracts by processors reflects this integration. Contracting can be positive for many farmers, but the small farmers are often bypassed because the transaction costs associated with managing the contract outweigh any productivity advantage the small farmer might offer. Since contracting is characterized by economies of scale, collective action among farmers, such as producers' associations, can make them competitive in an integrated supply chain. Collective action among farmers is, however, difficult to organize, coordinate, and manage.A similar situation faces small agroenterprises. Even where farms and firms do not operate under contract, cooperating can help them negotiate better prices for inputs and outputs, manage crises, or improve local infrastructure.Well-organized farmers have competitive advantages, but collective action at the local level is not likely to be enough to allow small rural enterprises to exploit new market opportunities fully. Whether they are acting individually or collectively, farms and firms need to stay informed about technological and managerial innovations, as well as emerging market opportunities in broader networks. A growing array of service providers -formal and informal, public and private -now exists to offer technical assistance, from quality control to marketing to financial planning. FirmsCollective action can sometimes allow producers to re-balance market power relationships and gain bargaining power in negotiations with big buyers.that identify and take advantage of these services are more competitive. A study in Colombia found that a 10 percent increase in the number of relationships that an agroenterprise maintained with other actors was associated with increases in income per worker of up to 18 percent. This means that for farms and firms that participate in technically demanding, information-intensive supply chains, managing their relationships can be as important as managing their production processes.External contacts are important, but internal relationships are also key to business performance and survival. Increased attention to promoting small enterprises is often accompanied by a push to form and legalize businesses. Decisions about how businesses should organize themselves are often made on the basis of legal costs and potential access to government subsidies for certain types of businesses.Different organizational structures, however, have fundamental differences that firms need to consider.• Cooperative forms of organization are based on economic and social objectives and require high levels of commitment and collective action to function. In practice, these levels of commitment are often hard to maintain, even if the groups are subsidized.• Partnerships have lower legal and administrative costs, but they assume high levels of trust among the partners, a condition reflected in the shared, unlimited liability for the firm's obligations.• Corporations have the highest administrative costs, but they may be the best structure for firms where investors do not share high levels of trust and are likely to change frequently.Evidence from Colombia shows that no one organizational structure is best for either economic performance or social impact. The appropriate structure depends on the individual characteristics and objectives of the members.Agroindustrialization is transforming agriculture and rural communities in developing countries. As a result, farmers and entrepreneurs need to change the way they do business. Part of the solution is precisely that: to think about and organize themselves as a business and to be more attentive to market signals and opportunities. Because they are in markets that are not perfect, investment in collective action and networking can bring high returns.The reality of agroindustrialization also means that the public and private sector research and development organizations that support agriculture and rural development must re-evaluate how best to support agroenterprise development through policy, technology, and institutional innovations. High-value products and opportunities for adding value should complement the focus on productivity improvement in undifferentiated commodities. Capacity building in business skills, accompanied by more and higher quality business development services, can improve the competitiveness of small rural businesses.A better understanding of how to develop and support networks, and innovative forms of organization beyond traditional agricultural cooperatives is also needed. On a more fundamental level, organizational and institutional innovations often arise in response to high transaction costs associated with market failures. Ameliorating these market failures, especially in the area of information and communication, will contribute to a more efficient and equitable agribusiness sector.","tokenCount":"1449","images":["1442977500_1_1.png","1442977500_3_1.png","1442977500_4_1.png"],"tables":["1442977500_1_1.json","1442977500_2_1.json","1442977500_3_1.json","1442977500_4_1.json","1442977500_5_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"09f9673f84590547c39000a03416837a","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/11c2683f-ef4c-4bc2-8a78-0c651b5c380c/retrieve","description":"Maximo Torero (IFPRI) 30th April 2009, International food Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C.","id":"1368616975"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"efd45e0d-9620-47d0-a5bf-a3924edd3e17","pagecount":"31","content":"decline.The potential cost of rising protectionism (with and Why some exporters are more affected than Why some exporters are more affected than the others? the others?•  -Finance creation and upgrading of infrastructureuseful to catch up, after period of rapid private-sector growth growth -Trade finance is essential -Pro-poor spending, pro-poor tax cuts:• Fund social safety nets and investments in education and health -investment in future productivity of the economy • Insure those who are uninsured or who face high costs of self g 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data/part_2/3181281207.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"d9780fbcebb5eb67e9f24faad4f56d69","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/c0064555-7e5a-4224-8d09-d6a2c3bda24a/retrieve","description":"This study examines the role of groups and networks in helping poor Filipinos manage their exposure to risks and cope with shocks. It brings together two strands of literature that examine how social capital affects economic variables and investigate the processes by which social capital formation, participation in networks and groups, and trusting behavior comes about. Using a longitudinal study from a province in Northern Mindanao, Philippines, the authors find that households belong to a number of formal and informal groups and networks, but participation differs according to household characteristics. Households belonging to the lower asset quartiles belong to fewer groups, and households with more human and physical capital have larger social networks. Furthermore, wealthier households are more likely to take part in productive groups while membership in civic and religious groups is not limited by economic status. Migrant networks play an important risk-smoothing role via remittances sent by migrant daughters.","id":"-69666137"},"keywords":["social networks","groups","social capital","poverty","remittances","Philippines"],"sieverID":"6b49ed37-24f2-4d54-a532-78d7e1db4f27","pagecount":"43","content":"The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) is an initiative of the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The initiative promotes comparative research on the role of property rights and collective action institutions in shaping the efficiency, sustainability, and equity of natural resource systems. CAPRi's Secretariat is hosted within the Environment and Production Technology Division (EPDT) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).CAPRi Working Papers contain preliminary material and research results. They are circulated prior to a full peer review to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most working papers will eventually be published in some other form and that their content may also be revised (http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/CAPRiWP84).Belonging to a group is highly valued in Filipino society. Personalism, familism, and other values supportive of harmonious relationships in small groups, and the individual's personal network of selected relatives and other allies affect how Filipinos function in organizations (Arce, 2003). Whether Filipino organizational culture is compatible with development objectives has been debated in the Philippines since more \"impersonal and more universal values such as the merit principle and the rationality of procedures in the Weberian sense\" are not viewed as central to the Filipino organizational culture (Arce, 2003:1). Do local institutions have an instrumental value beyond their contribution to an individual's sense of belonging?This study takes a broad perspective on different types of collective action in the rural Philippines, examining the role of groups and networks in helping the poor manage their exposure to risks and cope with shocks to their livelihoods. It brings together two strands of the social capital literature: the literature that examines how social capital, variously measured, affects economic variables (Pender and Scherr, 2002;Haddad and Maluccio, 2003;Narayan and Pritchett, 1999) and studies that investigate the processes by which social capital formation, participation in networks and groups, and trusting behavior comes about (Fafchamps andGubert, 2007, Haddad andMaluccio, 2003). Specifically, the paper attempts to answer the following questions:1. What kinds of shocks do rural households face? How do these shocks affect per capita consumption, and does the impact of shocks differ according to household characteristics? 2. What kind of formal and informal groups and networks do households join? Does exposure to risk encourage membership in such groups and networks? 3. What are the returns to membership in formal and informal groups and networks? Underlying these questions is the issue of heterogeneity. By examining different types of collective action institutions in the Philippines-local formal groups and informal networks, and migrant networks composed of family members-we attempt to understand: 4. How does heterogeneity affect network formation and risk-smoothing; and 5. How do groups and networks use different mechanisms to enforce behavior in order to achieve their risk-smoothing objectives?For this paper, we investigate two types of social capital: formal, proxied/measured by membership in groups, and informal, proxied/measured by the size of trust-based networks. Both groups and networks can be local or spatially diversified. We take this broader view of network formation-looking beyond the village as the locus of network activity-in the light of recent studies (Munshi and Rosenzweig, 2005) that have begun to question the assumption that the appropriate unit of risk-smoothing is the village (Townsend, 1994). Munshi and Rosenzweig (2005) find that, in India, consumption is smoothed within sub caste networks, which extend beyond the village. Indeed, the literature on migration and remittances suggests that networks can cross geographic boundaries, with the formation of migrant networks in the destination being affected by shocks in the origin locality (Munshi, 2003) and remittances, and return migration being influenced by shocks in destination localities (Yang, 2006). This literature is especially relevant to the Philippines given the importance of both internal and external migration as a livelihood strategy (Quisumbing andMcNiven, 2005, 2006).Other studies have also found that the problems of asymmetric information and limited commitment mean that households are not likely to be fully insured against adverse shocks (Ligon et al., 2000;Foster and Rosenzweig, 2000). However, such analyses do not assess whether responses differ depending on the nature of the shock, and indicators for collective action and participation in different types of networks are generally either absent or rudimentary. For example, would norms of reciprocity-which are likely to characterize networks of close relativesbe more effective in enforcing risk-sharing commitments compared to more formal agreements entered into by members of credit groups? A study undertaken in the Cordillera region of the Philippines (Fafchamps and Lund, 2003) shows that risksharing appears to occur mostly in very small networks of close friends and families-networks in which enforcement may be easier, but which may not have the heterogeneity required to efficiently share risk.While heterogeneity may be important for risk-sharing, in most empirical studies of its impact on collective action or on household incomes directly, the impact of any type of heterogeneity tends to be negative, or not significant (Ahuja, 1998;Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000;Bardhan, 2000;McCarthy and Vanderlinden, 2003;Place et al., 2004), with the interesting exception of results reported in Grootaert (2001) for studies in Burkina Faso, Bolivia, and Indonesia. It is often hypothesized that heterogeneity of any sort makes finding agreements mutually beneficial and acceptable to all more costly, and that sociocultural heterogeneity in particular is likely to reduce trust among group members and also to reduce the efficacy of social sanctioning (Easterly and Levine, 1997). On the other hand, much of the literature on group formation and networks highlights the added benefits to diversity (or heterogeneity) among members along any number of dimensions. Risk-pooling will certainly be more efficient when one's income is less correlated with other members in the group. Many networks exist to share information, and there may be economies of scope in terms of information gathering or accumulation of other assets. In this case, economic heterogeneity also favors pooling of resources to the benefit of all. Because there may be competing impacts of different types of heterogeneity on the functioning of groups, it becomes critical to examine which groups are able to harness the positive, and mitigate the negative effects, of heterogeneity, especially with respect to those groups serving the poor.Finally, if groups differ in terms of degree of heterogeneity and geographic dispersion, what kinds of enforcement mechanisms are used to ensure compliance to network objectives and norms of behavior? Members of local networks are easier to monitor, but local networks are less able to insure against covariate shocks. Spatially diversified networks offer some protection against covariate shocks, but network members will be more difficult to monitor. If information and communications technologies are poor, more distant network members may not even be aware of a shock that occurred in their origin communities.This chapter attempts to address these issues using rich longitudinal data and qualitative studies from Bukidnon, Philippines. We first describe the data, the context, and the types of shocks faced by rural households. We then examine their impacts on log per capita consumption, and whether these impacts vary across different types of households. We then compare and contrast the determinants of membership in groups and in informal networks, focusing on the role of initial wealth and heterogeneity in the accumulation of social capital. We then examine the returns to membership in two types of groups-formal groups and migrant networks-on various indicators of well-being. We conclude with some reflections on the effectiveness of local and migrant networks for enabling asset accumulation and consumption-smoothing.Our data come from a longitudinal study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Research Institute for Mindanao Culture, Xavier University (RIMCU) of households residing in southern Bukidnon, a landlocked province in Northern Mindanao, comprising 20 municipalities and two cities, Malaybalay and Valencia (see Figure 1). Since Bukidnon is landlocked, it relies on Cagayan de Oro, the major metropolitan center in Northern Mindanao, as its nearest seaport.The original survey in 1984/85 investigated the effects of agricultural commercialization on the nutrition and household welfare of these rural families. In 1977, the Bukidnon Sugar Company (BUSCO) began operating a sugar mill in the area, which had previously been dominated by subsistence corn production. The presence of the mill gave farmers the opportunity to adopt this cash crop, depending on their proximity to the mill. The survey was fielded in four rounds at four-month intervals from August 1984 to December 1985 so that each round corresponded to a different agricultural season. The survey contained information on food and nonfood consumption expenditure, agricultural production, income, asset ownership, credit use, anthropometry and morbidity, education, and 24-hour food consumption recall. The initial sample included 510 households, although 448 households were interviewed in all four rounds. Bouis and Haddad (1990) provide a detailed description of the sample design and survey area.Following qualitative studies conducted in the study communities in early 2003, IFPRI and RIMCU returned to conduct two rounds of quantitative data collection using a survey questionnaire that closely reflected the one used in 1984/85. The first wave of data collection in the fall of 2003 interviewed all original respondents still living in the survey area. We were able to contact 311, or 61 percent, of the original respondents. 2 The respondents listed all children who lived away from home, providing contact information for non-co resident children. We sampled at random up to two non-co resident children living in or near the origin household's village, yielding 261 households.  2 Godquin and Quisumbing (2007) model the determinants of the probability of being reinterviewed in 2003. They find that older households are less likely to be re-interviewed. The percentage of households affected by peace and order problems also contributes to the non-interview probability. However, households with a larger share of female working members in 1984 are more likely to be re-interviewed. Also, the proportion of non-attriters in the barangay between the first and fourth survey rounds in 1984/85 is associated with higher re-interview probabilities. We do not find significant impacts of attrition on estimated coefficients for the set of outcomes we consider (participation in groups).The second wave of data collection began in April 2004 and ended in July 2004. In this wave, the survey team interviewed any household formed by children who no longer live in their origin barangays. 3 This included a large group of households in three major urban areas in Mindanao (Valencia, the commercial center of Bukidnon, Malaybalay, the provincial capital, and Cagayan de Oro, the major metropolitan area in northern Mindanao) as well as many households in poblaciones (municipality seats) and other rural areas of Bukidnon. The sample size from this migrant wave consisted of 257 households-about 75 percent of potential migrants to be interviewed. Figure 2 presents a map of the survey area and the locations of original households, households formed by children in the original barangays, and households formed by children who migrated. While budgetary concerns did not allow us to interview all children, the survey nonetheless contains data on children who migrated to a variety of rural and urban locations. The initial interview with the parents obtained a basic set of information about all children, including location, educational attainment, and marital status. Obtaining this information from parents, plus assiduous follow-up of migrants and children residing in the community, avoided the common problem of sample selection bias if interviews were based only on residence rules (Rosenzweig, 2003). The analysis in this paper is based on 305 of the 311 parent households for whom we have complete data.Table 1 presents selected household characteristics of parents who were reinterviewed in 2003. The household head was 55 years old in 2003. Reflecting changes over the life-cycle, household sizes have decreased from 6.8 persons in 1984 to 5.8 in 2003, and dependency ratios have markedly decreased from 1.66 to 0.49. Agriculture seems to have become less important to parents as they aged: while 91 percent of parent households were engaged in agricultural production in 1984, only 71 percent remain active in agriculture, many of them having divested themselves of land. Only 33 percent of parent households had no land in 1984 (whether owned or rented), whereas 61 percent of parent households no longer have owned or cultivated land in 2003. This should not be interpreted as impoverishment of parent households since parents typically bestow land to children when the latter marry, not when the parents die. The average area cultivated in 1984 was 3.17 hectares; in 2003, the number was 3.09 hectares. 3.09 7.27We define shocks as adverse events that lead to a loss of household income, a reduction in consumption, a loss of productive assets, and/or serious concern/anxiety about household welfare. Similar to the Ethiopia case study (Dercon et al., 2008), data used in this section are based on a household-level \"shocks\" module developed in Hoddinott and Quisumbing (2003). The module asks households to consider a list of adverse events and indicate whether the household was adversely affected by them.Shocks are divided into a number of broad categories: agroclimatic, economic, political/social/legal, crime, and health. Agroclimatic shocks include drought and flooding, but also erosion and pestilence affecting crops or livestock. Economic shocks include problems in terms of access to inputs (both physical access and large increases in price), decreases in output prices, and difficulties in selling agricultural and nonagricultural products. Political/social/legal shocks in the Philippines include the implementation of land reform (its coverage was expanded beyond rice and corn areas in 1987) and an uncertain peace and order situation due to military conflict, as well as contract disputes.5 Crime shocks include the theft and/or destruction of crops, livestock, housing, tools or household durables as well as crimes against persons. Peace and order shocks include perceptions of general crime risk and military activity. Health shocks include both death and illness. We also consider miscellaneous shocks such as conflicts and disputes with other family members, neighbors, or other village residents regarding access to land or other assets. Finally, in addition to these questions about specific shocks, households were also asked to enumerate the three most important adverse shocks that they had experienced over the past 18 years. These are summarized in Table 2. The proportion of households reporting shocks is sizeable. Eighty-eight percent of parent households in the Philippines reported a most important shock, 52 percent a second most important shock, and 15 percent a third most important shock. Drought is the most important shock reported by parents (38.7 percent reporting), followed by illness or disability (31.8 percent) and crop pests and diseases (27.5 percent). Death of a spouse or other household member is also important-it is mentioned by 23.6 percent of households. Parent households also report other weather-related factors (humidity, floods, high winds, fires) (13.8 percent ) as well as crime and peace and order shocks (12.8 percent) as among their worst shocks. Because shocks reporting may be subject to respondent bias (for example, wealthier people have more assets that can be stolen, and thus may be more likely to report theft and crime shocks, or have more livestock that can be affected by diseases), in the empirical work we use village-level measures of most shocks, except for illness and death shocks, for which we use household-level reports.While the discussion in Section 3 provides a detailed overview of the types of shocks experienced by households, it does not give us a quantitative sense of their consequences, nor if these consequences vary depending on wealth, schooling, and other observable household characteristics. For these reasons, we report an econometric assessment of the impact of these shocks on one measure of welfare, log per capita consumption. 6Log of per capita consumption (lnpcexp) of household i in village v in time t is a function of two broad sets of household characteristics: household characteristics observed in the past (time t-1) (Hiv, t-1) and shocks to households experienced between time t-1 and time t(Siv, t). Vectors of parameters to be estimated are γ, β, and κ. The dependent variable is measured in 2003, while regressors are 1984 values of household characteristics. Denoting εiv, t as the white noise disturbance term, we write this relationship as lnpcexpiv, t = γ • Hiv, t-1 + β • Siv, t + κ • Xiv, t + εiv, t . (1) Observable household characteristics are characteristics of the head (age, sex, and schooling), demographic household characteristics (log size and dependency ratio), and household wealth. We do not include sex of the household head in the regressions because none of the households were female-headed in 1984. Household wealth is proxied by area cultivated in hectares and the value of net worth. Dummy variables for the head being Catholic (the dominant religious group) and having been born in Misamis Oriental are included. Having been born in Misamis Oriental, where the region's metropolitan center is located, may indicate better connections for business and commerce. Dummy variables are included for each municipality in the Philippines. The implication is that shocks are identified by within-municipality variation, which may make identification of covariate shocks difficult. Nevertheless, while covariate shocks are found in virtually all municipalities, there is no single municipality where drought affected all households unilaterally. Both factors appear to allow identification of the impact of these relatively covariate events in our data. These consumption regressions are estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS); note that while we have longitudinal data, we use past values as control variables instead of estimating a panel data model.The shocks data consist of dummy variables on each type of shock reported by each household, such as whether the household experienced drought, and therefore do not indicate the severity of the shock. To minimize respondent bias and to obtain some indicator of severity of shocks, we aggregate common shocks in the following categories by using the percentage of households in the village affected by: a drought; too much rain, pests or diseases that affected field crops or crops in storage; pests or diseases that affected livestock; difficulty in obtaining inputs or increases in input prices; inability to sell or decreases in output prices; and peace and order problems. We use the more general \"peace and order\" problems instead of crime and theft shocks, since the latter is more likely to be tainted by respondent bias. Illness and death shocks are disaggregated into illness of the head/spouse, illness of another household member, death of the head/spouse, and death of another household member.Table 3 presents regression results showing the impact of shocks and other covariates on log consumption per capita in Bukidnon, Philippines, controlling for household characteristics in 1984, and disaggregating on the basis of landholdings, net worth, and years of schooling in 1984. The percentage of households affected by drought-henceforth a drought shock, for brevity-decreases per capita consumption by 11 percent for all households. However, it is clear that the impact of shocks differs greatly across types of households. Regressions included control variables as of 1984: log of age of the household head, years of schooling of the head, log of household size, dependency ratio, net worth, area cultivated, whether household head was Catholic, and whether the head was born in Misamis Oriental.Standard errors are calculated using the Huber-White method; municipality dummies are included but not reported. A constant term was estimated but not reported. Drought shocks have the greatest impact on households whose landholdings are below the median land size and households with below median net worth of assets, and surprisingly, on households with greater than median levels of schooling. Crop and livestock pests and diseases significantly reduce consumption of households without land in 1984 and households with landholdings below the median size, but increase consumption of households with land, households with above median landholding size, and households with above median net worth. Input shocks reduce per capita consumption of those with less than median schooling, but increase it for those with above median schooling and those with no land in 1984. It is possible that these households are less likely to be engaged in agriculture and are in fact net suppliers of labor (in the case of those with no land) and other inputs (for those with above median schooling, who could be engaged in nonagricultural occupations). Output shocks do not appear to affect per capita consumption significantly.Death and illness are shocks that are truly idiosyncratic. Both death and illness are disaggregated depending on whether death (illness) occurred for the household head or spouse, or for another household member. We find that death of the head or spouse significantly reduces log consumption per capita for households that had land in 1984 and for households above the median landholding size in 1984. Households who have more land were probably engaged in agricultural production, so their consumption is more vulnerable to the loss of an adult working member, particularly either the head or spouse. In contrast, death of another person increased per capita consumption for households without land. This may simply be an artifact of construction of the dependent variable-death reduces household size and therefore the denominator of the dependent variable. Illness did not significantly affect consumption on the aggregate and across household types.The above analysis does not allow one to examine whether shocks have longterm and persistent impacts. Because the interval between survey rounds is close to twenty years, one would expect substantial heterogeneity of impact across such a long time period. To account for the possibility that timing of shocks matters, we divide our shocks recall period into two intervals: the first interval, 1984-1996, corresponds to the period before the most recent El Nino event and the Asian economic crisis (1997)(1998), while the second interval, 1997-2003, includes the recent El Nino and the period of the Asian economic crisis and recovery. A drought shock also occurred in the earlier interval, in 1987-88.Table 4 presents regressions on log per capita consumption, with shocks disaggregated into the two intervals, before and after the recent El Nino and the Asian economic crisis. Similar to Table 3, these regressions include controls for age and education of the household head, household size, dependency ratio, whether the head was Catholic, and whether he or she was born in Misamis Oriental. In the regression for all households, the 1987-1988 drought had a larger and more persistent negative impact than the recent drought, indicating that drought response mechanisms may have improved in recent years. Not surprisingly, short-and longer-term impacts differ across household types. Similar to the results for all households, in almost all cases, the 1987-1988 drought had a stronger impact compared to the 1997-1998 drought. The impact of the 1987-1988 drought was felt most strongly by households with no land in 1984, households with less than median landholdings, households with less than median net worth, and households with greater than median schooling. Crop and livestock pest and disease shocks experienced in the earlier period also had a more lasting impact on households without land and households with less than median net worth. Input shocks, however, significantly reduced per capita consumption significantly in both the later and earlier periods. Not surprisingly, the burden of input shocks in both periods was felt by households with land, those with greater than median land size, and those with greater than median assets, since these households are more likely to be engaged in agriculture. In contrast, a higher percentage of households reporting input shocks is associated with higher per capita consumption among households with no land, households with less than median land size, and households with greater than median schooling. These households are less likely to be agricultural producers and may in fact be net suppliers of labor or other farm inputs (in the case of those with greater than median schooling). Output shocks tended to have negligible impact in the earlier period, but had significant recent impacts on households without land, households with less than median landholdings, and households with less than median net worth. Peace and order problems had a significant impact in recent years, adversely affecting households with land, with greater than median landholdings, and greater than median net worth. Finally, among the idiosyncratic shocks, death of the head or spouse had a strong negative impact, regardless of whether it occurred in the later or earlier period. The seeming positive impact of illness on log per capita expenditures can be attributed to increased medical expenditures.In this section, we describe the groups and networks observed in Bukidnon, Philippines (see Godquin andQuisumbing, 2006, 2007 for a more detailed exposition) and analyze the factors that influence group and network formation. As mentioned above, we use \"groups\" to refer to more formal and structured organizations and \"networks\" to denote more informal alliances. Respondents in the 2003 round of the Philippine survey were asked about formal groups and informal networks to which they belonged. The group membership module asked the household members to list all the groups, associations, and cooperatives at least one household member belonged to. Households provided information on a total of 689 groups, which were classified into production, credit, burial, religious, and civic groups. As a measure of social networks, households were also asked about the number of persons it can run to for help on specific occasions. These events mobilize different aspects of social capital, such as trust, mutual insurance, information-pooling, or copying. Trust-related questions dealt with care of the house, care of children, and family problems, while questions related to economic networks were related to networks for coping with economic loss, price information, and technology adoption. These questions were informed by discussion with Filipino researchers who were familiar with the local culture and field tested by the authors. 8 8 See Godquin and Quisumbing (2006) for details and the exact wording of the questions.9 Defined as the sum of persons across all networks.Households in the Philippines can count on various social and economic networks for support (see Table 5). Membership in groups is widespread, with 76 percent of parent households belonging to at least one group. Parent households belong to an average of 1.6 groups, with the proportion of households belonging to at least one group and the average number of groups to which the household belongs increasing steadily with asset quartile.The types of groups households belong to are quite diversified compared to other countries where the most important groups are village women's and/or men's groups that engage in diversified activities (like in Senegal or in Kenya-see Kariuki and Place, 2005). 10 Religious groups are the most frequently mentioned groups, with 34 percent of the households belonging to at least one religious group. Civic groups are the least common type of group, with 15 percent of the households belonging to at least one such group. Household participation in religious, burial, and civic groups increases across asset quartiles, even though not steeply, but participation in production and credit groups increases markedly as wealth increases. This suggests that wealth may be a greater barrier to participation in economic versus non-economic groups.Households also belong to a number of diverse networks, dealing with social and economic matters. Table 5 presents information on the various networks households can rely on for help in specific matters. The \"all networks\" variable is the sum of persons in all of the household's networks and could potentially overstate the size of the total network since it is possible that the same person may belong to more than one trust-based network.11 Across quartiles, virtually all households reporting having at least one person they can turn to for help for various matters, although this may be an artifact of the definition of this variable. Looking at various types of networks, 75 percent of households report having a network to turn to in case of economic loss, with the highest asset quartile the best insured with respect to economic loss (82 percent of households report being able to turn to someone in case of severe economic losses, in contrast to 71 percent of households in the lowest quartile). Only 48 percent of households report having a network for technology adoption and copying-perhaps because farmers tend to rely on the formal extension system rather than their neighbors for information on new technologies. The study site is near an agricultural university that has active extension programs; also, the Department of Agriculture's extension agents have regular technology dissemination activities. On average, the number of persons households can turn to in case of important economic loss is larger than for the other scenarios. While it might seem that membership in groups and the size of one's networks increase with asset ownership, these differences in means might also arise from characteristics of households that also affect their propensity to join groups. Thus, we explore the determinants of group membership and network size using econometric analysis. We investigate the impact of household physical and human capital as well as various aspects on village heterogeneity on membership in groups and networks, controlling for individual, household, and community characteristics. Among the community characteristics of interest are measures of heterogeneity at the village level, following Alesina and La Ferrara (2000). These are measures of ethnic, origin, education, and asset heterogeneity. We also include (from the community questionnaire) the cumulative proportion of households affected by peace and order problems since 1984, and programs operating in the barangay the previous year (2000)(2001).Table 6 presents a tobit regression of the determinants of the total number of groups that a household belongs to. Both human capital and physical capital of the households are strongly associated with the accumulation of formal social capital. Whether the head completed secondary schooling and the percentage of household members with greater than primary schooling positively and significantly affect the total number of groups to which the household belongs. Relative to the highest asset quartile, household belonging to the lower asset quartiles belong to fewer groups. Catholic households also belong to more groups, a result that is driven by membership in religious groups. Not surprisingly, distance from the town center reduces the total number of groups to which the household belongs. Households that experienced more negative shocks in the past also belong to more groups, possibly indicating that groups may perform an insurance function.Group membership is lower in villages with higher ethnic diversity and higher asset heterogeneity, while education heterogeneity has a weak negative effect. Political unrest has a weak positive impact on the number of groups the household belongs to, while the number of cooperatives has a strong negative effect. The unexpected impact of cooperatives on the number of groups can be explained by the negative reputation of the cooperatives movement in the Philippines. Cooperatives have often been formed for political purposes, as the cooperatives movement in the Philippines has risen and fallen depending on support from government officials. 13  We also examine the determinants of participating in specific groups; detailed results are reported in Godquin and Quisumbing (2007). Consistent with the results for group membership in total, wealthier households are more likely to take part in productive groups. Not surprisingly, households engaged in agricultural or nonagricultural production are more likely to be members of productive groups, with being an agricultural producer having a greater marginal impact. Interestingly, none of the measures of village-level heterogeneity have a significant impact on membership in productive groups. The household's position in the asset distribution 13 Cooperatives were encouraged during the Marcos regime, for example, especially for agrarian reform beneficiaries. Many of these cooperatives fell into disarray in subsequent years. The cooperatives movement paled in comparison to the rise of NGOs during the Aquino administration, but seems to have recovered with support from the Ramos administration. also has a significant impact on the probability of joining a credit group, with the second and third asset quartiles significantly less likely to join a credit group relative to the wealthiest quartile. Both ethnic and educational heterogeneity have a negative impact on participation in credit groups. It is possible that having a similar level of education is a precondition for being able to rely on other group members to manage money together, or having similar ethnic backgrounds enables group members to form and manage groups more efficiently. We find that group participation declines in villages with more cooperatives. Perhaps the high number of cooperatives operating in the village is a signal of coordination difficulties. It is also possible that because members of cooperatives can avail of credit from the cooperative, they do not feel the need to participate in stand-alone credit groups. Lastly, a high incidence of peace and order problems diminishes participation in credit groups, perhaps due to increased uncertainty.Burial groups are important risk-sharing institutions in the rural Philippines and are found in almost all Philippine communities. In comparison to production and credit groups, being less wealthy does not seem to pose a significant barrier to participation in both burial and religious groups. Indeed, participation in burial groups is higher in barangays with a lower average value of non-land assets, possibly because households in poorer communities, which may not have the resources to independently finance burial expenses, have a greater incentive to participate in such groups. Participation in burial groups also crosses occupational categories, with households in different occupational categories having no significant difference in participation. Catholics are more likely to take part in burial groups. Village heterogeneity dampens the desire to join burial groups: ethnic and asset heterogeneity have a negative significant impact on the probability of joining a burial group. A higher incidence of peace and order problems increases the likelihood of joining burial groups. Even if peace and order problems do not directly affect the mortality rate of the village, they can increase residents' perception of uncertainty and their desire to insure against adverse events.Compared to production, credit, or burial groups, religious and civic groups do not focus on economic motives. Nevertheless, households with more human capital are more likely to participate in religious and civic groups. Interestingly, participation in religious groups does not differ across asset quartiles. Origin heterogeneity weakly reduces participation in civic groups, some of which are organized around different regional groupings (for example, a Boholano group, composed of migrants from Bohol), but ethnic heterogeneity increases the probability of joining a civic group.Does participation in formal groups substitute for informal trust-based networks? Group membership can both increase the size of one's network and be facilitated by one's network if members of networks have better access to information or if membership in one group is restricted to acquaintances of current group members. Alternatively, membership in formal groups could substitute for informal networks if households turn to formal institutions to provide services-e.g., risk-sharing, credit, insurance-that were formerly provided through one's informal social network. To investigate this issue, we estimate a regression on the size of a household's network, defined as the sum of the number of persons that a household can run to for help. As mentioned above, this variable may overestimate the number of persons who can actually assist a household, since it would double-count persons who provide help in different ways. To address the issue of double counting, we also estimate regressions separately for each type of network, but report the results only for total network size here. Household network density can be modeled as a function of household characteristics and village-level attributes. Household characteristics include the age and education level of the household head, household size, household demographic composition, asset position, and the number of shocks experienced since 1984. Because personal relationships may affect network formation more than economic considerations (Fafchamps and Gubert, 2007), we include measures of kinship relationships within and outside the village: the number of sons and daughters living inside and outside the village. We also include the measures of village-level heterogeneity described above.An underlying question is whether participation in groups increases networkbased social capital. We treat participation in groups as endogenous, using as instruments variables that affect whether households join groups, but which do not affect the size of the network. These variables are whether the household is a sugar producer, whether the head was Catholic in 1984, barangay heterogeneity indices in 1984, per capita expenditures on groups in 1984, and the barangay mean number of groups, excluding the household. Both OLS and instrumental variables estimates, in which group membership is treated as endogenous, are presented in Table 7; exogeneity tests lead us to accept the null hypothesis that the number of groups is exogenous.Surprisingly, the total number of groups to which a household belongs does not affect the density of its networks. Human capital and physical capital contribute to the size of social networks: education of the household head and total asset value in 1984 both have positive and significant coefficients. There is some weak indication that networks perform a risk-smoothing function, since the number of shocks experienced since 1984 increases the number of persons that one can turn to for help. Interestingly, the number of daughters living outside the villages exerts a strong negative influence on the size of one's local trust-based networks. Do these results hold for different types of networks? Regressions not reported here examine the determinants of the size of three different types of social networks (care of house, family problems, and childcare) and three types of economic networks (networks related to economic loss, price information, and technology information), with the number of groups as one of the regressors (treated as endogenous). What is remarkable in all these regressions is that the number of groups is almost always insignificant, indicating that the number of groups a household belongs to does not significantly impact the formation of social and economic networks. Unlike the regressions on group membership, very few variables related to the economic status of the household are significant in the economic network variables. Households that are wealthier, as indicated by total asset value in 1984, are slightly more likely to have larger networks that insure against economic loss, while asset heterogeneity of the barangay reduces the size of these networks. Networks for price information may be driven by risk-pooling considerations, with households experiencing more negative shocks since 1984 having larger networks for price information. However, a striking finding, similar to the findings of Fafchamps and Gubert (2007), is the importance of pre-existing personal relationships as drivers of economic trust-based networks. Networks related to price information and new technologies are smaller, the larger the number of daughters living outside the village. The network for new technologies, however, is positively associated with the number of sons living inside the village, but in separate households.Our findings suggest that sons and daughters perform different functions in social and economic networks-a finding that can be traced to the different roles of men and women in Filipino society. Daughters are trained to be responsible and often play the role of insurers, migrating to towns and cities and then sending remittances to their origin households (Lauby and Stark, 1988). The number of daughters living outside the village negatively affects the combined number of persons in all networks and the number of people in price-information and technology-adoption networks. Perhaps daughters living outside the village are a reliable source of information about price trends and new technologies. In contrast, sons who are living in separate households within the village are more likely to be engaged in agricultural production themselves and are a local source of technology information for parents.While the total number of groups does not capture differences in group objectives, which could affect network density depending on the type of network, the results of regressions not reported here do not show a consistent impact of membership in a particular group on the size of a particular network. 15 In almost all cases, the coefficient of membership in a specific group is insignificant. We therefore conclude that different motivations drive participation in groups and in social networks, and that formal group membership neither substitutes for nor encourages the formation of trust-based networks. Because trust-based networks tend to be based on personal relationships (Fafchamps and Gubert, 2007), economic factors are not the most important determinants of such networks.The regressions on group membership and on total network size suggest that negative shocks increase households' participation in groups and the size of one's network. In the present analysis, we do not provide definitive evidence that participation in groups and networks reduces the impact of shocks in the Philippines. Rather, we explore whether participation in groups yields economic returns in terms of increased per capita expenditures, the extent to which migrant networks form in response to shocks, and their possible impact on sending households. To explore whether group membership generates economic returns, we estimate the impact of group membership-the total number of groups-on per 16 Notes: Instrumental variables estimates with attrition weights; standard errors robust to clustering within barangay; t-statistics and z-values in bold are significant at 10% or better.Excluded instruments: Whether household is a sugar producer, whether head was Catholic in 1984, barangay heterogeneity indices in 1984: origin, ethnicity, assets, and education, per capita expenditures on groups in 1984, barangay mean number of groups, household excluded. capita expenditures using 2SLS to control for the potential endogeneity of group membership. As in the preceding section, we investigate whether the number of groups to which the household belongs has an impact on per capita expenditures. 17We regress log per capita expenditures on human capital of the household head (age in 2003, whether the household head completed primary education, whether he completed secondary education), household demographics (log household size and dependency ratio in 1984), asset quartiles in 1984, the area of titled land in 2003, the barangay average of titled land in 2003 (excluding the household), and dummies for productive status. 18Both OLS and IV estimates are reported in Table 8, with exogeneity tests leading us to accept the null hypothesis that the total number of groups can be taken as exogenous in a regression on per capita expenditures. The total number of groups to which a household belongs has a positive and significant impact on log per capita expenditures, while the signs of the other coefficients are as expected. However, the total number of groups might mask the impact of individual groups. Since participation in economic oriented groups might have a higher impact on per capita expenditures, we also explore alternative specifications where group membership reflects group membership in production, credit, burial, religious, and civic groups, respectively. These results, which are not reported here, suggest that membership in burial, religious, and civic groups have a significant positive impact on per capita expenditures.We are unable to investigate whether social networks also yield economic benefits because we lack credible instruments that affect social networks but do not directly affect per capita expenditures. Insights from the qualitative work conducted among respondent households that experienced covariate and idiosyncratic shocks, however, suggest that local networks only have a limited ability to help households cope with shocks. Several respondents mentioned that they feel embarrassed to ask for help from their friends and neighbors, who are also poor and also face similar problems-even in the case of a household-specific shock such as illness (prior to the introduction of government-provided health insurance). Local networks can offer limited support in the case of a covariate shock. When faced with negative shocks, households use a variety of coping mechanisms: working harder, relying on help from children who have left the home and who are now working, borrowing money from informal sources, and selling or mortgaging assets.Studies of collective action typically focus on nonfamilial groups. However, both the anthropological (see the review by Arce, 2003) and the economic literature on the Philippines suggests that kinship affects participation in groups notably risksharing networks (Fafchamps and Lund, 2003;Fafchamps and Gubert, 2007). The findings from our analysis of trust-based networks also suggest that \"migration capital\" and \"local\" social capital are substitutes. Given these findings, we examine the role of familial migrant networks in consumption smoothing. In our study sample, close to half-47 percent-of children 15 and older are migrants to rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in the Philippines as well as overseas. Similar to the national pattern, a higher proportion of migrants is female. Households with migrant children may invest less in local social capital because they can rely on transfers from their migrant children, particularly their daughters. We investigate this by examining the impact of migration and remittances, both endogenously determined, on various measures of well-being of parent households (this draws from Quisumbing and McNiven, 2007).Table 9 presents estimates of the probability of having an adult migrant child (21 years and older), the number of migrants age 21 and above, the probability of receiving remittances from outside the barangay, and the amount received. Marginal effects are presented-that is, the change in the dependent variable resulting from a one unit change in the regressor. We find that both household and community characteristics play an important role in the migration decision. While the education of the household head has a weak negative impact on the number of adult migrants, higher educational attainment of the children themselves increases both the probability of migrating and the stock of migrants, with daughters' completed schooling having a larger impact than sons'. Villages that have been connected to the main highway for a longer time tend to have fewer migrants, perhaps because workers can commute to the town center instead of having to relocate, but villages that have had electricity for longer durations tend to have more migrants. Finally, the percentage of migrants from other households in the barangay exerts a negative influence on both the probability of migration and the number of migrants. This last result is somewhat counterintuitive because other studies (see, for example, Winters et al., 2000) have shown that potential migrants in communities with larger numbers of migrants are able to take advantage of information networks formed by former migrants. However, in communities where a large number of families are related and where migration rates are already high, there may be diminishing returns to additional migration. While parental wealth affects neither the probability of receipts nor the amount received, remittances appear to perform a consumption-smoothing function. Cumulative shocks up to 2002 increase both the likelihood of receiving remittances and amounts received. Schooling attainment of daughters, but not of sons, increases both the probability of receipt and amounts received. This is consistent with previous studies (Lauby and Stark, 1988;Quisumbing, 1997) showing that females, particularly better-educated females, are more likely to make remittances to parents. While positive shocks to migrant incomes increase both the probability of receipt and amounts received, the marginal effects of shocks experienced by daughters are larger than those of sons. A one percent positive deviation from GDP in a region where a migrant son was located would increase remittance receipts by 1,420 pesos; if the one percent positive shock occurred in a region where a daughter lived, it would increase remittances by 1,988 pesos. These results support our earlier findings that parents invest less in local networks if they have more daughters living outside the village.How do migration and remittances affect parent households? Table 10 presents the coefficient estimates on the number of migrants age 21 years and above, and remittances on various outcomes of the parental household. Both migration and remittances are treated as endogenous in the IV regressions. 20 Our estimates suggest that investment in migrant networks involves tradeoffs. The number of migrants has significant negative impacts on expenditures on clothing and footwear, family events, alcohol and tobacco, and a weak negative impact on health expenditures (all per adult equivalent). Remittances, on the other hand, have significant positive impacts on housing and consumer durables, and the total value of nonland assets and total expenditure per adult equivalent. Similarly, expenditures on clothing and footwear, education, and alcohol and tobacco increase significantly with remittances. Clearly, financing educational expenditures of family members is an important use of remittances. These positive impacts on productive assets and schooling mirror the findings of Yang (2004), who finds that favorable exchange rate shocks for overseas Filipino migrants lead to greater child schooling, reduced child labor, and increased educational expenditure in origin households. Using longitudinal data from Bukidnon, Philippines, followed up by focused qualitative work in the survey villages, we have attempted to understand the role of groups and networks in determining how the poor manage their exposure to risks and cope with shocks to their livelihoods. Aside from determining the impact of shocks on consumption, and how these may vary across different types of households, our analysis allows us to arrive at some conclusions regarding the role of asset endowments and heterogeneity in network formation and risk-smoothing, and the role of different types of enforcement mechanisms so that the network can achieve its risk-smoothing objectives.Drought and the death of the household head or spouse have significant impacts on the well-being of Filipino households. While drought has a negative impact on all households, it has a significant negative impact on households with less land and assets. Death of a household head or spouse has a stronger negative impact on per capita consumption for households that have more land and assetsprobably because these households are more heavily engaged in agriculture.Accumulation of social capital comes easier to the wealthy. This finding is important to development agencies that deliver services through groups or that encourage the poor to invest in \"social capital\" because it is easier to acquire than physical assets: the poor are disadvantaged even in the acquisition of social capital. However, participation in less economically-oriented groups such as religious and civic groups, as well as insurance groups like burial groups, is less closely associated with initial wealth than participation in production and credit groups. Burial groups not only serve an important insurance function, but also seem to reach a wide spectrum of society.Different aspects of heterogeneity matter in the formation and conduct of collective action institutions. Disparities in ethnicity, assets, and education at the village level are likely to discourage the formation of groups, although they do not affect the formation of trust-based networks. Thus, external heterogeneity is not necessarily \"good\" for social capital formation; this may partially explain the difficulty of some collective action efforts in the Philippines, which has a highly unequal income distribution. However, heterogeneity with respect to location may be important in insurance against covariate shocks.Networks composed of spatially-diversified children perform an important insurance function against covariate shocks that may not be achievable by local networks. While spatially-diversified networks might offer more insurance against covariate shocks, problems of asymmetric information are greater. It is therefore no surprise that in the Philippines migrant networks are composed primarily of family members (children) since norms are easier to enforce within the family. Children, especially daughters, are socialized to have utang na loob, a debt of gratitude in the form of reciprocity for favors granted (Lopez, 1991). As part of utang na loob children must obey and respect their parents and fulfill their obligations long after parents have reared them to maturity. Indeed, children are expected to be everlastingly grateful to their parents not only for raising them, but more fundamentally for giving them life itself (Racelis Hollnsteiner, 1973). Failure to live up to these obligations is severely sanctioned, even with threats of divine retribution. 22 Thus, children, even those who live far away, continue to contribute to their parents.Because shocks can have adverse consequences in both the short and long term, understanding the appropriate role for public policy is important for sustainable poverty reduction. Policies to help poor households cope with shocks must take into account Filipino social and organizational culture since policies that are not mindful of the social context may backfire by eroding indigenous social support mechanisms. These results suggest a number of policy implications. First, development practitioners and policymakers need to be more realistic about the possibility of using collective action to deliver services directly to the poor or encouraging the asset-poor to accumulate social capital. Identifying those barriers that prevent the poor from participating in collective action is an important task for development practitioners. Poorer folk often express hiya (in Tagalog) or kaulaw (in Cebuano-Visayan, the language spoken by our respondents), literally translated as shame, but actually meaning the uncomfortable feeling that one is in a socially unacceptable position (Lynch, 1973) when approaching wealthier individuals for help in time of need. Fear of being unable to reciprocate may also prevent poorer households from approaching richer households for help since reciprocity is at the core of Filipino social transactions (Racelis Hollsteiner, 1973). Such feelings of discomfort may interfere with efforts to have a more heterogeneous mix of households in groups-and to achieve consumption-smoothing within formal groups. Such shame may be tempered if the richer individual is a relative, even a distant one. Thus, it is not uncommon for kinship networks to perform consumption-smoothing functions.Second, because local networks and other forms of collective action have limited effectiveness when there are covariate shocks, this is the appropriate arena for public policy. Even if migrant remittances may respond to covariate shocks, substantial time lags may be involved, and not all households in a locality may have access to migrant remittances. Third, certain types of networks do provide insurance against some types of idiosyncratic shocks such as illness, and these tend to be the sort of shocks where, because of information asymmetries, public action may tend to be less effective. Consideration should be given to thinking of public action as taking on an enabling role; examples of this in the Philippines include facilitating interventions (such as improvements in information and communications technology, or reducing transactions costs in making remittances) that lower the costs associated with developing and maintaining family networks. In the Philippines, for example, it is now possible to make bank payments and remittances by sending a text message using a cell phone. Finally, public policy needs to be aware of indigenous networks that already exist and ensure that government action does not displace already functioning local networks.","tokenCount":"8960","images":["-69666137_1_1.png","-69666137_1_2.png","-69666137_1_3.png","-69666137_8_1.png","-69666137_10_1.png","-69666137_10_2.png","-69666137_10_3.png","-69666137_10_4.png"],"tables":["-69666137_1_1.json","-69666137_2_1.json","-69666137_3_1.json","-69666137_4_1.json","-69666137_5_1.json","-69666137_6_1.json","-69666137_7_1.json","-69666137_8_1.json","-69666137_9_1.json","-69666137_10_1.json","-69666137_11_1.json","-69666137_12_1.json","-69666137_13_1.json","-69666137_14_1.json","-69666137_15_1.json","-69666137_16_1.json","-69666137_17_1.json","-69666137_18_1.json","-69666137_19_1.json","-69666137_20_1.json","-69666137_21_1.json","-69666137_22_1.json","-69666137_23_1.json","-69666137_24_1.json","-69666137_25_1.json","-69666137_26_1.json","-69666137_27_1.json","-69666137_28_1.json","-69666137_29_1.json","-69666137_30_1.json","-69666137_31_1.json","-69666137_32_1.json","-69666137_33_1.json","-69666137_34_1.json","-69666137_35_1.json","-69666137_36_1.json","-69666137_37_1.json","-69666137_38_1.json","-69666137_39_1.json","-69666137_40_1.json","-69666137_41_1.json","-69666137_42_1.json","-69666137_43_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"7e05634ef667b4780823269f32b8bc86","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/7eceda73-ccea-4a3d-8417-d6fd8de9e344/retrieve","description":"By Pratiti Priyadarshini Foundation for Ecological Security","id":"-1701674056"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"9a06f888-45d7-49a5-8bec-f54aad5847f9","pagecount":"9","content":"• High investments on improving surface water supply, but many communities fail to sustain the benefits over time.• Water easily depletes if there is no effective coordination among users to ensure provision and regulate withdrawals.• Blueprint rules introduced in a top-down manner have not made much impact. What are the innovations we want to bring about to improve water management?Experimental Games to emphasize on the 'shared' nature of the resource and trigger collective actionCrop Water Budgeting (CWB)An easy colour-coded tech platform to guide people on adequate means to store ground and surface water ","tokenCount":"93","images":["-1701674056_1_1.png","-1701674056_1_2.png","-1701674056_2_2.png","-1701674056_3_2.png","-1701674056_3_3.png","-1701674056_5_2.png","-1701674056_5_3.png","-1701674056_5_4.png","-1701674056_6_2.png","-1701674056_6_3.png","-1701674056_6_4.png","-1701674056_7_2.png","-1701674056_8_2.png","-1701674056_9_2.png"],"tables":["-1701674056_1_1.json","-1701674056_2_1.json","-1701674056_3_1.json","-1701674056_4_1.json","-1701674056_5_1.json","-1701674056_6_1.json","-1701674056_7_1.json","-1701674056_8_1.json","-1701674056_9_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fe20aa4b1ac8e88e779b37a8c852c368","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/8179a9b9-c827-4162-926b-cb0e3b93069a/retrieve","description":"We study the effect of alleviating the information asymmetry regarding product quality that is widespread in contracts between agricultural producers and buyers in developing countries. Opportunistic buyers may underreport quality levels to farmers to reduce the price that they have to pay. In response, farmers may curb investment, thereby negatively affecting farm productivity. In an experiment, we entitle randomly selected smallholder dairy farmers in Vietnam, who are contracted by a large company, to independently verify milk testing results. Results indicate that treatment farmers use 12% more inputs, and they also increase their output significantly. Some wider research and policy implications are discussed.","id":"-262863824"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"00e3e9ea-dd5f-409d-9567-a31b98865dfc","pagecount":"2","content":"Infants with a low weight at birth are at an increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Low birth weight is defined as weight at birth of less than 2,500 grams. The target of reducing low birth weight incidence by 30 percent between 2010 and 2025 was endorsed by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2012. 1   Monitoring progress toward that target, however, will be challenging because worldwide data on low birth weight are sparse and inconsistent.Globally, approximately half of babies are not weighed at birth (48 percent excluding births in China, based on data collected during the period 2008-2012). 2 Empirical data that do exist come from two main sources: administrative records and household surveys. For industrialized countries, data come from birth registration systems. For nonindustrialized countries, low birth weight estimates are primarily derived from national household survey data, although some middle-income countries also have reliable data from routine reporting systems. In a recent review of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) low birth weight global database, 3 more than half of data points came from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHSs) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICSs). Other national surveys, whether household or facility based, accounted for approximately one-third of data points and administrative sources for approximately one-fifth. Each of these sources can have methodological limitations.DHSs and MICSs employ a similar methodological approach to collecting data on low birth weight. All sampled women of reproductive age with at least one birth in the last 2-5 years are asked both for their subjective assessment of the baby's size at birth (very small, smaller than average, average, and so forth) as well as whether or not their child was weighed at birth. If the child was weighed at birth, either the weight is recorded directly from a health card, if it exists, or the mother is asked to recall the birth weight. UNICEF takes these pieces of information to calculate an adjusted estimate of the rate of low birth weight. Adjustments are made for the following:• Heaping on 2,500 grams for those with a reported birth weight in grams, by allocating one quarter of those exactly 2,500 grams to the category of low birth weight • Live births with missing birth weights by combining information for children with complete data available on child's size at birth together with recorded birth weights and extrapolating this to the unweighed cases to generate an estimate of those who likely weighed less than 2,500 grams. 4 It is notable that across DHSs and MICSs conducted since 2008, the proportion of infants weighed at birth ranged from a high of 99 percent in Belarus to a low of 3 percent in Ethiopia, indicating that the degree and type of adjustments vary widely between countries.Deriving low birth weight estimates from national surveys that are not DHS or MICS can be even more problematic due to inconsistent data collection methods, incomplete or missing documentation, lack of raw data, or a combination of these. China provides an example of the challenges of working with nonstandardized national survey data. The National Health Services Survey provides an estimate of 2.8 percent for 2008, which can be considered implausibly low. Notably, data were collected only for ever-married women; furthermore, adherence to other facets of the standard definition are unclear, such as whether all births, regardless of gestational age, were included in the analysis.Low birth weight data derived from vital statistics can be robust only in countries with a high proportion of weighed births. Although estimates that are comparable across time and across countries must be based on a single definition, this is often not the case for data coming from routine information systems. In some cases, the denominator, which should be the number of all live births5 with a recorded birth weight, is not clearly defined in existing documentation. In other cases, there is a clear bias in the denominator, but lack of access to raw data makes it impossible to adjust the estimates. For example, available administrative data from Belarus for the years 1989-2005 exclude newborns with a birth weight of less than 1,000 grams. Insufficient documentation is available publicly for data from 2006 onward to determine whether or not newborns less than 1,000 grams are included in the denominator. Such nonstandard local definitions can lead to an underestimatation of the problem.To address these methodological issues and strengthen reporting for the WHA target, UNICEF, Johns Hopkins University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will be reviewing existing data and the currently employed adjustment methods detailed above over the coming months. As a result of this review, new estimation methods may be proposed, resulting in a new time series.","tokenCount":"780","images":["-262863824_1_1.png"],"tables":["-262863824_1_1.json","-262863824_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/3624844057.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"c2d3f8cf64c21ded1dd82b0a893bca73","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/dc487da2-c270-44a0-8aa2-02ff7d05942d/retrieve","description":"","id":"121248080"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"9f7311d8-6be6-46c7-adcc-01c2145aec8e","pagecount":"4","content":"District Nutrition Profiles (DNPs) are available for 707 districts in India. They present trends for key nutrition and health outcomes and their cross-sectoral determinants in a district. The DNPs are based on data from the National Family Health Survey NFHS-4 (2015NFHS-4 ( -2016) ) and NFHS-5 (2019NFHS-5 ( -2021)). They are aimed primarily at district administrators, state functionaries, local leaders, and development actors working at the district-level.  Note: NA refers to data unavailable for a given round of NFHS/Census.• What are the trends in infant and young child feeding (early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, timely initiation of complementary feeding, and adequate diet)? What can be done to improve infant and young child feeding? • What are the trends in IFA consumption among pregnant women in the district? How can the consumption be improved?• What additional data are needed to understand diets and/or other determinants? • How can the district increase women's literacy, and reduce early marriage, if needed?• How does the district perform on providing drinking water and sanitation to its residents? Since sanitation and hygiene play an important role in improving nutrition outcomes, how can all aspects of sanitation be improved? • How can programs that address underlying and basic determinants (education, poverty, gender) be strengthened?• What additional data are needed on food systems, poverty or other underlying determinants? Note: NA refers to data unavailable for a given round of NFHS/Census.• How does the district perform on health and nutrition interventions along the continuum of care? Does it adequately provide both prenatal and postnatal services to women of reproductive age, pregnant women, new mothers and newborns? • How has access to health and ICDS services changed over time (food supplementation, health and nutrition education and health checkups)?","tokenCount":"289","images":["121248080_1_1.png","121248080_1_2.png","121248080_1_3.png","121248080_1_4.png","121248080_1_5.png","121248080_1_6.png","121248080_1_7.png","121248080_1_8.png","121248080_1_9.png","121248080_1_10.png","121248080_1_11.png","121248080_1_12.png","121248080_2_1.png","121248080_2_2.png","121248080_2_3.png","121248080_2_4.png","121248080_2_5.png","121248080_2_6.png","121248080_2_7.png","121248080_2_8.png","121248080_2_9.png","121248080_2_10.png","121248080_2_11.png","121248080_2_12.png","121248080_3_1.png","121248080_3_2.png","121248080_3_3.png","121248080_3_4.png","121248080_3_5.png","121248080_3_6.png","121248080_3_7.png","121248080_3_8.png","121248080_3_9.png","121248080_3_10.png","121248080_3_11.png","121248080_3_12.png","121248080_4_1.png","121248080_4_2.png","121248080_4_3.png","121248080_4_4.png","121248080_4_5.png","121248080_4_6.png","121248080_4_7.png","121248080_4_8.png","121248080_4_9.png","121248080_4_10.png","121248080_4_11.png","121248080_4_12.png"],"tables":["121248080_1_1.json","121248080_2_1.json","121248080_3_1.json","121248080_4_1.json"]}

data/part_2/3807763119.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"edb5279e1824cf7cc4eddc0449e1ea68","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/5af23c64-1d92-4b1c-b13e-8cdf5f85b9b8/retrieve","description":"Plant transformation research has achieved outstanding progress in the development of transgenic crops over the past decades, and the research results have been spread through journal publications and patents. With the recent emergence of stronger intellectual property rights, investments in crop research and the landscape of plant transformation research have changed, along with the patterns of knowledge dissemination. In this paper, we discuss the recent trends in plant transformation research by examining patent and journal publication data during the last decade. The data analysis shows that there have been significant shifts toward applied research by developing countries and toward patenting as a means of knowledge dissemination during the past few decades, reflecting the increasing role of the private sector in developing countries in crop improvement research.","id":"-1145005666"},"keywords":["biotechnology research","patent","crop improvement","journal publication"],"sieverID":"8352f490-f341-4490-8642-c72470c883c0","pagecount":"24","content":"was established in 1975. IFPRI is one of 15 agricultural research centers that receive principal funding from governments, private foundations, and international and regional organizations, most of which are members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).Significant progress has been made over the past few decades in agricultural biotechnology, leading to the development of several transgenic crops worldwide. Advances in plant genetics technology such as bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics have expanded the scope of research and generated a large body of knowledge. This stock of cumulative knowledge has traditionally been freely shared with the research community through journal articles, scientific databases, conferences, and other outlets. In the United States, for example, the public sector, including universities, has played a particularly important role in generating and disseminating knowledge in the area of agriculture, fostering an environment of free access and sharing (Wright et al. 2007).However, as the commercial potential in biotechnology has increased through various legal and technological changes, private companies are increasingly involved in generating and privatizing scientific knowledge and technologies. The landmark Diamond v. Chakrabarty case in 1980, which allowed the patenting of living organisms, and subsequent rulings on patentability of plant and genes contributed to a rapid surge in biotechnology research by the private sector. Private companies have actively protected their technologies to capture the returns from their investment through intellectual property rights, such as patents and plant breeders' rights. Parallel to this trend of privatization, the public sector in the United States has also started to pursue intellectual property rights on its own research outputs, especially since the implementation of the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which allows universities and other public research institutes to patent and exclusively license their research results that were generated through federal funding (Jaffe 2000).These changes in institutional environments led to a rapid surge in patenting worldwide in the late 1990s (Kortum and Lerner 1999). However, multiple patent claims in fundamental technologies and limited freedom to operate may slow down the utilization of these technologies and increase the transaction costs of developing new transgenic crops. Many of the core technologies in plant transformation have been patented and (exclusively) licensed through contracts, creating a thicket of overlapping patent claims. Heller and Eisenberg (1998) dubbed this phenomenon \"tragedy of anticommons,\" where the proliferation of intellectual property rights in basic technologies may stifle subsequent improvements of the technologies and lead to fewer innovations. For example, Wright (1998) reports a case where University of California researchers had to abandon research on developing a transgenic tomato due to the inability to negotiate a licensing agreement on using patented technologies.Continued accumulation of scientific knowledge and its dissemination to other sectors are today's seeds for tomorrow's innovations and agricultural improvements. 1 Traditionally, the dissemination of knowledge has taken the form of publication through journals or other outlets that ensure free access to the knowledge. The development of new technologies, together with changes in institutional environments toward privatization of research outputs, has given scientists different incentives to disseminate their research outputs. A detailed analysis of the patenting and publication patterns of research outputs can provide insights on how research outputs and scientific knowledge have been generated and disseminated with the changes in research environments.In this paper, we will analyze recent patterns of knowledge generation and dissemination in agricultural biotechnology, in particular plant breeding, by using the example of the Agrobacteriummediated transformation method. The Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method is one of the most widely adopted methods of developing transgenic crops, and active research is currently being performed to improve the technology. Recent developments in transgenic crops in both developed and developing countries largely used this technology, and timely adoption of this technology is critical to both traditional and transgenic crop improvement programs in developing countries.By using the data on the journal publications and patents, this study examines the recent trend in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation technology, with a special emphasis on the types of technology (fundamental vs. applied) and their geographical distribution. The fundamental knowledge of this technology has mostly been generated by researchers in developed countries over the past few decades. An interesting research question is whether researchers in developing countries actively improve and apply the fundamental technology for local needs, or whether researchers in developed countries continue to improve the fundamental technology, and developing countries are simply early adapters of the applied technology. This analysis can evaluate the current research capacity of developing countries, and will provide useful information for policymakers to set resource allocation priorities for agricultural development. Furthermore, the increasing use of proprietary protection of research outputs may have a significant future impact on knowledge dissemination.The analysis of the technology in journal and patent publications requires a certain level of knowledge underlying the research output, and Section 2 provides a brief introduction of the technology on Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method. This section helps distinguish the fundamental knowledge from applied technology in the data analysis, and explains the current level of technological progress. Readers with background knowledge of the technology can skip this section. Section 3 analyzes the detailed data on patents and publications, such as the current trend in plant transformation research, its research focus, and the geographical distribution of research outputs. The conclusion follows in Section 4.Developing a new transgenic crop involves the transfer of genes with desired traits to other cells, and gene transformation technology is one of the main research focuses in crop improvements. Understanding the technical process involved in crop improvement is prerequisite to evaluating the recent technological developments in plant transformation methods published in journals or patents. This section briefly reviews the key technical steps in the process of plant transformation.Although the first successful experimental transfer of individual genes to a plant was described only a few decades ago (Herrera-Estrella et al. 1983;DeBlock et al. 1984;Horsch et al. 1984), the gene transfer mechanism itself is an old natural phenomenon. In their natural environment, organisms can transfer genetic information in a vertical way from parent to progeny or in a horizontal way from one organism to the other. Vertical gene transfer through sexual reproduction induces genetic variations in the progeny through crossover and natural mutagenesis. Scientists and farmers often cross closely related species in order to produce new varieties with particular traits, and this approach has played an important role in natural selection and crop improvement since agriculture started millenniums ago.On the other hand, horizontal gene transfer between different species has been applied in agriculture only recently. The possibility started with the discovery that genetic information can be transferred from one bacterium to another through DNA, and it was confirmed with the discovery of the DNA structure by Watson and Crick in the 1950s. Rapid technological advances in genetic engineering during the last few decades enabled scientists to create new plants with specific traits by incorporating genes from other species. In 1994, the first transgenic crop, the FlavrSavr tomato, with a prolonged shelf life, developed by Calgene, was approved for sale in the United States. Several other transgenic crops have been developed and commercially released since then. Most genetically modified crops are either herbicide tolerant, such as Roundup Ready soybeans and canola, or insect resistant, such as Bt corn or Bt cotton.2 Many other types of crops are currently being developed with such traits as disease and pest resistance, drought and cold tolerance, and improved protein content, product quality, and vitamin enrichment.The process of developing these transgenic crops involves the transfer of genes across species (called \"transformation\"), and several transformation technologies can be used to transfer genes into plant cells. One method, known as particle bombardment or biolistics, is a mechanical cell-disruption approach in which gold particles coated with DNA are \"bombarded\" into plant cells under high pressure. The transferred DNA molecules can then be incorporated into the target plant genome. This method has successfully been applied to monocots like wheat or maize, for which the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is less effective. This technology of using \"gene guns\" was developed by scientists at Cornell University in the 1980s, and was licensed to DuPont in 1990. The problem with this method is that it often damages the cellular tissue. Another method, called \"electroporation,\" uses electrical impulses to make the plant cell membrane permeable, so that DNA molecules are transferred directly into the cell. Though this technique can be applicable to nearly all cells and species types, it often causes cell damage, and the transport of material is often nonspecific (Weaver 1995).The most widely applied method in developing transgenic crops is the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method (Tzfira et al. 2004;Valentine 2003). This method uses the natural process of the soil-borne bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which causes crown gall disease in plants by transferring some of its own DNA molecules into the plant cells (Hooykaas and Schilperpoort, 1992;Van Montagu, 2003;Van Larebeke et al. 1975). Agrobacterium was identified by Smith and Townsend in 1907, but the gene transfer capacity of Agrobacterium was only understood in the 1970s and 1980s.Initially, this method was believed to be applicable to only dicotyledonous plants 3 , but recent advances made its application to monocotyledonous plants (e.g., most cereals) possible. However, the transformation of some legumes and woody species is still limited due to the low efficiency of transformation and unstable transgenic expression. 4  The efficiency of Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation varies not only by plant species but also by plant tissues. A majority of transformation protocols have been based on in vitro modification of cotyledons, callus cells, embryonic tissue, leaves, shoot apices, roots, pollen, or hypocotyl tissue. Recently, in planta transformation methods-in which scientists dip the flowers in Agrobacterium solution to mediate gene transfer without prior isolation and sterilization of plant tissue-have been developed, avoiding the need for in vitro culturing. Although the in planta transformation methods would facilitate high throughput transformation and reduce the overall transformation time and costs, they cannot be applied routinely to all agriculturally important crops (Clough and Bent 1998).Although much of the basic research and findings that led to Agrobacterium-mediated transformation was done in public institutions, the private sector now holds many of the key patent positions. The patents were obtained by the private sector either from internal research and development or from public institutions in the form of a license, or occasionally, as the assignee. Thus, the science and the patent positions are of high interest to both public and commercial sectors (Roa-Rodriguez and Nottenburg 2003). The limited availability of methods for transforming plants might indicate some degree of patent holdup on plant transformation technologies (Schimmelpfennig 2004).Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation is a very labor-intensive and complex process, requiring well-trained personnel, specific equipment, and various technologies in each stage. A schematic representation of Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation method is illustrated in Figure 1. 3 Agrobacterium was initially believed to be restricted to the transformation of certain dicotyledonous plants (flowering plants with two cotyledons in their seeds and broad leaves with reticulated veins), such as potatoes, tomatoes, beans, tobacco, and so forth, but nowadays transformation of monocotyledonous plants (flowering plants with one cotyledon in their seeds and narrow leaves with parallel veins), such as maize and rice, is routinely performed (Roa-Rodriguez and Nottenburg 2003). 4 The transformation efficiency and time influence the overall costs, benefits, and risks of transgenic crop development.The first step in the transformation process is the preparation of the tumor-inducing plasmid, also called Ti-plasmid. It is a circular nongenomic DNA molecule that is present in Agrobacterium cells. The ability of Agrobacterium to transfer genes into the target plant cells is controlled by this large Ti-plasmid that contains three essential regions: the transferred-DNA (T-DNA) region, the Nos/Noc region, and the virulence genes (vir) region (Figure 1). The Nos/Noc region contains the genes for nopaline synthesis and catabolism as energy sources for the bacterium. The vir region contains the genes required for the excision, transfer, and integration of the T-DNA fragment. The gene of interest (e.g., herbicide-tolerance gene, male-sterility gene) is inserted into the T-DNA region. To enable specific selection of the cells containing the gene of interest at a later stage, a selectable marker gene (mostly antibiotic-resistance genes inducing kanamycine or hygromycine resistance) is also added to the T-DNA region. The T-DNA region also contains regulatory sequences such as promoter and terminator sequences to regulate the expression of selectable markers and transgenes (Figure 1). Lots of research has focused on developing many of these tools (e.g., markers, promoters, genes), and most of them are protected through patents.Obtaining licensing agreements to use these basic tools is important in developing transgenic crops, and holdups in obtaining licenses are often observed (Heller and Eisenberg 1998).After the preparation of plasmid, the T-DNA with the gene of interest is transferred and integrated into the genomic DNA of the target plant cell. For gene transfer, both Agrobacterium bacteria (containing T-DNA in Ti-plasmid) and plant cells are cocultivated in vitro for about 24 hours and then transferred to growth medium. High levels of hormones in the growth medium initiate cell proliferation and induce the growth of unorganized cell masses, called callus. Some of the transformed cells in the callus contain the gene of interest. The efficiency of this process is species-dependent and affected by tissue quality, concentration of Agrobacterium cells, length of T-DNA region, type of Ti-plasmid, and other environmental factors. Researchers have optimized this procedure for different types of species.Not only do the transformed plant cells containing the T-DNA region proliferate in the cell cultures, but the neighboring cells that do not harbor the T-DNA (including the gene of interest) also form callus.Therefore, the presence of the selectable marker gene (antibiotic resistance gene) in the T-DNA region is necessary to distinguish the successfully transformed plant cells from the cells without T-DNA. During the selection of cell cultures, antibiotics are added to the growth medium to inhibit growth of plant cells without T-DNA. Only those cells that contain the selectable marker gene (along with the transgene in the T-DNA region) will show resistance to the antibiotics in the medium and will survive the selection conditions. A repetition of the selection steps may be required to specifically select transgenic cells.Once plant cells that successfully incorporate the gene of interest are selected, they are transferred to the regeneration medium to induce plant development. Unlike most animal cells, plant cells are totipotent, and entire plants can be regenerated from a single cell. The first step in this regeneration process is to transfer the selected cells to an appropriate growth medium to induce the development of shoots. When shoots are formed, the cells are transferred to a second regeneration medium for root development. When both shoot and root structures are developed, the small plantlets are transferred to larger in vitro containers for further growth.The selection process with markers in the previous stage is not perfect, and some plantlets without the transgene can survive the antibiotic selection. To further screen for cells that contain the gene of interest, DNA samples of the plantlets are subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and Southern blot analysis. Since the presence of the targeted gene does not guarantee the expression of the transgene, the expression level of the transgene (i.e., the transcription of transgenic DNA into transgenic mRNA) is measured using the quantitative real time PCR or Southern blot analysis. Finally, the presence of the trait protein or enzyme (i.e., the translation of transgenic mRNA into transgenic protein) should be verified by the Western blot analysis or ELISA technology. This selection process is very time-consuming and laborintensive, but it is necessary to reduce the cost of transgenic plant multiplication in the next stage.After the final screening, the selected plantlets are carefully transplanted from in vitro culture medium to soil and transferred to the greenhouse to further grow into mature plants. At this stage, the transgenic plants are subjected to phenotypic analysis, that is, they are tested for the presence of desired traits such as herbicide tolerance, fruit quality, production yield, or insect resistance. The regeneration and multiplication process often requires a few weeks to several months for most species, but may take up to several years for woody species.To analyze the recent trend of knowledge generation and dissemination in the agricultural biotechnology area, this study uses the development of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation technology as a case study. We collected patent and peer-reviewed journal publications that are related to Agrobacteriummediated transformation in agriculture. For patent information, we collected global patent data from the patent database esp@cenet, version 3 (http://be.espacenet.com). This patent database, which is managed by the European Patent Office, covers about 50 million patents from 71 countries as of February 2005.For journal publication data, we used the literature database National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Literature), which is managed by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The PubMed archive in this database contains more than 1.1 million full-text journal articles and 15 million citations from over 340 biomedical and life sciences journals worldwide.To obtain the relevant data on Agrobacterium-mediated transformation from both sources in a consistent manner, we adopted the keyword search strategy rather than relying on the built-in classification codes in the database (e.g., international patent classification code for the esp@cenet patent database). In the first stage, we searched for the keywords Agrobacterium and transformation in the fields of titles, abstracts, and main texts from both patents and journals that were published since 1980. In the second stage, we manually read all abstracts of the first-cut data to screen out those that were not directly related to the Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation method in crop improvement. This two-step search process resulted in a total of 612 patent observations and 1,692 journal articles that were published during 1980-2004 (Figure 2). 5  For more detailed, in-depth analysis of the changing trend of research activity, we choose in the following analysis the data for three discrete years (1996, 2000, and 2004) that are considered to cover the period of major research developments in the area of plant transformation. In this process, we also eliminated duplicative patents that were obtained in different countries from the same technology or innovation. An innovator often applies for patents in different countries even though the underlying innovation is the same (often called a patent family). These patents can be identified with the priority date information and are counted as a single innovation in the following analysis. 5 The lists of journals included in the data observations are summarized in Appendix Tables A1. The countries or institutes of data sources for patent data include Australia; Belgium; Canada; Switzerland; China; Germany; Eurasian Patent Office European Patent Office; Spain; Finland; France; United Kingdom; Greece; Israel; Italy; Japan; Korea; Luxembourg; Mexico; Netherlands; New Zealand; Russia; Taiwan; United States; World Intellectual Property Organization; Ukraine; South Africa.. Figure 2 shows recent trends in the research on Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation methodology in terms of the number of worldwide patent and journal publications from 1980 through 2004. The primary data series are those that pass the first screening process, and the secondary series are the ones garnered through a more refined screening process. Though there was an upward, steady trend in the number of journal publications during the last few decades, the number of patents has increased sharply since the late 1990s. Technological breakthroughs in the areas of genomics and bioinformatics since the 1980s might have contributed to the overall increase in research activities, which is reflected in the overall increase in the number of both journal and patent publications.In terms of the relative surge in patents compared to journal publications in recent years, institutional changes since the 1980s might have contributed to the upward trend. Since the 1980s, a series of institutional changes in intellectual property rights protection have provided pro-patent environments both in the United States (see Kortum and Lerner 1999 for examples) and worldwide (see Harhoff 2006 for examples in Europe). Recent surges in the number of patents in most areas somewhat reflect these global institutional changes. Though it is difficult to make a concrete judgment with the current data, we can argue that both technological and institutional changes have contributed to the recent increases in patents in the Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation technology.Though the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method is widely adopted in transgenic crop development, its efficiency varies greatly by crop species, as discussed in Section 2. For many dicotyledonous plant species such as tobacco, Medicago, Arabidopsis, and petunia, the efficient transformation protocols with Agrobacterium have been well established over the past decades. However, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of monocot plants has encountered technical difficulties, and its efficiencies were very low in the early years of transformation attempts. Alternative transformation methods, such as particle bombardment or the gene-gun method, were more commonly used for this type of plant in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the first successful transformations of rice and corn plants with Agrobacterium in the mid-1990s, however, research on the transformation of other monocot plants has rapidly increased.Table 1 shows the number and share of patent and journal publications on Agrobacteriummediated transformation research in 1996Agrobacteriummediated transformation research in , 2000Agrobacteriummediated transformation research in , and 2004 by types of target species. While the number of journal publications during the three sample years is stable at around 80, the number of patents has dramatically increased from 21 in 1996 to 70 in 2004, reflecting the recent surge in patenting in the biotechnology area. In terms of the types of species, the share of patent and journal publications reporting monocot plant transformation has substantially increased in the early part of this decade. In addition, it should be noted that the share of monocot plants in patents is higher than in journal publications in the early part of this decade (i.e., 20 percent vs. 12 percent). Most commercially valuable cereals are monocots, and they attract more patent applications to capitalize the commercial market. Figure 3 illustrates how the nature of research has changed over time. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation research can be methodological, applied, or fundamental in nature. Methodological research focuses on the specific steps of a transformation protocol for a specific plant species, and applied research analyzes the development of specific transformation procedures and their applications to biotic and abiotic stress resistance, product quality, modified nutrient quality, and crops as biofactories. On the other hand, fundamental research examines gene-transfer mechanisms without direct reference to industrial applications and includes plant physiological and ecological studies and research on plantmicrobe interaction and symbiosis. Patents, by definition, report research outputs with industrial applicability, so the patent data are classified only as either applied or methodological research.Figure 3 also shows that there has been a significant shift in recent years from fundamental toward applied research projects in terms of journal publication. While the majority of the published journal papers (nearly 73 percent) were fundamental in nature in 1996, only 21 percent of papers published in 2004 discussed fundamental research problems. The process of technological development in general evolves from fundamental to applied focus as the research progresses, but the shift was more drastic in the area of plant transformation research. The increased patentability of research outputs because of various court rulings and changes in law (e.g., the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act in the United States) and the growth of commercial markets for crop varieties might have encouraged the shift of research focus. In the field of applied research, the main application has been to develop transgenic crops with resistance to biotic stress, such as insect, bacterial, viral, and fungal resistance (Cohen 2005). Over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in developing crops for use as biofactories (Figure 4). The first recombinant plant-derived pharmaceutical protein was human serum albumin, initially produced in 1990 in transgenic potato and tobacco plants (Sijmons et al. 1990). The focus was later shifted to industrial applications, and several drugs, such as antibodies, growth factors, blood products, cytokines, and human enzymes, are currently produced in plants (Twyman et al. 2005).Table 2 categorizes the number of journal and patent publications by the affiliation of researchers. Though somewhat arbitrary, we classified all universities and research institutes as public sector (some may be privately operated). In terms of journal publication, the majority (93 percent) of articles have been published by researchers in the public sector, especially in universities. This trend hasn't changed much during the past decade: nearly 91 percent of all journal publications were still lodged by the public sector in 2004, down by only 3 percent compared to 1996. However, the trend is very different in the case of patents. During the study period, the majority of patents (55 percent) on the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method were owned by the private sector, but its share has been rapidly decreasing, from 71 percent in 1996 to 49 percent in 2004. Many universities have adopted various measures to encourage researchers to apply for patents, which can explain the increased role of university patents from 19 percent to 30 percent during the same period. Overall, the public sector still accounts for about 45 percent of all patents in the area of agricultural biotechnology, unlike some other industries, where the private sector dominates the number of patent applications.Though most of the research activities in biotechnology are found in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (89 percent for all journal articles and 84 percent for patents), the rapid growth of research activities in some developing countries during the past decade is noteworthy (Table 3). In particular, China has been very active in plant transformation research in recent years, with policy commitments toward transgenic crop research and development, and a similar trend can be found for India. In terms of journal publications, OECD countries' share of published articles dropped from 95 percent in 1996 to 83 percent in 2004. However, for patents, the drop is much more significantfrom 95 percent to 68 percent during the same period-indicating the active role of China. Both patent and journal publication data show that some developing countries actively improve fundamental knowledge to fit their environment, instead of passively receiving fully applied technology from developed countries. Among the OECD countries, the United States accounts for nearly half of all journal publications and patenting activities in the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation research, followed by Japan. However, the share of U.S. research activity gradually decreased from 1996 to 2004, while OECD countries' share of research activity has been gradually increasing. We can argue that the knowledge base of agricultural biotechnology has globally spread out during the past decade.Economic development and technological progress depend on continued generation of new knowledge and innovations and their wide dissemination to society. The right balance of these two is one of the main objectives in innovation policy. While new innovations can be readily generated by assigning proprietary rights, the patent itself can limit the dissemination of research outputs. On the other hand, although new innovations and knowledge may be disseminated widely through publication in journals, there may be less incentive to develop new innovations if the return on investment is not secured. Historically, innovation policy has shifted between these two considerations, and recently it has been moving toward an increasingly protected research environment. As policy shifts from one direction toward another, the research environment and reaction of the scientific community changes accordingly. Using patent and journal publication data on plant transformation technology, this paper analyzed how researchers' incentives in disseminating research outputs have changed in response to the institutional changes in the research environment.We found that the research focus in the last decade, in the area of plant transformation, has shifted from fundamental to applied research, and from journal publication to patents. We also found a rapid rise of the role of developing countries (e.g., China and India) in applied research in crop improvement, which reflects significant knowledge dissemination from developed to developing countries.The increasing shift toward patenting of research outputs is an important trend observed in this analysis, but this trend poses several challenges. First, patents tend to limit access to the technology, since they require users to obtain a licensing agreement with the patent holder. Several rights holders (Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, and the Max Planck Society) recently agreed to cross license their Agrobacterium-mediated transformation technologies. This allows them to access each other's patented technologies free of charge (press release February 2005, http://www.mpg.de/). This agreement may limit technology access for other companies who want to apply these methods, and might slow down the overall technological progress, though the opposite argument exists (Binenbaum et al. 2003). The significant knowledge dissemination achieved during the past few decades may not continue in the future.Second, public sector institutes, which use others' proprietary technologies without acquiring formal license, are increasingly vulnerable to patent infringement claims (Eisenberg 2003). Public sector researchers have assumed that they could easily resort to the statutory \"research exemption,\" which allows free access to patented technologies for noncommercial and/or research applications of an invention. A survey reported that most of the international research centers of the CGIAR used patented technologies without formal approval of the patentees (Cohen, Flack-Zepeda, and Komen 2004), and most university researchers rarely seek a license when using proprietary technologies. However, a recent ruling (Mady v. Duke, 307 F.3d 1351, October 3, 2002) showed that the research exemption can be very narrowly interpreted, and the public sector should not be complacent with this exemption clause. Public research institutes are now in a difficult situation where they should make their research outputs available to the public without restriction, but they have to get licenses for using others' technologies.Third, there has been a small movement toward open access to technology in the biotechnology area, similar to open-source projects in the software industry. An example is the Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) initiative-recently launched by CAMBIA, a non-profit research institute in Australia-which aims to forge a new commons in fundamental technologies for biological innovation (Broothaerts et al. 2005). Frustrated by the complex patent maze and by the enormous financial and bureaucratic barriers to obtain licenses, this initiative intends to create a common pool of technologies that are made freely available to scientists who could otherwise not afford them. The success of the opensource movement depends on the incentive structure of the providers of technologies, but the role of the public research community is critical.","tokenCount":"5024","images":["-1145005666_1_1.png","-1145005666_1_2.png","-1145005666_1_3.png","-1145005666_1_4.png","-1145005666_1_5.png","-1145005666_1_6.png","-1145005666_1_7.png","-1145005666_10_1.png","-1145005666_10_2.png","-1145005666_14_1.png","-1145005666_16_1.png"],"tables":["-1145005666_1_1.json","-1145005666_2_1.json","-1145005666_3_1.json","-1145005666_4_1.json","-1145005666_5_1.json","-1145005666_6_1.json","-1145005666_7_1.json","-1145005666_8_1.json","-1145005666_9_1.json","-1145005666_10_1.json","-1145005666_11_1.json","-1145005666_12_1.json","-1145005666_13_1.json","-1145005666_14_1.json","-1145005666_15_1.json","-1145005666_16_1.json","-1145005666_17_1.json","-1145005666_18_1.json","-1145005666_19_1.json","-1145005666_20_1.json","-1145005666_21_1.json","-1145005666_22_1.json","-1145005666_23_1.json","-1145005666_24_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"6071882b2c6bac33bf4302edbeae1c10","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/0daa07bb-bff4-43e5-9e67-3bd36f3d2aa3/retrieve","description":"This price bulletin was developed by researchers at IFPRI Malawi with the goal of providing clear and accurate information on the variation of weekly retail prices of selected agricultural commodities that are important for food security and nutrition in Malawi. The reports are intended as a resource for those interested in agricultural markets in Malawi.","id":"387414772"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"52787e08-087d-4029-8926-a3a457b5c984","pagecount":"2","content":"Figure 1. Regional average retail prices (MWK/unit) of livestock and livestock products during[Grab your reader's attention with a great quote from the document or For further information contact Dennis Ochieng ([email protected]) or Aubrey Jolex ([email protected]) at IFPRI Malawi.To learn more about our work, visit https://massp.ifpri.info or follow us on Twitter (@IFPRIMalawi).Table 1. Retail prices of livestock and livestock products (MWK/unit) during December 2020 Note: Chicken are priced per live chicken; eggs are priced per tray; goat meat is priced per kg; -= commodity was not monitored.With financial support from the European Union, IFPRI Malawi began monitoring retail prices of selected legumes, roots and tubers, and non-maize cereals* in selected markets in October 2020. Currently, prices are collected from 44 markets across the country, with monitoring occurring once per week. Three monitors report prices from each market. Data is collected by means of automated short message service (SMS) with follow-ups made by telephone the next day if needed. The commodities monitored are being phased-in, starting with legumes, root crops and other cereals, and then expanding to include livestock products and fish. Fish prices will be included in the next monthly bulletin in January 2021. Note that the number of markets monitored vary by commodity because major markets are targeted in areas where these commodities are widely produced.* daily retail prices for maize are available from our monthly maize market reports","tokenCount":"229","images":["387414772_1_2.png","387414772_1_3.png","387414772_1_4.png","387414772_2_1.png"],"tables":["387414772_1_1.json","387414772_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/3999159314.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"0bcacafbe39b400d167797cf0f297c57","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/59cadb1d-6ead-41dc-ba04-e0d2d0568a49/retrieve","description":"This paper provides details of the analysis done for Ethiopia’s background study for its implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The analysis provides an assessment of agricultural growth options utilizing a new computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Ethiopia based on data from the EDRI 2004/05 Ethiopia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). The CGE model results indicate that if Ethiopia can meet its targets for crop yields and livestock productivity, then it should be possible to reach and sustain the six percent agricultural growth target during 2006-2015.","id":"-647440207"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"f3c275cc-92c1-4a1b-8a6c-c85ba560287e","pagecount":"2","content":"Ethiopia's national development strategy, A Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty for 2005/06 to 2009/10 (PASDEP) places a major emphasis on achieving high rates of agricultural and overall economic growth. Consistent with the PASDEP, Ethiopia is also in the process of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) together with other African governments. As part of CAADP, the country has committed itself to meeting targets of devoting at least 10 percent of public expenditures to agriculture and to achieving a 6 percent growth rate in agricultural GDP. Ethiopia has already met these targets in recent years. The challenge remains, however, to continue to devote these public resources and to achieve high growth rates through 2015.This paper analyzes agricultural growth options that can support high levels of agricultural development using a new computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Ethiopia based on data from the EDRI 2004/05 Ethiopia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM), an internally consistent data base covering production, incomes, household consumption, investment and trade. The SAM includes 4 agro-ecological zones and disaggregates households into poor and non-poor based on per capita expenditure distribution reflected in the 2004/05 Household Income Expenditure and Consumption (HICE) survey.Five different scenarios were designed for this analysis. In Scenarios 1-3 we target specific groups of crops or agricultural sub-sectors. Simulation 1 models increased productivity of cereals (with the productivity increases varying by cereal and by agro-ecological zones). Simulation 2 models increases in productivity of exportoriented crops along with the productivity increases in cereals of simulation 1. Simulation 3 adds increased productivity of livestock and simulation 4 models increased productivity growth in all agricultural subsectors, including fisheries and forestry sub-sectors. This is equivalent to a 'CAADP' scenario, since it captures all possible sources of additional agricultural growth. Finally, in the 'non-agriculture' scenario (Simulation 5), we accelerate economic growth in not just the agricultural sector, but in non-agriculture as well.Under the 'All Agriculture' scenario, agricultural growth accelerates to six percent per year for the period 2002-2008 (i.e., 2009-2015) (see Table 3). This is driven by a strong expansion in cereals production. For example, wheat production increases from about four million tons under the Baseline scenario to over six million tons under the 'All Agriculture' scenario. Similarly large expansions of coffee production are also achieved under this accelerated scenario. Thus, even though the additional growth required for other crops is less pronounced, the achievement of the six percent agricultural growth target remains ambitious. Livestock growth would also have to more than double from an annual average growth rate of 2.9 percent per year under the Baseline scenario to 6.0 percent under the 'All Agriculture' scenario. However, despite these challenges, the model simulations indicate that if the crop yield and livestock productivity targets can be achieved by 2015, then Ethiopia will be able to achieve and sustain the six percent agricultural growth target set forth by CAADP. Even though these yield targets are below the maximum potential yields identified by agricultural field trials, they are still ambitious given the short timeframe of the CAADP initiative (i.e. seven years).Rapid agricultural growth also has major benefits for the poor. Achieving agricultural growth of six percent per Ethiopia Model Simulation Results: Agricultural GDP Growth and Poverty year would reduce national poverty to 18.4 percent by 2015, lifting an additional 3.7 million people out of poverty compared to a base simulation using medium term growth rates. Composition of agricultural growth matters, though. Additional growth driven by cereals has larger impacts on poverty reduction, because these crops already constitute a large share of rural incomes and so can contribute substantially to achieving broad-based 2005 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15Most households are expected to benefit from faster agricultural growth. However, some agro-ecological zones that grow higher-value cereals and export-oriented crops and which are better situated to larger urban markets (e.g., the rainfall sufficient highlands) stand to gain more than other parts of the country. Both rural and urban households benefit from faster agricultural growth (and thereby overall economic growth), as rural producers benefit from increased agricultural productivity and incomes, while net purchasers of food in both rural and urban areas benefit from moderate declines in real food prices. agricultural growth. Yield improvements in these crops not only benefit farm households directly, by increasing incomes from agricultural production, but also by allowing farmers to diversify their land allocation towards other higher-value crops. Increased productivity of cereals that reduces real cereal prices is also effective at raising rural real incomes and reducing poverty, especially amongst the poorest households. Thus, high priority should be afforded to improving cereals yields and opening market opportunities for upstream processing to reduce demand constraints.This research note is intended to promote discussion; it has not been formally peer reviewed but has been reviewed by at least one in ternal and/or external reviewer. ","tokenCount":"806","images":["-647440207_1_1.png","-647440207_1_2.png","-647440207_1_3.png","-647440207_1_4.png","-647440207_2_1.png","-647440207_2_2.png"],"tables":["-647440207_1_1.json","-647440207_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/4002068154.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"d4d8527a7f5cac36a5d9bd17ee6ad451","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/713c4247-1189-4ae4-bcae-c272e4fd8640/retrieve","description":"Advocates of reforms in land rights and land markets frequently posit two important hypotheses: (1) African countries must grant land titles to farmers because titles increase land tenure security and facilitate access to input, land, and financial markets; and (2) land markets constitute the most efficient mechanism for allocating resources and improving access to productive resources by the poor, especially women and other marginalized groups... Research must focus on understanding the dynamics of land values in the different markets for land rights and devise ways to improve the marketability of customary rights through simple processes that also increase the demand for agricultural land and effectively contribute to the reform of land rights. -- from Text","id":"1476889261"},"keywords":["For further reading: P. Groppo","ed.","Land Reform (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations","1994); N. Chaherli","P. Hazell","T. Ngaido","T. Nordblom","and P. Oram","Agricultural Growth","Sustainable Resource Management and"],"sieverID":"3971acc0-d098-4dcc-ae7a-5f784fddd0aa","pagecount":"6","content":"T wo types of reform processes exist. One type seeks to improve the opportunities and relieve the constraints associated with specific land rights, usually by moving from customary use rights, which are generally characterized by limited transfer rights, to full individual or group private ownership.A second type involves redistributing land to reduce disparities and to grant productive assets to landless and land-poor farmers. The first type focuses more on efficiency and sustainability issues, especially when the policies are geared toward granting private rights to communities and special production groups, whereas the second type emphasizes efficiency and equity issues.Legal reforms have generally been state driven and reflect a limited understanding of the dynamics of land rights and markets and the components of land values for alternative land rights.To help fill some of these gaps, this discussion will focus on the benefits and costs associated with different land rights and the conditions under which right holders may demand alternative land rights.U nder any land tenure system, right holders will demand alternative land rights if the benefits associated with the selected alternative land rights are higher or equal to the costs of getting such alternative land rights. Such land values would be reflected by the difference between the benefits, which are equal to the sum of the discounted net present value of increased productivity per hectare (VP) and collateral value per hectare (CV), and the costs, which are the sum of the transaction costs per hectare (TC) and taxes on land per hectare (T) associated with getting alternative land rights. Given this understanding, we offer a valuation framework for different land reform processes.Table 1 illustrates the composition of land values of six types of land reform processes: (1) maintaining customary rights; (2) registering customary land rights; (3) titling land rights; (4) state ownership/redistribution of land rights; (5) subsidized landownership; and (6) market-based land access. For each type of reform, specific land rights have been granted to individuals and groups, with different opportunities and constraints for transferring, selling, and renting lands. Moreover, rights granted within each reform type determine the value of land rights and marketing potential.The importance of customary land tenure systems varies from country to country. In Botswana, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Niger, and Zambia, customary land rights are the dominant tenure system. Under these systems, land values are generally equal to the discounted net present value of current and future productivity per hectare. As such, land productivity is used to determine the terms of land contracts.These land  Land sales are very limited under these systems, especially among members of different groups and communities.When such sales do occur, the value of the sale mainly represents the level of investment made to improve land productivity. Rental markets are dominated by sharecropping arrangements ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent of production. In the case of informal mortgages with local merchants or middlemen, the creditor cultivates the mortgaged field, and the servicing of the loan is equal to the value of the production he obtains. Poor farmers prefer informal mortgages because they can avoid the risks associated with formal financial and land markets.Yet because such rights are outside formal land markets and credit institutions, they limit opportunities for productive exchange and access to credit. In addition, such rights offer very limited opportunities for women to gain access to and control these lands.Registered customary private rights are the dominant land rights in North Africa (mulk/melk) and a few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (such as the Central African Republic, Kenya, Mali, and Niger). Registration need not involve costly cadastral surveys, but can rely on simple, local registration processes to define the boundaries of individual or group-owned lands. It facilitates the recording of all transactions at the local level and reduces the incidence of conflict. Registration also transforms the value of these lands.The value of registered land equals the sum of the discounted net present value of current and future productivity per hectare and the collateral value of the land per hectare. Registration, therefore, enlarges the possibilities for right holders to make land transactions in both formal and informal land markets, as well as giving them easier access to credit in state-managed credit schemes.This approach constitutes an important transitional step from customary systems to titling. In Mali, for example, right holders were only required to register their lands, but purchasers of land under customary systems were required to title purchased lands.This option reduces the high transaction costs associated with titling, especially when the demand for agricultural land is still low. It is critical, however, to make sure that women's rights are taken into consideration during the registration process.Some advocates consider land titles the optimal option for granting tenure security and facilitating poor farmers' access to input and financial markets.Yet links between land titles and tenure security, demand for inputs, investments, and availability of credit have not been well demonstrated in the African context. Even though such rights may have a high market value, especially where high-value commodities are produced, establishing them involves high costs, including the costs of cadastral surveys and formal legal procedures.Also, titling efforts can lead to worsening inequality, as elite farmers are better placed to take advantage of titling efforts and emerging land markets. Furthermore, the extent to which women hold land titles is not known.In Botswana, Swaziland, and Zambia, distorted land policies have favored the emergence of landowning elites and private agribusinesses at the expense of small producers. In Côte d'Ivoire the titling process has resulted in the eviction of many migrant laborers who have worked under rental and sharecropping arrangements for generations. In Tunisia, however, titling was widespread because the government reduced titling fees and promoted irrigation and production of highvalue crops (olives and nut trees).Land redistribution is a popular way to either reduce inequalities in landholdings or grant more productive lands to farmers. Policies to reduce inequality, which involve redistributing lands confiscated from foreign and large landholders, were widely implemented in Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Libya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and other countries. Policies to grant more productive lands to farmers occur in developed agricultural areas after irrigation is introduced. Project beneficiaries receive higher land value but less land than they owned before project development.This was the case in large, community-based irrigation projects along the Senegal River. In both kinds of redistribution, beneficiaries are commonly organized into cooperatives and associations to promote economies of scale in production, but they have very limited possibilities for selling or renting granted land.Besides reducing inequality, the first type of redistributive land reform results in the temporary loss of the collateral value of the land, which becomes state land, and in the removal of land taxes. Under these conditions, right holders generally rely on state-promoted cooperatives, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and parastatal societies to obtain inputs, credit, and other services. Inheritance is permitted, but mechanisms for land transactions are very limited.This system poses a risk that inefficient producers, prohibited from selling or renting out their granted rights, will cling to them for fear of losing their land. Research in Ethiopia has shown, however, that when land sales are prohibited but land rental is regulated, land redistribution can increase efficiency and equity by giving greater land access to women and younger households capable of using these lands productively.The second type of reform maintains inequality because projects apply the same coefficient to all farms, and each farmer receives land according to prior ownership rights. Inequality can even be worsened, as in the case of the Boghé Perimeter in Mauritania, where the irrigation project affected all the land of powerful and wealthy community members, while poor farmers were asked to wait for the extension of the perimeter. Because the extension never took place, poor farmers were transformed into laborers.Agrarian reform issues in Southern African countries are highly politicized because of the difficulty of drawing a line between the legitimate claims of black indigenous people, whose customary rights were preempted, and the equity and efficiency concerns of the many white and elite black Southern Africans who control most of the best lands and agribusinesses. It was generally believed that land redistribution based on confiscation would have detrimental effects on the economies of these countries and that demand-driven land reform involving \"willing sellers\" and \"willing buyers\" would improve equity and enhance the efficiency of the agricultural sector.In Southern Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe experimented with market-based land reforms, but findings suggest that the white population acquired more land between 1996 and 2001 than the disadvantaged black farmers. Such a situation has raised concerns and prompted changes in government approaches to land reform.The reform experience in Zimbabwe illustrates the sensibilities surrounding this issue.The Zimbabwean government attempted to move back to confiscation to satisfy the social demand for redistribution, but the outrage of the international community indicates the magnitude of the difficulties facing most Southern African governments.At present, given the poverty of beneficiaries and high indebtedness of African governments, marketbased reforms will face many challenges and lead to further inequalities in landownership.Under this option, a variant of the market-based reform option, governments subsidize reform by paying part of the cost of purchasing land. In postapartheid South Africa, for example, the World Bank supported a land acquisition scheme whereby the government granted about R16,000 as subsidies to qualifying households. This reform targeted poor people and women more successfully than the reforms in Zimbabwe, but its pace was slow.Although this option can facilitate landownership for poor people and women, it also has drawbacks.The higher the share of the state contribution, the greater is the incentive for beneficiaries to sell their lands. Indeed, by selling their land in the market, beneficiaries make a profit equal to or greater than the state contribution. Since this option can result in further land concentration and large disparities among the black population, it must be accompanied by regulations ensuring that beneficiaries do not just collect the rent associated with land values and jeopardize the whole purpose of reform.T here is no doubt about the need to reform cus- tomary rights to alleviate the multiple constraints farmers face in accessing input and credit markets. In response,African countries have enacted plenty of laws and implemented a wealth of land reform processes.Yet many of these laws and reform processes are inappropriate, especially the new policy agenda that attempts to generalize land titling and market mechanisms while bypassing other land rights and evolving market processes. It is critical to account for the capabilities and possibilities of poor households, to target land rights and the markets under which these rights oper-ate, and to set up a process linking all these rights and markets. Moreover, it is essential to recognize the administrative and legal processes associated with different approaches and the capacity of governments to support those processes.One can improve the efficiency of resource allocation and meet the demand for inputs and credit by simply registering customary rights. Once these rights are registered, they can more easily be traded between community members and even outsiders.This reform approach involves very low transaction costs because it relies heavily on existing local institutions. Complementary investments consist mainly of setting up a simple recording system that can be used later to develop a cadastre.Most land rights established by land redistribution programs fall outside formal land markets and constrain farmers' capacity to sell their lands and invest in other productive areas.Two pathways may improve the system.The first option is to maintain the system but allow these rights to evolve into private property. In Morocco, agrarian reform lands evolved into full private property once holders paid the costs of their field.The second option is to create cooperatives or associations whose members own shares of all the resources. Members who want to quit farming can sell their shares to the cooperative or to farmers who wish to join the cooperative.These approaches would avoid maintaining inefficient farmers and would provide poor farmers with capital to invest in other activities.High land values have been the main constraint to balancing equity and legitimacy concerns in market-based agrarian reforms.The main differences between the land under customary rights and farms operated by white and black elites are land titles and investments made to improve the land. Consequently, to reduce the overvaluation of land, a clear distinction must be made between improved and unimproved land. On improved land, land prices will include productivity and collateral values, whereas on unimproved land, prices will consist mainly of collateral values. In unimproved areas devoted to grazing or forests, however, land value could be cal-Photo credits: Cover photo © 2005 IFPRI/Carole Douglis culated using the value of the feed contribution or timber productivity and its collateral value. Such an approach would allow landowners to recover the full value of their investments on improved lands and give many poor farmers access to unimproved lands at a cheaper price. Moreover, it would reduce Southern African governments' cost burdens for acquiring these lands for redistribution.This valuation approach could also be applied in dry areas, which have low cropping potential, but the redistribution process for dry lands in particular must favor group ownership and be accompanied by an insurance scheme that would service group loans during drought or bad seasons.This would prevent groups from risking loss of their land.A frica has been the theater of various land reform experiences since the colonial period, and it is crucial to capitalize on the lessons of these reforms to develop policy guidelines that will help countries establish appropriate legal and institutional frameworks. Land resources managed under customary tenure must evolve toward titling in a stepwise process, transiting through the registration of customary rights. Here the role of local institutions, both customary and decentralized, is critical.The recent trends toward recognizing and revalorizing customary land rights suggest that many African governments are breaking away from 40 years of groping for policies to reform land rights, but the process must be well monitored to avoid preempting women and other groups, like pastoralists, from their rights over the resources. In Southern Africa, where the majority of land resources are in the hands of white farmers and agribusinesses, using the proposed valuation framework will help prevent overpricing and promote more access to land for poor farmers. Nonetheless, in the case both of customary land rights and of unequal land rights, it is important to detangle the components of land values that will help determine the demand for alternative land rights and provide guidance in formulating land reform policies. Research must focus on understanding the dynamics of land values in the different markets for land rights and devise ways to improve the marketability of customary rights through simple processes that also increase the demand for agricultural land and effectively contribute to the reform of land rights.","tokenCount":"2445","images":["1476889261_1_1.png","1476889261_1_2.png","1476889261_1_3.png","1476889261_6_1.png"],"tables":["1476889261_1_1.json","1476889261_2_1.json","1476889261_3_1.json","1476889261_4_1.json","1476889261_5_1.json","1476889261_6_1.json"]}

data/part_2/4388414785.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"75be03d7eb6ab784a7a775de28feba14","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/b141d9a8-0178-4b52-a8ca-80e1c842c447/retrieve","description":"The urgency of India’s food system transformation is more pronounced than ever. Despite high economic growth and rising per capita incomes, approximately 194 million people in India remain undernourished and there is a high prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies, particularly among women and children under 5 years. Agri-food systems in India employ more than 50% of the workforce and engage nearly 82% of smallholder farmers. Therefore, ensuring inclusive growth and reduced poverty necessitates new and enhanced livelihood and employment opportunities in the agri-food sector. We use an integrated suite of models to create macro policy scenarios for India until 2050. These scenarios are centered around equitable livelihoods by ensuring minimum wages for agricultural labor, and inclusive development through reduction in income inequalities and wage gaps. Our results suggest that multiple livelihood-enhancing measures, such as minimum wages and capital investments, when combined, have a weakening effect on inclusion outcomes. Employment levels significantly decline, affecting 19 million people. This has higher negative effects on women whose agricultural employment has been found to reduce disproportionately with increased capital investments. However, livelihoods improve from higher wages and lower economic costs of production. Transformative actions encouraging agricultural labor engagements can potentially increase the share of labor requirements to 73.5% by 2050, compared to 67% in the baseline, thereby enhancing employment opportunities for nine million individuals. Our integrated Food Systems Development Pathway, which integrates multidimensional policy measures, reports strong trade-offs with the goals of inclusion as the largest decline in employment is observed in this scenario following an increase in wages and labor productivity","id":"830194856"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"5a71e92f-326f-4f1a-9267-ef7ad7b16543","pagecount":"1","content":"A Healthy, Inclusive, and Sustainable Food Systems Approach for IndiaVartika Singh 1,2,3,4 , Prantika Das 1 , Chandan Jha 1 , Ranjan Kumar Ghosh 1 , Miodrag Stevanovic´4, Hermann Lotze-Campen 2,4 , Alexander Popp 4 Combining minimum wages and capital investments have a weakening effect on inclusion outcomes.Employment levels significantly decline, affecting 19 million people.This has higher negative effects on women whose agricultural employment has been found to be reduced disproportionately with increased capital investments.Liberal trade policies result in lower agricultural employment, but higher wages compared to 2020Combining all FSMs improves 12 out of 14 indicators.Transformative actions encouraging agricultural labor engagements can potentially increase the share of labor requirement to 73.5% by 2050, compared to 67% in the baseline, thereby enhancing employment opportunities for 9 million individuals.Issues like declining agriculture employment may need policy support from outside food system. India's agrifood system grapples with challenges such as persistent malnutrition, environmental degradation, resource strain, and social disparities.Transitioning to sustainable food systems necessitates cohesive bundling of sustainable food and land use management measures, inclusive changes and identifying strategic entry points for transformation.","tokenCount":"180","images":["830194856_1_1.png","830194856_1_2.png","830194856_1_3.png","830194856_1_4.png","830194856_1_5.png","830194856_1_6.png"],"tables":["830194856_1_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"0a058ecd161dee06b0e67cf8dce59c45","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/58cdd64b-ce98-404c-87d8-6324ca05114d/retrieve","description":"As part of the seminar held by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) under the title of \" Fertilizer policy in Egypt and options for improvements\".","id":"-1207200654"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"678b247d-9474-4ac6-83ac-fdebde6518d8","pagecount":"19","content":" Mineral fertilizers are of great importance for food production. Accordingly, the world demand for mineral fertilizers has increased to meet the increased demand for agricultural production  Mineral fertilizers are produced from soil ores that may contain high concentrations of heavy metals  Consequently, the addition of large amounts of mineral fertilizers to the soil results in the accumulation of heavy metals","tokenCount":"63","images":["-1207200654_1_1.png","-1207200654_5_1.png","-1207200654_8_1.png","-1207200654_8_2.png","-1207200654_9_1.png","-1207200654_9_2.png","-1207200654_10_1.png","-1207200654_11_1.png","-1207200654_12_1.png","-1207200654_13_1.png","-1207200654_14_1.png","-1207200654_15_1.png","-1207200654_16_1.png","-1207200654_17_1.png","-1207200654_19_1.png"],"tables":["-1207200654_1_1.json","-1207200654_2_1.json","-1207200654_3_1.json","-1207200654_4_1.json","-1207200654_5_1.json","-1207200654_6_1.json","-1207200654_7_1.json","-1207200654_8_1.json","-1207200654_9_1.json","-1207200654_10_1.json","-1207200654_11_1.json","-1207200654_12_1.json","-1207200654_13_1.json","-1207200654_14_1.json","-1207200654_15_1.json","-1207200654_16_1.json","-1207200654_17_1.json","-1207200654_18_1.json","-1207200654_19_1.json"]}

data/part_2/4589750877.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"a54b5d8537d9bfd040e601ab5d76a8b0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/bdffcb36-0a8b-4f85-bbe6-4a8f87b8805c/retrieve","description":"In contrast to a perception that ex situ collections of germplasm are rarely used, this empirical case study reveals large quantities of germplasm samples distributed by the U.S. National Germplasm System to many types of scientific institutions located in numerous countries around the world. Distributions favor developing countries in several ways including the numbers of samples shipped, utilization rates in crop breeding programs, and the secondary benefits brought about through sharing this germplasm with other scientists. Expected future demand is also greater among scientists in developing countries. These findings underscore the importance to global science and technology of retaining such resources in the public domain.","id":"-1619758814"},"keywords":["developing countries","crop genetic resources","plant breeding","germplasm collection"],"sieverID":"b2f89456-6548-499e-aae1-31adf2f23a21","pagecount":"44","content":"In contrast to a perception that ex situ collections of germplasm are rarely used, this empirical case study reveals large quantities of germplasm samples distributed by the U.S. National Germplasm System to many types of scientific institutions located in numerous countries around the world. Distributions favor developing countries in several ways including the numbers of samples shipped, utilization rates in crop breeding programs, and the secondary benefits brought about through sharing this germplasm with other scientists. Expected future demand is also greater among scientists in developing countries. These findings underscore the importance to global science and technology of retaining such resources in the public domain.to pests, quality, or other desirable traits in modern varieties have resulted from the crossing by professional breeders of diverse parental material. Both farmers who consume their crop output and professional plant breeders depend on crop genetic resources; in turn, farmers' selection efforts and the achievements of modern plant breeders have generated other genetic resources.Plant breeding issues are not resolved once and for all--they persist because the problems of crop production change. Pests, pathogens and climates evolve and change, so that breeders continually need new genetic resources from outside the stocks they work with on a routine basis (Duvick 1986). The US Department of Agriculture estimated that new varieties are resistant to biological stresses for an average of five years, while it generally takes 8-11 years to breed new varieties (USDA 1990). Resource constraints and discontinuities in research programs mean that the time to release a new variety can be even longer in the developing world. In disease hotspots such as those for the rusts of wheat in the Asian subcontinent or northern Mexico, virulent new strains may overcome genetic resistance based on single genes in only 2-3 years unless more complex mechanisms of resistance are found (Dubin and Torres 1981;Nagarajan and Joshi 1985).Uncertainty about the resources that will actually be needed for improving future agricultural production motivates genetic resource managers, particularly those in the public sector, to collect and accumulate a broad range of germplasm in ex situ collections. Funds are limited for genetic resource management, however. Duvick (1995: p. 36) stated, \"For thirty years and more, germplasm banks have been in operation… Without exception, and differing only in degree, the collections have been imperiled from the day of their assembly.\" The economic justification for investing in collections of crop genetic resources has remained a subject of controversy. The perception remains that germplasm collections are underutilized and are of questionable economic value (Wright 1997;Simpson and Sedjo 1998).To address this perception, we offer a summary of how one national genebank is used internationally, based on quantitative data and a study of germplasm requestors. Data reveal large numbers of germplasm samples distributed by the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System to many types of institutions locate* in numerous countries around the world. Moreover, rates of utilization are likely underestimated given the long-term nature of scientific research.Germplasm distributions favor developing countries in several ways. These findings raise questions about previous assumptions concerning the demand for such resources, and may have relevance for ongoing negotiations of international agreements, such as the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (U. S. NPGS) provides an interesting point of departure for the study of germplasm collections because of its size, the sheer volume of material it distributes, and the documentation maintained by curators. Many national collections, especially those found in the developing world, do not possess the resources to digitize information regarding their activities. Investments would need to be made to enable them to track requests and distributions of their materials, but when funding is severely curtailed as it is for many collections, documentation systems are not a priority. In terms of size, U. S. NPGS holdings exceed 450,000 accessions 5 of comprised of 10,000 species of the 85 most commonly 4 grown crops, making it the largest national genebank in the world. U. S. NPGS's materials are not held in one location; rather the system consists of a number of publicly funded collections located across the country as well as centralized facilities for coordination, quarantine, and longterm seed storage. Collections include seed and genetic stocks, as well as repositories of clonal germplasm and plant introduction stations.The U. S. NPGS has a clear mandate to serve the needs of national scientists, and for the ten major crops we study here (barley, bean, cotton, maize, potato, rice, sorghum, soybean, squash, wheat), about three-quarters of the 621,238 samples shipped over the past decade were destined for U.S. requestors. Nevertheless, the collection is of global importance, as indicated by the amount of germplasm it distributes internationally. For these ten crops only, during the past decade the U. S. NPGS distributed 162,673 germplasm samples to scientists in 242 countries outside the U.S. All available germplasm from the U. S. NPGS is provided to anyone free of charge, upon request, though special permission is required to fill germplasm requests from countries with which the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations.A comparison with the volume of distributions from other genebanks is illustrative of the international role of U.S. NPGS. All economically important crops have gene bank collections, and there are hundreds of such collections worldwide, with roughly 6 million accessions for all crops (FAO 1998). The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) research centers hold substantial proportions of the accessions included in these collections. One of these centers, the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement, distributed 20,540 samples of maize and 39,770 samples of wheat to from 1987 to 1998, compared with larger numbers (30,493 for maize and 154,962 for wheat) by the U.S. NPGS over a similar time period (1990 to 1999). National collections in other richer countries provide another contrast. Two germplasm systems, the Nordic collection (representing the Scandinavian countries) and the Netherlands collection, have provided data that enables a comparison with U. S. NPGS. Over the same 1990-1999 period, the total of germplasm samples for all crops distributed to other countries by the Nordic collection was only 15,477, and for the Netherlands, 25,310. 6 These numbers represent but a fraction of total U.S. NPGS distributions to other countries during the same period, including only the 10 crops we have considered. Based on data reported by Shands and Stoner (1997), we estimate that the 10 crops account for slightly more than half the total distributions of all plant germplasm by U. S. NPGS over the past decade.The next section describes data sources used. Findings are reported in terms of three questions motivating the study, followed by estimates of actual use rates. Conclusions and implications are discussed in the final section.Data reported here are drawn from two sources. The first is data on germplasm distributed by U. S. NPGS. The U.S. National Plant Germplasm Resources Laboratory, which coordinates documentation for the system through Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) and coordinates the plant exploration program, provided quantitative information about samples distributed from 1990 to 1999 for the 10 crops that we selected for study. The second source of information was original data that we collected directly from requestors of U. S. NPGS germplasm. In order to implement this study, the U.S. National Germplasm Resources 6 Laboratory also supplied the names of all individuals who requested germplasm from 1995 to 1999 for the 10 crops in question.Because examining users of the entire U. S. NPGS collection of 85 crops was not possible with the resources available to us, we focused on 10 crops. Five crops were selected based on their importance in world production: wheat, rice, soybeans (as a leading oil seed), maize (as the leading coarse grain) and barley (USDA, FAS 2001). Cotton and sorghum are also leading crops in the US, in terms of production volume, hence their inclusion. Potato, beans and squash were also included, not only because of their economic importance, but because they are indigenous to the Americas (as are maize and upland cotton).To understand the nature of the demand for crop genetic resources conserved in gene banks, we need first to answer the fundamental questions of: 1) who uses the genebanks; 2) what kind of germplasm is used; and 3) why users want germplasm (for what purpose and in search of which plant characteristics) (Wright 1977). We developed a study questionnaire around these questions.Each requestor was sent a letter explaining the study and a form that asked for information about the recipient's experiences with U. S. NPGS. The format by which responding users submitted information was intentionally brief, to ease response time and improve the response rate. The questionnaire was sent to international requestors for the first time in mid-2000. Users who did not respond to the first request were mailed a second request.Lists of respondents have remained confidential and are separated from data files.A total of 1063 individuals were included on the list of international requestors, though several names appeared more than once with different crops. Of these, 380 (36 percent) provided usable information. Response rates ranged from 23 to 45 percent by crop, with the lowest response rate in potato and the highest in wheat. For cotton, rice, sorghum and squash the number of responses was small for purposes of statistical analysis. The response rate was nearly twice as high in developed and transitional economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as in developing countries, likely reflecting mail service difficulties.Most of the international respondents had requested more than one seed sample. Since respondents reported the number of germplasm samples they received, we can analyze the information either by respondent or on the basis of germplasm samples. Both approaches are employed in this paper, depending on which is more appropriate for the analysis.U. S. NPGS in-house distribution data provide a clear picture of who uses public germplasm in the international community. The geographical pattern of distributions to other countries for the 10 crops is shown in Figure 1.  According to U. S. NPGS data, about a third of all samples were destined for countries in the Europe region, followed closely by other countries in the Americas (30%). Asia was the next largest regional recipient (23%), while the continent of Africa received only 13% of samples shipped. Geographical patterns reflect a number of factors, including the production zones of the crops in question, and the capacity of local scientists to utilize materials, which is in turn conditioned by their funding and the technologies available to them.When classified by development status, developing countries as a group were distributed more germplasm (46%) than either developed countries or the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Figure 2). Source: Calculated from data provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Germplasm Resources Laboratory. Includes all germplasm samples distributed internationally for barley, beans, cotton, maize, potato, rice, sorghum, squash, soybean, and wheat.Together, developing and transitional countries received 63 percent of all germplasm samples sent to other countries during the past decade, or over 100,000 samples. Thus, internationally, this large national genebank is more likely to distribute public germplasm to recipients working in less technologically favorable conditions.The distribution data also reveals some unexpected patterns with respect to the institutional affiliation of recipients (Table 1). First, as expected, the vast majority (76%) of germplasm samples sent outside the U.S. were distributed to non-commercial organizations.Second, the U.S. national collections clearly supply more samples to public institutions concerned with crop breeding and research than to those dealing with conservation. Genebanks, especially international agricultural research centers, were less important recipients than crop improvement and research programs. Generally, private breeders are thought to rely primarily on their own collections (Mann 1997;Wright 1997), and their use of gene banks is believed to be limited-though in his survey of U.S. breeders, Duvick (1984) found that private breeders make use of all germplasm sources. Indeed, only about 5 percent of the 167, 673 samples U. S. NPGS sent abroad in the past decade were shipped to commercial requestors.Surprisingly, however, commercial companies receiving samples in other countries were twice as likely to be located in developing countries as in developed countries (Figure 3). Unaffiliated individuals were few, and most were found among the developed country recipients. Source: Calculated from data provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, USDA. Includes all germplasm samples distributed for barley, beans, cotton,maize, potato, rice, sorghum, squash, soybean, and wheat.Among U. S. NPGS users who participated in the study, a similar proportion were affiliated with governments, universities, or publicly-funded research and development institutions (70%). A larger proportion of respondents (15%) worked for private seed, chemical or biotechnology companies or for privately-funded research organizations than is represented in the data on total distributions for the decade. Since the average size of request was significantly greater for publicly-funded than for private-funded institutions (Table 2), however, the proportional balance in terms of numbers of germplasm samples is similar between the two data sources. Like other gene banks, the U. S. NPGS supplies various types of germplasm to requestors.Materials are categorized as: 1) elite or modern, 2) landraces, 3) wild and weedy relatives, and 4) genetic stocks. 7 The first category includes all materials improved by professional plant breeders. This material can be broken into two categories, the first being \"cultivars\", which includes recently developed cultivars, and \"obsolete\" cultivars that are no longer grown. The second kind of elite modern germplasm is advanced breeding material, which includes the advanced lines that breeders combine to produce new cultivars (sometimes referred to as \"breeding materials\"). Landraces, or traditional varieties, are varieties of crops that were improved by farmers over many generations without the use of modern breeding techniques.Wild or weedy relatives are plants that share a common ancestry with a crop species but have not been domesticated. Germplasm collections may also include \"genetic stocks.\" Genetic stocks 7 Another category of germplasm is \"unknown.\" Such undefined germplasm samples were not included in these calculations.are mutants or other germplasm with chromosomal abnormalities that may be used by plant breeders for specific purposes.Different germplasm types serve different breeding objectives. Landraces and wild relatives are often used for resistance traits, and generally require extensive efforts before their genes are usable in a final variety. An earlier survey of international users of wheat germplasm suggested that only a minor percentage of materials used in crossing were landraces or wild relatives, and these were more likely to be us ed in search of resistance traits than for yield potential. Wheat breeders working in developing countries also used them in breeding for grain quality more often than those working in developed countries (Rejesus et al. 1996). Demand for advanced breeding material implies an active breeding program. Genetic stocks are often used for highly sophisticated breeding, and also for basic research. While the use of cultivars may suggest that instead of breeding, researchers are \"fishing for useful final varieties\", cultivars may also serve breeders when they are looking for specific traits. Drawing conclusions from requests for cultivars is therefore difficult.Roughly half of all respondents to the international study requested cultivars, and an equal number requested landraces or wild relatives-suggesting an unexpected demand for exotic materials. Genetic stocks were requested by slightly more than 27 percent of respondents, while advanced materials were requested by about 21 percent of all respondents (Table 3). 88 Because respondents could request more than one type of germplasm, numbers sum to more than 100 percent. Demand for germplasm types also depends on the breeding needs for the crop in question. Landraces and wild relatives were most attractive to respondents working with potatoes, a crop with an extremely narrow genetic base, and for which breeders need to broaden the germplasm used to realize any significant improvements (Haynes 2001). Though soybean also has a narrow genetic base in most countries except China, Japan, and Korea, cultivars were more likely to be demanded for this crop than for others.Genetic stocks were most likely to have been requested by respondents asking for maize accessions, and dominated maize requests relative to other types of materials. The greater level of basic research concerned with maize, combined with features of maize seed industry structure, may help to explain the greater demand for genetic stocks by maize researchers relative to other germplasm types and compared to scientists working with other crops. Virtually all of the maize area in the developed world is planted to hybrid seed that is bred, multiplied and sold by private companies (Echeverria 1991). The same is true in developing countries where maize is commercially grown (Lopez-Pereira and Filippello 1994), though maize seed industries there are highly variable in organization and performance (Morris 1998). In many cases, basic research in maize is conducted by public institutions rather than by private firms. Since private firms dominate maize seed research, an institution like U.S. NPGS may represent the primary source of materials for publicly-employed scientists in other countries who are conducting basic research. Another factor explaining the relative low percentages of requests for cultivars, landraces and wild relatives in maize cultivars is the difficulty of combining tropical and temperate germplasm because of their dramatically different photoperiodic responses (Goodman 1995). A comprehensive survey conducted in 1983 on the use of exotic germplasm in commercial maize revealed that less than 1% of the U.S. germplasm base consisted of exotic germplasm (Goodman 1985). At the same time, the vast majority of the improved maize materials developed for use in the United States, Western Europe, and northern China are of little direct use to maize farmers in developing countries (Morris 1998: 15). Though the findings in It is also possible that when landraces are used by developing country scientists in breeding for resistance or grain quality, they are more likely to look first among the local landraces that are still grown by their country's farmers, when these are available to them, than to distant gene bank collections.c) Why is germplasm requested?Breeders are always seeking an improvement on the status quo. They look for germplasm with certain characteristics, such as better resistance to a pest, or higher yield. Study respondents reported four categories of intended use for germplasm they requested: trait evaluation, breeding or pre-breeding, basic research, and adding to collections. Since samples could be intended for multiple purposes, percentages across purposes may total to more than one hundred.Samples were most likely to be intended for trait evaluation (55% of samples).Evaluation for specific traits indicates an active breeding program in which scientist do not simply test existing varieties, but work to develop new varieties. Providing material internationally for basic research (36% of samples) also appears to be an important function of the U. S. NPGS, though that role generally receives little attention. Twenty-five percent of samples were to be added to collections, and 23 percent were for breeding and prebreeding.Combined, breeding/prebreeding and evaluation for traits (essentially a subset of breeding/prebreeding) account for 78 percent of the intended use of samples. This reiterates the idea that genebanks supply most of germplasm samples to institutions concerned with breeding, followed by research institutions, and then other germplasm collections.Respondents in developed, developing, and transitional economies varied somewhat in how they intended to use germplasm. Consistent with our other findings, on average, respondents in developed countries intended a higher proportion of their shipments to be used in basic research, reflecting, perhaps, their technological advantages. Respondents in transitional economies allocated a higher percentage to collections.The nature of the traits sought provides further insight into scientists' demand for germplasm held in genebanks. International respondents were asked to classify the traits they sought into five categories: tolerance to abiotic stresses, tolerance or resistance to biotic stresses, yield, quality or other. Tolerance to abiotic stress includes drought tolerance, salinity tolerance, and temperature tolerance. Biotic stresses are usually pests, including diseases, which attack plants. Yield, in the pure sense, means an increase in a plants productive capacity, assuming ideal growing conditions. Quality generally means some characteristic of the final agricultural product, suc h as the gluten content of wheat, or the oil content of maize.Respondents generally intended to use a higher proportion of samples they requested for biotic resistance or tolerance than for other traits, regardless of the improvement status of the material (Table 5). Since samples may be used to search for more than one trait, totals may exceed one hundred percent for each germplasm type. Thirty-seven percent of germplasm samples were used to search for resistance or tolerances of biotic stresses. This finding was expected, since resistance to pests, including diseases, is thought to be a primary motivation for breeding (Duvick 1992). Quality traits were the desired characteristic in 19 percent of the germplasm. Abiotic resistance was sought for about 14 percent of the germplasm, respectively. A lower proportion of germplasm samples (13 percent) was intended for advancing yield potential. Because many increases in on-farm yield actually come from improvements in resistance, the relatively lower percentage of samples used to seeking yield advances is not surprising. The average percent of requestors intended to use samples for specific \"other uses\" was also relatively high. When explanations for other uses were examined, most fell into the category of basic research, such as genomics.The average percent of samples intended for yield or quality advances varied significantly according to the sample germplasm type. On average, respondents intended to use advanced breeding materials for yield potential about twice as frequently as landraces or wild relatives. In addition to advanced materials, a higher percentage of landraces than wild relatives were requested in pursuit of quality traits. Genetic stocks seem to have been intended primarily for the \"other\" traits of interest; particularly those connected to basic research.In assessing the use of U. S. NPGS germplasm, we note that the long-term nature of plant breeding and agricultural research, combined with the reproducible nature of seed, implies that utilization rates calculated over a short period of time underestimate actual use patterns in both temporal and spatial terms. That is, materials may be useful much later in a breeding cycle than when they are first received, and they may be incorporated into research multiple times by different users.Even so, respondents' perceptions about the usefulness of the samples that they received are a good indicator of the actual utilization of U. S. NPGS germplasm samples in international breeding programs. Within the brief 5-year period covered by the respondents, 11 percent of germplasm accessions had already been incorporated into a breeding program (Table 6). Given the long time period required to breed a new variety, it is not surprising that much of the material is still being evaluated, and it is encouraging that 43 percent of the samples were deemed worthy of further investigation. Respondents considered 19 percent of the samples useful in other ways, leaving only 28 percent of samples not useful at all. Overall, an estimated 72 percent of materials sent from U. S. NPGS to other countries has already been used in breeding, considered worthy of further assessment, or found otherwise useful. If we apply the percentages obtained from study responses to the total numbers of germplasm samples distributed from 1995 to 1999, we generate an estimate of the actual numbers of germplasm samples used during that period for the ten crops considered. Our findings suggest that, in other countries alone, over 18,500 germplasm samples from U. S. NPGS have already been used in breeding and in other ways, while another 27,000 are still under evaluation. This is an impressive finding. Of course, it is important to remember that users in developed countries made up a smaller percentage of the study respondents than they did of the total recipients, and researche rs working in the private sector were more heavily represented in the study than in the total distributions data. However, we have no indication of whether this difference in representation would bias findings, and the overall response rate was good for mailed questionnaires.Developing country respondents reported that 18 percent of the germplasm samples they received were already put to use in breeding programs -about three times the percentage reported by respondents in developed and transitional economies (Table 6). In fact, scientists working in developing countries found 80 percent of the samples useful or worthy of further study. Those working in transitional countries found half their samples \"not useful\"; at least twice the percentage of samples characterized as such by developing and developed countries.Larger numbers of germplasm samples are \"useful in other ways\" for developed country recipients. While the exact use of such germplasm is unclear, it may reflect the higher levels of the basic research associated with developed economies.Germplasm can be distributed by the original recipient to additional users, generating secondary benefits. Respondents shared about 20 percent of all germplasm samples with other scientists at their own institution and 10 percent with those in other institutions. These secondary transfers are of a larger magnitude for developing country respondents than for respondents in developed and transitional economies (Table 7). Again, applying the findings from the user study to the total number of samples distributed, our estimates suggest that secondary transfers may represent an additional utilization of as many as 17,000 samples.One factor affecting the usefulness of germplasm is the presence of data. Accessions may have data that can generate value by speeding the research discovery process. For all 10 crops, respondents reported that 28 percent of samples had useful data for the trait of interest and 18 percent had useful data for other purposes (Table 8). The percentage of samples with useful data for the trait of interest was slightly higher among developing country respondents (31 percent). The total samples with useful data for the trait of interest was therefore substantially larger for developing country recipients compared with developed country recipients. Developed country respondents, on the other hand, found that a greater percentage of samples had useful data for other purposes, which would include basic research.International respondents' expectations regarding utilization of U. S. NPGS germplasm in the next decade provided some indication of future demand for public germplasm. There were no significant differences by crop or institution type in the percentages expecting to increase, decrease, or maintain their utilization. Again, however, there were statistically significant differences by the development status of the requestor's country. A majority of respondents in developing countries expected to increase their requests from U. S. NPGS in the next decade, and they were more likely to respond positively than those from either developed or transitional economies (Figure 4). Respondents were given the opportunity to state any additional perceptions about the benefits and problems of the U. S. NPGS. While positive statements about the benefits of the U.S. NPGS outweighed comments about problems by approximately 3 to 1 (Table 9), some important limitations were expressed.9  The most common problem, by far, was inadequate or incomplete information about germplasm samples, accounting for 38 percent of all problems cited. Still, positive comments about data/information as a benefit slightly outweighed comments about data/information as a problem.Interestingly, the second most commonly mentioned problem was regulations that affect germplasm exchange. Quarantine restrictions, particularly in the European Union, seemed to cause concern among some of these respondents. This may account, at least in part, for the fact that respondents in developed countries, on average, expected their use of U. S. NPGS germplasm to decline in the next decade. Another U. S. NPGS-specific problem was seed quality concerns, e.g. seeds that were not viable, or which were contaminated. This was the third most frequently cited problem. Insufficient funding for maintaining seed viability, as well as inadequate resources for data assessing the U. S. NPGS accessions was reported by a GAO study (1997). Finally, the fourth-ranking problem was inadequate funding/resources, a factor, like regulation, outside the control of the U. S. NPGS, but one that may lay at the root of data and seed viability problems.The study findings demonstrate that U. S. NPGS plays an important role in providing public germplasm to developing countries. The total number of samples distributed from 1990 to 1999 amo ng the 10 crops we studied favors developing countries as a group relative to either the transitional economies of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe or developed economies. At least in terms of the relative scarcity of technologies and small sizes of public research budgets in developing countries (as compared to developed countries), it is likely that the relative marginal economic value of these resources to these countries is also higher.In their earlier study, Shands and Stoner (1997) suggested that requests from nonindustrialized countries were constrained, in part, by the lack of adaptation of U. S. NPGS germplasm to certain environments, and in part by the lack of capacity and support in many of these countries for crop improvement programs. Their first conclusion is drawn from their own examination of the geographical pattern of germplasm distributions. The data presented here are consistent with their second conclusion, to some extent. Respondents from developing countries intended to use a lower average proportion of the materials received for basic research than did scientists in developed countries, while more were requested for breeding purposes, trait evaluation, and adding to collections in the developing world. However, the higher percentage of respondents from developing countries requesting advanced materials suggests active breeding programs.Furthermore, utilization rates in breeding, as reported by respondents during the 1995-1999 period, are much higher among developing country than among developed country respondents. Larger numbers of germplasm samples are still being evaluated, while fewer samples have been shown to be \"useful in other ways.\" Developing country respondents tended to share materials more often with other researchers in their own institution and elsewhere.Finally, respondents from developing countries expect to increase their use of U. S. NPGS over the next decade, while those in developed countries were less optimistic (again, perhaps due to restrictions on germplasm exchange). Our findings indicate developing countries' reliance on the U. S. NPGS is greater than that of developed countries, and that their benefits may exceed those of other countries, at least insofar as direct utilization in breeding programs is concerned.A second major conclusion concerns the meaning of the term \"use.\" In contrast to the perception that ex situ collections of crop genetic resources are rarely used, our study suggests that national genebanks such as the U. S. NPGS generate multiple, global benefits to users.First, the numbers of germplasm samples distributed are large-and we have accounted for only 10 crops, or approximately half of total distributions over a ten-year period only. The volume of transfers to other countries compares favorably with transfers by other national collections in developed countries and those held at international agricultural research centers.Multiple benefits are suggested by the extent of utilization by respondents, the breadth of materials they requested, and the range of institutions served. With respect to utilization, respondents stated that 11 percent of the samples received in other countries during the last five years have already been incorporated into breeding programs, while another 43 percent are still being evaluated and 19 percent have been useful in other ways. In addition to the germplasm itself, accompanying data also had benefits in use either for the trait of interest or some \"other purpose.\" In terms of materials, though almost half the respondents requested cultivars, nearly as many respondents requested land races, demonstrating a demand for exotic germplasm.Genetic stocks and advanced materials were also requested by a substantial proportion of respondents, indicating good demand for these types of germplasm that is likely to derive from fairly sophisticated breeding/research programs. This national gene bank also serves a variety of institutions, of which the majority are publicly funded research organizatio ns, though private companies are also represented. The findings presented here demonstrate in simple, unequivocal terms the magnitude and breadth of the benefits generated by the U. S. NPGS collection.Our third and final conclusion is that the benefits this national genebank likely generates for developing countries should not be underestimated in the current negotiations over future access to publicly-held crop genetic resources. According to respondents, regulations concerning seed exchange are a primary external problem the U. S. NPGS faces. While the problems associated with inadequate resources are easily perceived, the role of germplasm exchange regulations is subtler. However, like funding constraints, regulations affect the operations of the collections in very fundamental ways. Many developing countries are considered \"germplasm rich\", that is they include or are near centers of domestication. In the past, these countries often supplied genetic resources free of charge, particularly to \"germplasm deficient\" developed countries where they were used to create modern varieties sold commercially. Such genetic resources included landraces that resulted from generations of effort from farmers who selected and conserved germplasm. Both the Undertaking and the Convention have raised hopes that countries with germplasm needed by 10 In addition to the Undertaking and the Convention, we wish to note the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) of 1986. While discussion of it is beyond the scope of this paper, one important component of the GATT is settlement of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. The GATT creates minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property rights over commercially developed seed and plant varieties, and through that, has moved closer to more universal recognition of plant breeders' rights.breeders could establish \"farmers' rights\" to much of this germplasm (Cooper 1993). This would allow these countries to collect the some of the benefits arising from such farmer-led efforts, as well as benefits from other genetic resources held.The implications of our research for such agreements are complex. Our results suggest a healthy demand for all types of germplasm. Countries with genetic resources useful for agriculture may see this as reason to hope that their resources could be marketed and financial returns received. However, because U. S. NPGS provides germplasm free of cost, demand for its germplasm does not necessarily indicate a \"willingness to pay\" for similar resources. Also, because much of the demand came from developing countries, users of agricultural germplasm may not have the financial resources to pay prices high enough to generate substantial returns for resource holders. \"Free\" germplasm from places such as U. S. NPGS and international genebanks would likely be a desirable substitute for marketed germplasm. These genebanks themselves can be seen as potential buyers of unique germplasm not already in their collections.However, because genebanks throughout the world face serious budget constraints, as stated earlier, it is doubtful that they would be able to produce significant funds for such acquisitions.Such financial constraints have also impeded the collection of funds through the public sector as part of the process to compensate fa rmers' rights. Thus, we conclude that national genebanks probably will not be good sources for compensation funds, and efforts to collect such funds may want to focus on other potential sources.The clearest conclusion suggested by this study is that, tho ugh maintaining public access to the resources housed in the U. S. NPGS serves its national scientists, the international scientific community also benefits greatly. The role played by this bank is complementary to that of the international collections in magnitude and direction, offsetting the view that developed countries continue to benefit disproportionately from the utilization of genetic resources that originated within the national boundaries of today's developing countries.","tokenCount":"5875","images":[],"tables":["-1619758814_1_1.json","-1619758814_2_1.json","-1619758814_3_1.json","-1619758814_4_1.json","-1619758814_5_1.json","-1619758814_6_1.json","-1619758814_7_1.json","-1619758814_8_1.json","-1619758814_9_1.json","-1619758814_10_1.json","-1619758814_11_1.json","-1619758814_12_1.json","-1619758814_13_1.json","-1619758814_14_1.json","-1619758814_15_1.json","-1619758814_16_1.json","-1619758814_17_1.json","-1619758814_18_1.json","-1619758814_19_1.json","-1619758814_20_1.json","-1619758814_21_1.json","-1619758814_22_1.json","-1619758814_23_1.json","-1619758814_24_1.json","-1619758814_25_1.json","-1619758814_26_1.json","-1619758814_27_1.json","-1619758814_28_1.json","-1619758814_29_1.json","-1619758814_30_1.json","-1619758814_31_1.json","-1619758814_32_1.json","-1619758814_33_1.json","-1619758814_34_1.json","-1619758814_35_1.json","-1619758814_36_1.json","-1619758814_37_1.json","-1619758814_38_1.json","-1619758814_39_1.json","-1619758814_40_1.json","-1619758814_41_1.json","-1619758814_42_1.json","-1619758814_43_1.json","-1619758814_44_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"f9e10181edf914746230ebbc70f72502","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/afa094c0-6401-4914-8a5f-4e13d72d23a0/retrieve","description":"This synthesis brief draws on an extensive body of published studies and the latest working papers produced as part of foresight-related research supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM). It offers a focused, forward-looking perspective on key issues to support discussions on food, land, and water systems transformation and the role of foresight in helping better understand our dynamic future.","id":"-1791620276"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"3fcca06d-fbdf-43a2-a352-eb225d68bd93","pagecount":"9","content":"This publication has been prepared as an output of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by IFPRI. Any opinions expressed here belong to the author(s) and are not necessarily representative of or endorsed by CGIAR, IFPRI, or PIM.Investment in strategic foresight research and practice is seen as a valuable activity across many different sectors. Businesses that use foresight to improve \"future preparedness\" demonstrate greater levels of profitability and growth (Rohrbeck and Kum 2018). Given both observed and anticipated impacts of climate change on agriculture and food systems, strategic foresight to guide policy and investment decisions has become commonplace and is applied to a large cross section of key questions within the sector, including by decision-makers in low-and middle-income countries and their development partners (Prager and Wiebe 2021;Lowder and Regmi 2019).While foresight approaches have, indeed, become commonplace and addressed a range www.pim.cgiar.org• Foresight analysis related to food systems has expanded rapidly in recent years, broadening from earlier work focused on agricultural production to include multiple dimensions of food systems, the synergies and trade-offs between these different dimensions, and enhanced understanding of the challenges related to climate change, nutrition, and the environment.• More work is needed to address these complex and dynamic issues and to better capture aspects related to livelihoods, gender, equity, and resilience in the context of rapidly transforming food systems.• Sustaining and enhancing the role of foresight requires investment in data collection, data management systems, model development, and analytical tools to support improved representation and assessment of future food systems performance.• Making this work useful in informing decision-making also requires investment in human and institutional capacity, both within and outside CGIAR, to embed improved analysis in ongoing and iterative dialogue processes with stakeholders and decisionmakers.of potential futures, there are still opportunities to improve in both research and practice. A recent set of reviews commissioned by the Independent Science for Development Council of CGIAR suggests several critical gaps. They highlight the need to emphasize analysis of future agriculture systems in relation to poverty reduction, jobs, livelihoods and, especially, the need to consider these issues with a gender lens (ISDC 2020, 3). Other pressing and future priorities highlighted by the ISDC include consideration of shocks and their impact on food prices, as well as the need for trade-off analysis as an integral part of foresight to help identify links (both favorable and adverse) among different policies and investments (ISDC 2020, 10).Given that strategic foresight serves a multitude of roles, a range of foresight approaches are being developed both within and outside of CGIAR to support similar big-picture views and a range of methods are being used to \"do\" foresight. Thus an important question emerges: What is the best way for foresight to grow and evolve with CGIAR to maximally support CGIAR beneficiaries, the development investment community, and CGIAR itself? (2020) on sex-disaggregated employment -further unpack the nuanced differences between investment strategies in terms of potential goals, including desired food security, economic, environmental, and social outcomes. These issues are further explored from a forward-looking systems perspective in a new collection of working papers on the future of food security, nutrition, and health (Chan et al. 2021), land and water systems (Gotor et al. 2021), income and employment (Kruseman et al. 2021), and synthesized by Wiebe and Prager (2021).While the above studies illustrate the wide range of questions addressed by the CGIAR foresight community, they also shed light on some key areas where there is opportunity to improve. In each of the studies, for example, there are different types of baseline analyses that serve as the counterfactual to the possible investment scenarios. Such baselines depend heavily on the assumptions in the underlying shared socioeconomic pathways (Hasegawa et al. 2015 These examples illustrate the wide range of ways in which foresight has been integrated into strategic processes, both by CGIAR and its partners. At the same time, there are many opportunities to continue refining the approaches and increasing the overall capacity of CGIAR and partners to respond effectively, efficiently, and equitably to the challenges that lie ahead.Looking ahead and drawing on the findings of Chan et al. (2021), Gotor et al. (2021), Kruseman et al. (2021), and Wiebe and Prager (2021), we see three principal areas for consideration in relation to the ongoing development of CGIAR's foresight capacity. These areas include metacapability, thematic and methodological issues, and emerging issues.The CGIAR system must co-evolve both in relation to the most pressing challenges as well as the needs of its national partners. Similarly, foresight capacity within the system must evolve to (re)orient quickly around key questions and core capability, while simultaneously anticipating and preparing for future needs of both the system and its partners. This continual reassessment and anticipatory capacity are known as metacapability (Furlong and Johnson 2003).One of the primary mechanisms to do this is enhanced collaboration and integration with a wide range of national partners, donor agencies, and stakeholders around the world. The engagement strategy in the new Foresight Initiative expressly incorporates this modality, spanning both internal and external partners.Central to the enhanced partnership model is an extended set of communities of practice (CoPs). These CoPs, including groups of specialists in different thematic areas (such as crop improvement and climate science) and specialists in different organizational contexts (such as policy and NARS), will enhance knowledge management and information exchange among foresight practitioners and decision-makers. Crucial to the knowledge management activities will be the newly launched CGIAR Foresight web portal (https://foresight.cgiar.org/). A core ambition of the new Initiative is to also enhance measurement of the effectiveness of different foresight approaches. The Foresight Initiative will develop new approaches to quantify and measure how foresight works -and how it could work better -within different decision-making environments; this information, in turn, will feed back into the foresight process and be used to help chart the course for future activities.As highlighted by the ISDC (2020), foresight capability must become fully embedded within the entire CGIAR system. This implies both system-level foresight (that is, foresight commissioned by and for the CGIAR system management) as well as systemwide foresight (that is, foresight developed by and in collaboration with the full set of One CGIAR Initiatives). The Foresight Initiative is a core collaborator in both processes, with a primary responsibility associated with addressing current and future partner needs and foresight capability, while recognizing that foresight-related work will be central to the activities of many other CGIAR initiatives as well.In addition to metacapability at the organizational level, foresight readiness and agility also require ongoing investment in maintaining the basic foresight tools, skills, and core capacity needed to respond quickly to diverse policy challenges. These include routine updates of model parameters and data to ensure that forward-looking analyses are grounded in the best available current information.Beyond maintaining up-to-date tools, improved and new foresight capabilities are required to keep up with a rapidly evolving food system. The food system is vastly more interconnected than ever through telecoupling, complex capital flows, trade, dynamic social and institutional ties, and common resource use (Eakin et al. 2017). Inroads have been made in applying this approach (Wyckhuys et al. 2018), but further advances are required. Critical to advancing this capability will be improved understanding of consumer behavior. Consumer preferences are driving demand for both commodities and food products, and these preferences themselves are evolving as a function of megatrends such as increasing wealth, urbanization, and market integration.As markets become increasingly integrated, future supply chain disruptions are of greater concern. Anticipating the effect of different shocks -whether looking at the food security implications associated with COVID-19's effect on the supply chain (Laborde et al. 2021) or its adverse impacts on incomes, employment, and food security (Arndt et al. 2020) -will become increasingly critical with increased globalization. Couple this with increased climate variability and increasing complexity around the governance needed to respond to these challenges, the necessity for foresight becomes dramatically clear. Improved capability is needed to parse the implications of different shocks to increase resilience while considering the trade-offs associated with different precautionary approaches.In using foresight to better understand the likely effects of shocks, we are also better positioned to prepare for the risks associated with compound extreme events co-located in space and time (Zscheischler et al. 2018). Larger-scale compound events such as \"multiple breadbasket failures\" (Gaupp et al. 2019;Anderson et al. 2019) require similar inspection, especially considering the telecoupling and implications of trade already noted.Trade brings with it a number of additional considerations that foresight analyses can help unpack. Increasing emphasis on producing the \"the right crop in the right place\" underscores the need to look at the local and regional capacity and trade-offs around GHG mitigation and food security (Hasegawa et al. 2018) as well as considerations of labor and total factor productivity.While quantitative strategic foresight is a proven tool for exploring alternative, plausible futures, there are several emerging areas that will likely drive new thinking on foresight. A marker of many these emerging issues is their fundamental multidimensional nature.First, while some dimensions of climate change are reasonably well understood, the mid-to longterm implications for the intersecting agricultural, pest and disease, and biodiversity frontiers remain relatively unexplored. Farming system geographies are going to be continually changing alongside niches for pests and disease, and ecological niches for different plant, animal, and microbial species. All these issues have implications for the \"right-crop, right-place\" question and, coupled with the shift toward a food systems perspective, drive us toward questions on how to better anticipate \"good fit\" agricultural systems that are more inclusive and that consider local context. With this more holistic consideration, we will be able to better understand how to improve overall future resilience of the agriculture and food systems.As mentioned, consumer demand, trade, and global markets will significantly drive the shape of future agricultural systems. Consumer demand will likely evolve much more rapidly than production systems, and therefore, we must be capable of using foresight to examine the intersection of these faster and slower processes Finally, there is need to bring foresight to support the increasing attention to themes at the intersection of climate security and food systems.From failing food systems as a driver of conflict to conflict disrupting food systems and food supply, questions of climate security will become increasingly prevalent in some regions around the world. This, coupled with the previously described geopolitical changes, suggests foresight approaches can be co-developed with the climate security community to better understand how climate-related conflict may disrupt food systems or respond to targeted food systems interventions.If the last decade of foresight activities in support of CGIAR has taught us anything, it is the importance of systematically discussing and preparing for the future. Strategic foresight helps foster this dialogue and creates a space for comparing ideas, the potential impacts of different policy and investment strategies, and the trade-offs and synergies among different development trajectories. With some creativity, the inclusion of appropriate partners and stakeholders, and the development of new methods and approaches, foresight can inform strategic decision-making in One CGIAR and its partners to help shape development pathways toward improved nutrition, livelihoods, equity, and climate and environmental outcomes.","tokenCount":"1851","images":["-1791620276_1_3.png","-1791620276_5_2.png"],"tables":["-1791620276_1_1.json","-1791620276_2_1.json","-1791620276_3_1.json","-1791620276_4_1.json","-1791620276_5_1.json","-1791620276_6_1.json","-1791620276_7_1.json","-1791620276_8_1.json","-1791620276_9_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"18848af55f69914641bf5529f2c2e14b","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/2db6b79a-083e-453f-88d5-6924e3c01fbf/retrieve","description":"","id":"71315098"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"852ca1a3-09f1-48f5-956d-80ee34155f48","pagecount":"3","content":"T: +233-(0)-21-780716 • F: +233-(0)-21-784752 gssp.ifpri.info This publication has been prepared as an output of the Ghana Strategy Support Program, which is funded by USAID and facilitated by The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) headquarters. It has not been peer reviewed. Any opinions stated herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the International Food Policy Research Institute (www.ifpri.org), its partners, or its collaborators.his study assessed four major subsidy and credit facilitation initiatives implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to guide government policy and improve performance. The four initiatives are:1. support to the establishment and operation of Agricultural Mechanization Services Centers (AMSECs) 2. Subsidization of fertilizers via the National Fertilizer Subsidy Program 3. Establishment and management of Block Farms that benefit from a combination of subsidized mechanization services and fertilizers, credit for improved seed and pesticides, extension services, and guaranteed minimum output prices 4. Stabilization of output prices via the establishment and operation of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO)With the objective of modernizing agriculture, the goal of these initiatives is to increase productivity and incomes of Ghanaian farmers.Based on the literature, program-specific impact pathways were conceptualized to guide the empirical approach, including indicators, sampling, data collection, and analysis. The information was obtained from two main sources: (i) existing program documents and data; and (ii) interviews with implementing actors, knowledgeable experts, farmers, and other stakeholders along the entire value chain, using both structured and semistructured instruments (Benin et al. 2012).The aim of the AMSEC program, which was piloted in 2007 with 12 centers in eight regions, was to make mechanization services available at farmers' doorsteps in every district with the potential for setting up at least one program. The idea was to raise the tractor-to-farmer ratio from 1:1800 to 1:500 by 2020 and to reduce the number of tractors older than 15 years. Successful applicants to participate in the program, which was open to all private sector actors, including farmers, were given an average of five tractors and accompanying implements, including plows, harrows, and trailers. An initial payment of 10-17 percent of the total cost was paid by the applicants, with the remainder to be paid in five annual installments. By the end of 2010, about 467 tractors, other machinery and accompanying implements had been distributed at a cost equivalent to less than 2 percent of MoFA's budget in 2008 and 2009 (Table 1). Given the high capital cost of entering the mechanization services market, the AMSEC program has contributed to improving access by all farmers to these services by raising the average area mechanized (at least by the surveyed farmers) from 5.3 acres per farmer in 2008 to 7.8 acres per farmer in 2010, representing a 21 percent per year increase.Because the demand for mechanization services far outstrips the supply, the program has not crowded out privatesector investment. However, newer tractors associated with the AMSEC program seem to break down more frequently than those operated by non-AMSEC agents-about 17-64 percent more-due to lack of skilled operators and mechanics or spare parts for the new tractors.Additional issues affecting the program have been poor cost recovery by MoFA in the initial stages, limited scope of mechani-zation services, and poorly prepared fields with unmarked stumps. The latter two affect efficient operation of mechanization services in general.In an effort to increase productivity of Ghanaian farmers and modernize agriculture, the government of Ghana, in July 2008, instituted a country-wide subsidy on four types of fertilizer: NPK15:15:15  NPK 23:10:05  Urea  Sulphate of ammoniaThe subsidy was also a response to dramatic increases in food and fertilizer prices as well as to raise the low average application rates of fertilizer from8 to 20 kg/ha. In 2008 and 2009 the subsidy was implemented through the voucher system, and from 2010 through the waybill system. While the voucher system targeted small-scale farmers, the waybill system was made available for all types of farms and farmers that could afford the subsidized price. The total amount of subsidized fertilizers increased more than threefold from 43,200 MT in 2008 to 150,000 MT in 2011, at a cost equivalent to 10-13 percent of MoFA's total budget in 2008 and 2009 (Table 2). The fertilizer subsidy programhas contributed to an increase in application of fertilizers. Farmers who applied fertilizer not only obtained not only higher yields, which was expected, but a positive net income than those who did not use any fertilizer. The overall future economic return of the program is positive, with an estimated benefit-cost ratio of 1.7, although this comes with high risks because costs associated with the program overtime could easily consume a larger share of the MoFA budget (up to 35 percent by 2020).Delays in negotiations between the government and fertilizer importers, which delay supply and distribution of the fertilizers, place limitations on the potential benefits of the program. To forestall delays in fertilizer importation and distribution, it is recommended that government initiate negotiations with importers early so that fertilizer can be stocked in the appropriate districts prior to the planting season.The Block Farm Program (BFP), launched in 2009 as a pilot in several locations in six regions, was intended to bring in large tracks of arable land (in blocks) for the production of selected commodities in which the districts had comparative advantage.The idea was to exploit economies of scale, thus ensuring that the block farms benefited from subsidized mechanization services and inputs (fertilizers, improved seed, and pesticides) in the form of credit and extension services, both delivered to farmers by MoFA. By bundling the delivery of both inputs and services, it was envisaged that delivery would be timely and costeffective.Agricultural extension agents are supposed to work closely with farmers so that the farmers follow recommended practices to meet yield expectations. Following harvest, the cost of the services and inputs provided as credit by the government to the block farmers is recovered in kind-a fixed number of bags of grain or output determined at the beginning of the program. Because prices at harvest are usually at their lowest levels in any year, farmers looking to sell their produce at that time can sell to agents of the National Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) at a higher price than what could have been obtained on the open market.Data on actual coverage of the program and costs were difficult to obtain. In the pilot phase in 2009, the program covered 11,577 ha at a total cost of GHC 2.6 million. With the expectation to scale up nationwide to 150,000 ha in 2010 (more than 13 times the area covered in 2009), we can expect the cost to go up proportionally.BFP has generated keen interest among farmers, because those participating in the program have attested to the benefits they received, including access to low-cost credit in the form of inputs and mechanization services, which has led to greater productivity, production, and incomes. However, recovery rates for the input costs were surprisingly low. For the government to sustain the program, farmers need to be encouraged to pay back the money they have borrowed.Contrary to expectation, we found that the youth have not been a strong focus of the program as it was conceived. Being relatively inexperienced, the youth are a riskier venture in terms of being able to properly manage the farm and inputs and services, and are less likely to repay the loans.MoFA set up NAFCO in 2009 to ensure the security of farmers, insulating them against losses resulting from anticipated increases in production and the consequent low output prices, and to ensure national food security.NAFCO buys cereal from farmers during the (bumper) harvest and stores it for sale in the lean season. This allows farmers to get a certain assured minimum price for their produce. It also gives farmers an assured market for their produce and protects them from the exploitation of market operators during gluts, when supply is greater than demand. During the lean period, NAFCO put out supplies to meet the demand and prevent an escalation of prices. The consequences of NAFCO's interventions are stable prices and a ready market, thus giving the farmers the motivation they need to expand their acreage, adopt modern technologies, and increase production and productivity.The evidence, based on a combination of price trends and market structure, conduct, and performance (SCP) analyses, shows that maize prices stabilized in 2010 following uncertainty during the preceding years.There are lessons to be learned, although data limitations prevent our ability to distill the role of NAFCO in this stabilization in order to inform both the government and NAFCO on how to strategize to sustain or improve upon it. We found NAFCO to be financially viable under current conditions projected in the immediate future. But a decline in its revenue could pose problems and would likely force the government to spend more on its operations than intended. NAFCO should therefore carefully track its revenue, make realistic projections, and find ways to minimize variability. Focusing attention on its useful food security role of managing strategic food grain reserves could have high payoffs if suddenly faced with severe food shortages. In the long run, improving trade ties with regional markets could also help dampen any negative price effects, either from a rapid acceleration in output or from a shortfall of supply in local markets. In more isolated markets, NAFCO should still play a critical role in procuring output where such need exists, as the evidence showed that areas where NAFCO was operating seem to have also exhibited higher yields in response.There are substantial interaction effects among the four different programs. In particular, the presence of NAFCO seems to enhance the positive effects of the other programs. By offering a fixed and assured output price so that farmers can make resource allocation decisions at the beginning of the production stage, NAFCO seems to lower farmers' uncertainty about future prices, permitting them to make higher purchases of inputs.Thus, the roles of the various programs are inherently linked to the success of the NAFCO program by ensuring higher yields and outputs. While NAFCO could achieve its goals of stabilizing prices and producing positive economic returns, this could also result in rapidly increasing costs that would become unbearable for the government, easily making up about 90 percent of the MoFA budget by 2020 from an estimated 35 percent in 2010.A more realistic strategy on the fiscal budget is to allow for gradual increases in total stock volume annually, which we will assume to grow at about 10 percent per year. Instead, total costs across all 4 programs will likely rise to 35 percent of MoFA's budget by 2020. The overall net worth of all four programs is GHC 403 million across 10 years if we assume open trade. However, if domestic prices fall as a result of the rapid increase in output growth, declining at about 7.8 percent per year, the net worth quickly becomes negative.","tokenCount":"1821","images":["71315098_1_1.png","71315098_3_1.png"],"tables":["71315098_1_1.json","71315098_2_1.json","71315098_3_1.json"]}

data/part_2/5022812512.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"9de2d671ca834dbbcb2f3449061249cf","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/8302d81c-3d04-4775-b8ba-acb0335bd30c/retrieve","description":"A key aspect of women's empowerment is participation in important intra-household decisions. This paper describes a new mixed-methods emic-informed approach that we developed involving multiple stakeholders to explore intra-household decision making on agriculture- and expenditure-related matters. The tool was piloted in cassava-producing districts in Kagera and Kigoma Regions of Tanzania. It first comprises a qualitative guide that was used to interview 40 dyads (mostly married couples) who grow, process, and/or trade cassava. We conducted thematic content analysis of these interviews and identified seven distinct patterns that dyads used to make decisions. These included: husband shares idea, discusses with wife, then (i) husband makes the final decision; (ii) wife makes the final decision; or (iii) they make a joint final decision. Alternatively, (iv) husband shares idea with his wife before he makes the final decision; or wife shares idea, discusses with husband, then (v) husband makes the final decision; (vi) wife makes the final decision; or (vii) they make a joint final decision. These patterns informed the development of vignettes that describe intra-household decision making, along with survey questions asking respondents which decision-making vignettes they most identify with and additional questions on why and how decisions are made in their households. Finally, these new modules were included in a multi-topic survey that was administered to around 1300 couples to validate the new decision-making modules. Our approach aims to help us better measure and understand intra-household decision making and its links to household-level economic, food, and nutrition security outcomes.","id":"424202886"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"0ef83a63-8c31-428c-9460-120a07df3300","pagecount":"17","content":"• To set up a transdisciplinary process to develop a mixed-methods research tool for improving the measurement and understanding of important decisions dyads make on agricultural-and expenditure-related matters within the household, and how these decisions influence specific development outcomes • Pilot the tool in Tanzania within the smallholder cassava value chain Key research questions 1. How do dyads (two spouses) make cassava production, processing, trading, and expenditure-related decisions within the household? 2. Who makes these decisions? 3. Why are these decisions made solely or jointly? 4. How do decision-making processes influence specific food and nutrition security and economic outcomes at household level?photo credit• A key aspect of women's empowerment is the participation of women in important intrahousehold decisions• Quantitative assessments often rely on questions on the identity of the decision maker(s) to determine women's participation• And less focus on understanding why women make decisions, how decisions get made, or on women's roles in decision-making processes• Furthermore, questions are often developed using etic (outsider) perspectives, when emic (insider) perspectives are a critical source of information  • Vignette illustrations developed to assist respondents when listening to the vignette stories","tokenCount":"187","images":["424202886_1_1.png","424202886_1_2.png","424202886_1_3.png","424202886_1_4.png","424202886_2_1.png","424202886_2_2.png","424202886_3_1.png","424202886_3_2.png","424202886_3_3.png","424202886_4_1.png","424202886_4_2.png","424202886_5_1.png","424202886_5_2.png","424202886_5_3.png","424202886_5_4.png","424202886_5_5.png","424202886_5_6.png","424202886_5_7.png","424202886_6_1.png","424202886_6_2.png","424202886_6_3.png","424202886_7_1.png","424202886_7_2.png","424202886_7_3.png","424202886_8_1.png","424202886_8_2.png","424202886_8_3.png","424202886_8_4.png","424202886_8_5.png","424202886_8_6.png","424202886_9_1.png","424202886_9_2.png","424202886_10_1.png","424202886_10_2.png","424202886_10_3.png","424202886_10_4.png","424202886_10_5.png","424202886_10_6.png","424202886_11_1.png","424202886_11_2.png","424202886_11_3.png","424202886_12_1.png","424202886_12_2.png","424202886_13_1.png","424202886_13_2.png","424202886_13_3.png","424202886_14_1.png","424202886_14_2.png","424202886_15_1.png","424202886_15_2.png","424202886_15_3.png","424202886_15_4.png","424202886_16_1.png","424202886_16_2.png","424202886_17_1.png","424202886_17_2.png","424202886_17_3.png"],"tables":["424202886_1_1.json","424202886_2_1.json","424202886_3_1.json","424202886_4_1.json","424202886_5_1.json","424202886_6_1.json","424202886_7_1.json","424202886_8_1.json","424202886_9_1.json","424202886_10_1.json","424202886_11_1.json","424202886_12_1.json","424202886_13_1.json","424202886_14_1.json","424202886_15_1.json","424202886_16_1.json","424202886_17_1.json"]}

data/part_2/5345631894.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"0961629b7561060d1b870d9730b4c783","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/aacba975-1be9-429d-866b-d94b9ed372af/retrieve","description":"We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves households’ access to factor markets.","id":"1679886482"},"keywords":["Social networks","iddir networks","factor market imperfections","factor market transactions","crowding-out JEL-codes: D02","D13","D71","D83","D85","J46","O17","Q12"],"sieverID":"b3d57c39-79c3-4321-82f8-0cce6a9d383f","pagecount":"26","content":"In the absence of well-established factor markets, the role of indigenous institutions and social networks can be substantial for mobilizing factors for agricultural production. We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves households' access to factor markets. Specifically, we find that joining an iddir network improves households' access to land, labor and credit transactions between 7 and 11 percentage points. Furthermore, our findings also indicate that iddir networks crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as Arata Abedari), a relatively expensive credit source, virtually without affecting borrowing from formal credit sources. These results improve our understanding of the roles non-market arrangements, such as social networks, can play in mitigating market inefficiencies in poor rural markets. The results also have important policy implications for designing alternative policy measures which aim to improve these marketsMarkets in developing countries are characterized by a broad range of failures that adversely affect the individual actors and challenge the institutions created to mediate their interactions in the marketplace (Stiglitz 1989;Besley 1994). Factor markets, like several other markets in developing countries, are subject to widespread inefficiencies resulting from incomplete information and imperfect contract enforcement, exacerbated by unclear property rights and subsequent high transaction costs (Stiglitz and Weis 1981;Collier 1983;Stiglitz 1989;Hoff and Stiglitz 1990;de Janvry et al. 1991;Barrett and Mutambatsere 2008;Pender and Fafchamps 2006).Nowhere are these problems more critical than in land, labor, and rural credit markets of developing countries. These three types of markets are particularly thin and inhibited by problems of information asymmetry. As a result, moral hazard, adverse selection, and related opportunistic behaviors are common, since transactions in these markets require extensive information for screening, monitoring, and contract enforcement. Information asymmetry in these markets results in transaction costs that are high, as monitoring and penalizing opportunistic behavior is difficult. The failure of factor markets imply that \"either the transactions simply do not occur, or substitute institutions emerge to allow the transaction to take place\" (de Janvry et al. 1991). A vast amount of literature points to such failures in these markets giving rise to traditional institutional arrangements and social networks playing critical roles in filling the gaps in exchanges of goods, services, and factors of production that markets fail to deliver (Binswanger and McIntire 1987;Rosenzweig 1988;Udry 1990). One line of literature studies the widespread use of land and labor sharing contracts in developing countries in the face of risk and missing insurance markets (e.g. Johnson 1950;Cheung 1969) and imperfect monitoring of labor efforts (e.g., Newbery 1975). These studies point to incentives, risk pooling, and the production efficiency advantage of land and labor sharing arrangements. Pender and Fafchamps (2006) provide evidence and point out that social relationshipscapitalizing on pre-existing trust and thereby reducing transaction costs of monitoringplay important roles in determining land and labor contract arrangements.A similar line of literature studies how information asymmetry undermines the operations and effectiveness of rural credit markets in developing countries. Empirical evidence, following the seminal work by Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), points to such information asymmetry in rural credit markets limiting lenders from writing effective contracts because, in the absence of information regarding the characteristics and activities of their clientele, formal lenders find it difficult to discern their potential borrower types in these areas (Udry 1990;Aryeetey and Udry,1997). In the absence of formal credit, households often rely on credit from their informal networks to smooth consumption (Fafchamps 2006;Rosenzweig 1988;Townsend 1995, Fafchamps andLund 1998). Informal credit often involves trust based self-enforcing informal networks and relationships which are typically characterized by flexibility in credit allocation and repayment (Udry 1990;Fafchamps 2006). In most rural communities, these activities are organized in some form of traditional social networks that provide group based informal insurance, like iddirs in Ethiopia. These institutions perform a crucial function for rural households in overcoming important factor market imperfections by expediting the flow of information within and beyond the village (Udry 1990;Barr 2000), reducing monitoring and enforcement costs (Sadoulet et al. 1997;Berhane et al. 2009;Fafchamps and Minten 2002;Karlan 2007), and developing trust among agents (Fukuyama 1995;Fafchamps and Lund 2003).There is a large empirical literature on the formation, prevalence, and role of social networks in dealing with a wide spectrum of socio-economic problems, including risk and consumption smoothing (Udry 1994;Fafchamps and Lund 2003;Okten and Osili 2004;Hoddinott et al. 2005;Hoddinott et al. 2009;Wydick et al. 2011;Ali and Deininger 2014;Ali et al. 2014); credit, saving and transaction costs (Dercon et al. 2006;De Weerdt and Dercon 2006); and technology adoption, insurance, and productivity (Bandiera and Rasul 2006;Barr 2000;Conley and Udry 2002;Fafchamps and Lund 2003;Fafchamps and Minten 2002;Foster and Rosenzweig 1995;Krishnan and Sciubba 2009). However, little is known about the explicit roles of social networks in mitigating factor market imperfections, and, hence, their role in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers.In this paper, we study the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, iddir associations, in overcoming factor market imperfections to facilitate factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Iddir is the most inclusive and widespread social network in Ethiopia, commonly established by community members, neighbors, or among friends and families. The origin of iddir as a social network is to provide funeral services and to support bereaved family members morally and financially (see for instance, Dercon et al. 2006). However, a closer look at iddir networks reveals their scope to go beyond funeral associations, as they are involved in many socio-economic issues (Pankhurst and Mariam 2000;Mariam 2003;Dercon et al. 2006). By offering informal social insurance, information, and trust among members, iddir associations share the main micro-level properties of other networks (Caeyers and Dercon 2012). However, very little is known about how iddir networks contribute to the economic activity of their members. Dercon et al. (2006;2008) studied the role of iddir associations as funeral and insurance institutions, while Hoddinott et al. (2005) investigated the role of iddir networks as risk coping mechanisms. Investigating the roles of social networks in ameliorating market imperfections in the Ethiopian case provides an interesting context given the coexistence of such social networks and evidence of pervasive market failures and their associated high transaction costs in rural Ethiopia (Deininger et al. 2008;Deininger and Jin 2008;Ghebru and Holden 2008).We use longitudinal household survey data from Ethiopia to investigate the role of iddir networks in facilitating factor market transactions among farmers. To circumvent estimation and identification problems associated with households' self-selection into network membership, we exploit the longitudinal feature of the data and use a difference-in-differences approach. We find that iddir membership improves household's access to factor market transactions in a range of 7 to 11 percentage points. Specifically, we find that iddir membership improves households' sharecropping and labor-sharing practices, as well as their access to credit. Interestingly, our findings also indicate that iddir networks crowd-out borrowings from village moneylenders (locally referred to as Arata Abedari), who often provide expensive credit due to the screening, monitoring, and contract enforcement problems that can be removed by social networks. However, our findings suggest that membership in these networks does not crowd-out borrowing from formal credit sources that offer both relatively cheaper and larger amounts of credit. These results are robust to various methodological specifications and robustness checks. These substantial effects potentially work through households' privileged access to key resources that iddir networks avail to their members ranging from enabling the flow of information among members and, thereby, building trust, up to penalizing opportunistic behavior through provisions of strict rules and social sanctions. The results of this analysis are important in at least two ways. First, while much of economics continues to rely on assumptions of market-based solutions to imperfections (Fafchamps 2004:3-21), these results suggest that non-market institutions also can play crucial roles in intermediating transactions whenever contracts are not perfectly enforceable due to lack of information or efficient court systems. Second, they further suggest that the outcomes of government intervention to improve market performance in these contexts is not straightforward. Care must be taken not to crowd-out the role these institutions are bound to play in facilitating local exchange (Dercon et al. 2006).The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the institutional features of iddir networks in Ethiopia. Section 3 presents a brief exposition of factor markets in Ethiopia, while Section 4 discusses the data and empirical models used for this analysis. In section 5, we present the empirical results, while Section 6 provides concluding remarks and policy implications.Iddir is the most inclusive and widespread type of social network in Ethiopia, prevalent both in rural and urban settings and inclusive of gender, wealth, education, religion, and ethnicity (Pankhurst 2008). Originally, iddir networks were established to provide financial (cash) and other types of support (in kind) when a family member dies. These networks also assume a key role in facilitating the burial and funeral of the deceased member. However, a close look at iddir networks reveals that they go beyond funeral associations as they are involved in many socio-economic issues. Iddirs provide small credit for their members, often without collateral (Dercon et al. 2006); help unemployed members (Pankhurst and Mariam 2000); finance their members' health care expenditures (Mariam 2003); provide financial assistance when their members suffer from other shocks (Dercon et al. 2006); and in recent years, iddir networks provide insurance for death of key livestock, such as oxen.Iddir networks often have well-defined and written rules (Dercon et al. 2006). Membership is on a voluntary basis and is commonly open to all members living in a village (Hoddinott et al. 2005;Dercon et al. 2006;Mariam 2003). 1 Hoddinott  et al. (2005) and Mariam (2003) report that the majority of iddirs in Ethiopia have no restrictions on membership and that all villages in their study samples hosted at least one iddir that was open to anyone living in the village. Members are required to pay a monthly contribution, while new members may have to pay an entrance fee. Membership fees in most iddirs are relatively small and provide some flexibility in payment due dates, and hence, most interested potential members are able to join. Dercon et al. (2006) report that the average monthly household contribution to iddirs in their sample amounted to 1.64 Birr (0.08 USD), which is too small to dictate participation in these networks. In addition, most iddirs have flexible conditions for the membership of the very poor, accepting non-monetary contributions and sometimes allowing people to become members free of charge (Pankhurst and Mariam 2000;Mariam 2003).Previous studies show that individual and household wealth indicators have insignificant effects on iddir membership. For example, Dercon et al. (2006) find that, while age and household size affects the probability of becoming a member, wealth, land, and livestock holdings had no effect. Richer households could obtain better coverage against risk by joining multiple iddir networks, and perhaps by joining iddir associations established in rich neighborhoods. As suggested by Hoddinott et al. (2005), the income and wealth status of a household could affect the intensity of participation in iddirs, but income and wealth are found to have an insignificant effect in defining the extensive margin of participation in these egalitarian associations. This evidence sets an interesting context to evaluate the effectiveness of such an inclusive social network in facilitating factor market transactions among households.Like many other social networks, iddir associations provide informal social insurance and information and strengthen trust among members of the association (Caeyers and Dercon 2012). Besides providing linkages among members, iddirs reduce transaction costs and provide security against shirking or defection in the absence of formal contractual agreements. Rigorous empirical evidence as to whether these qualities of iddir networks are important to facilitate factor market transactions among smallholder farmers and to complement imperfect agricultural markets in rural economies is not yet available.As in many other developing countries, rural areas of Ethiopia are characterized by imperfect or missing factor markets (Deininger et al. 2008;Deininger and Jin 2008;Ghebru and Holden 2008). In Ethiopia, land belongs to the state and landlords are only entitled to user rights. Under this form of ownership, landowners are not entitled to sell, transfer, or mortgage their land. Pender and Fafchamps (2006) point out that, in the absence of land redistribution, the only means of acquiring access to land in Ethiopia is through gifts, borrowing, fixed-rental, or sharecropping. They find that the latter is the most prevalent form of securing access to land. Sharecropping is a tenancy agreement between landowners and their tenants. It evolves on the premise that tenants share a portion of the harvested production with the landowner depending on their agreement, usually half or two-third of gross production (see, for instance, Pender and Fafchamps 2006). In some cases, landowners contribute some production inputs, generally draft-animal (oxen) or labor. In contrast, in fixed land rentals, the tenant pays a fixed amount of money, commonly in advance and assumes ownership of the land and the harvested production for the agreed production season.Similarly, the agricultural labor market in Ethiopia lacks formality. Labor transactions depend on traditional laborsharing practices, which mainly involve paired-borrowing of labor between farming households in return for similar labor on another day (or season). As discussed in Krishnan and Sciubba (2009), labor-sharing practices in Ethiopia may also involve large-scale labor borrowing from a large number of households, which may be returned when a similar event is organized by contributing households. These practices sometimes exploit the seasonal variation in demand for labor among households in the crop planting, growing, and harvesting periods. For instance, if a household's crops are not ready for harvest, the household continues to credit labor to other households who are in demand for it and gets the labor back when its crops are ready for harvest.Such traditional arrangements in local land and labor markets also extend to rural credit markets in Ethiopia. Despite recent progress, Ethiopia's agricultural credit market is not yet well developed. Rural credit is predominantly covered by informal loan arrangements, including moneylenders, and exhibits the same screening, incentive, and enforcement problems found in many rural credit markets in developing countries (Hoff and Stiglitz 1990;Udry 1990).To sum up, factor markets in Ethiopia are incomplete and are dominated by traditional arrangements. Most of these arrangements or transactions do not involve formal contractual agreements. Thus, their validity hinges on informal relationships and trust among agents. In the presence of these imperfect factor markets, investigating the role of iddir networks is crucial in designing alternative policy measures that aim at improving factor markets in agriculture. Social networks play a key role in trust formation (Fukuyama 1995;Fafchamps and Lund 2003) and information sharing (Barr 2000). These qualities of social networks offer an interesting context to reduce information asymmetry among agents of rural factor markets, and hence, facilitate factor market transactions among farmers.In this paper, we empirically investigate the role of iddir, an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, in easing factor market imperfections in rural economies. We are specifically interested in investigating households' factor market transaction dynamics when they join iddir networks. We hypothesize that iddir networks improve poorly functioning factor markets in rural Ethiopia and, hence, improve smallholder farmers' access to these markets. When information asymmetry is binding and lack of trust and reputation limits potential efficiency improvements in factor markets, iddir networks can serve as information hubs where households can exchange information relevant to their input endowment. Furthermore, and most importantly, the network built through iddir associations serves as a safety net (insurance) and a basis for stronger reciprocity among members.More specifically, we hypothesize that iddir networks can bridge the information and reputation related gaps between those who would like to acquire access to land or labor and those who would like to provide these factors through land or labor sharing agreements. Likewise, iddir networks can also improve households' access to credit specifically from other iddir members by minimizing information asymmetry, thereby further strengthening trust among members. Furthermore, through their informational resource advantage, iddir members may even enjoy better access to factor markets that involve transactions with non-members. Since iddirs are formed among residents of (and often limited to) the same village, we expect that iddir membership may specifically improve households' access to credit from neighbors and friends, who are more likely to be from the same village. In contrast, we expect that iddir membership could potentially crowd-out access to credit from moneylenders who, on account of the relatively high risk and transaction cost involved, charge higher interest rates. Although iddirs may not have a clearly defined legal basis to enforce market transactions, they are observed to be guided by sound set rules to which members can appeal in case of default, even if loans are made one-to-one without the institutional involvement of the iddir. In addition, these rules are strengthened through the social leverage that iddirs and their leaders are bestowed from members. These include group pressure and social penalties on individuals that fail to comply with agreed terms between members, similar to the roles played by community leaders in northern Nigeria to overcome loan enforcement problems (Udry 1990).The data we use for this study comes from a longitudinal household survey collected to evaluate the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia. The data is collected from 68 food-insecure woredas (districts) randomly drawn from the 153 food-insecure woredas where the program operates in Ethiopia. These 153 food-insecure woredas are found in the four main regions of Ethiopia.2 From each woreda, 2 to 3 PSNP beneficiary kebeles (villages) were randomly drawn as Enumeration Areas (EAs) from a pool of PSNP beneficiary kebeles. From each EA, 15 PSNP beneficiaries and 10 non-beneficiaries households were randomly selected from an exhaustive list of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in each EA. Four rounds of interviews (2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012) were conducted with the sample households with two-year gaps. A more detailed exposition on the sampling design is given in Berhane et al. (2011). Table 4.1 presents the distribution of iddir membership across the surveys from the four main regions covered in the longitudinal survey. Some previous studies that focus on specific regions where iddir networks are particularly prevalent report higher iddir participation than are seen in our sample (Hoddinott et al. 2005;Dercon et al. 2006). 3 A closer look at Table 4.1 suggests that iddir membership increases across the surveys, ranging from 51 percent in the first ( 2006) survey to 66 percent in the third (2010) survey. This generally increasing trend may be attributed to the increasing demand for the services that these networks provide and the concurrent expansion of the networks. This is not surprising given the increase in the recurrence of drought and other idiosyncratic shocks in rural Ethiopia in recent years and that membership in an iddir network can directly or indirectly mitigate such shocks for a household. The increment is particularly large between the two middle surveys. Thus, we focus on these two middle surveys in this study. However, we also use information from the first (2006) and fourth (2012) surveys to corroborate and test our identification strategy. In terms of timing, both middle surveys were conducted at similar times: The 2008 survey was fielded between late May and early July, while the 2010 survey was fielded in June and July. Detailed descriptive statistics of the variables in these two surveys is given in Table A1 in the Appendix. Though the data is not collected for the purpose of investigating the role of iddirs, the sampling design is well-suited for our purpose for the following reasons: First, iddir participation is unrelated to PSNP selection and its targeting criteria (or determinants). We perform some empirical exercises to investigate if indeed iddir participation is not directly determined by some observed livelihood characteristics that define PSNP participation. Thus, we explore the association between iddir membership and PSNP participation as well as other observable characteristics that may affect PSNP participation, including wealth status, income, food security status, and other observed socio-economic variables. Table 4.2 presents these results. In the first column, we regress the propensity to join an iddir on different observable characteristics of households, including wealth, income, food security status, social status and other socio-demographic variables. The second and third columns extend this specification by including zone-level and woreda-level fixed effects, respectively. 4 The results indicate that self-reported wealth, income, food security status, and PSNP participation are not statistically correlated with iddir participation. Rather, as expected, households' socio-demographic characteristics, such as education, household size, and household's social status in the village, are correlated with iddir participation. This is in line with findings presented in Hoddinott et al. (2005) and Dercon et al. (2006). Furthermore, recent studies that evaluated the PSNP point out that PSNP selection is largely based on assets, income, and food security status, which we tried to control for using observable household characteristics in our regressions (Andersson et al. 2009;Gilligan et al. 2009;Berhane et al. 2011;Berhane et al. 2014).Second, though indigenous social networks such as iddirs are not well-researched in Ethiopia, the few existing studies indicate that iddir networks are inclusive and open to all interested members of the community (Hoddinott et al. 2005;Dercon et al. 2006;Mariam 2003). The fact that iddir networks are inclusive and uncorrelated with household wealth indicators has important implications for our identification strategy. In this study, we are particularly interested in the last two groups of householdsthose who joined iddir networks after the 2008 survey (but before the 2010 survey) and those households that remained non-members in both surveys. We exploit this variation in iddir membership status across both surveys to identify the role of iddir networks in factor market transactions. Specifically, we compare the change in households' participation in factor market transactions between those who joined iddir networks after the 2008 survey and those who remained nonmembers in both surveys, before and after the former joined iddir networks. Observing the increasing trend in Table 4.1 and simple correlations in Table 4.2, we expect that this switching is either exogenous to our outcomes of interest or driven by factors that are dealt with in our estimation strategy. This comparison enables us to remove any time-invariant selection into iddir membership. Furthermore, in some of our specifications we employ time-varying controls that may induce iddir participation. For convenience, we label the 345 households who joined iddir networks after 2008 as our treatment group, while those 581 households who remained non-members in both surveys are control group households.We are interested in investigating the role of iddir networks in complementing the poorly functioning agricultural land, labor, and credit markets. We are particularly interested in investigating households' factor market (land, labor, and credit) transaction dynamics when they join social networks that provide them information, linkages, and social capital. As discussed in Section 3, we hypothesize that iddir networks can improve households' access to sharecropping land. Similarly, we are also interested in examining the impact of iddir networks in facilitating labor-sharing practices. As discussed in Krishnan and Sciubba (2009), there are different types of labor-sharing practices in Ethiopia that involve varying numbers of participants.Here our focus is on a specific type of labor-sharing practice that commonly involves symmetric reciprocation of labor among parties involved in the network.Finally, we aim to estimate the impact of iddir networks in facilitating credit transactions among farmers and, hence, their role in easing liquidity constraints of smallholder farmers. We are particularly interested in estimating how iddir networks affect credit flow from friends and neighbors, those individuals who are expected to be members of the iddir network. 7 Furthermore, we investigate whether iddir networks crowd-out expensive credit sources. By providing alternative sources of credit, we expect that iddir networks may crowd-out households' credit from local moneylenders who charge high interest rates.8 Table 4.3 provides a list of the outcome variables of interest in this study and their summary statistics measured at the pre-treatment period (2008). Consistent with the literature on social networks, we generally expect that the potentially untapped role of iddir networks in factor market exchanges mainly works through trust formation, information sharing, and reducing enforcement costs that can instrumentally smooth the flow of transactions. Furthermore, these networks involve social support that enables them to impose strong social sanctions on households who defect, which is an effective tool and guarantee for members of the network. Table 4.3 shows that both treatment and control group households have statistically similar pre-treatment factor market transactions for many of our outcome variables. Before households in the treatment group joined an iddir, the degree of involvement in factor market transactions for both the treatment and control group households was fairly similar. This helps our identification strategy, ensuring that we are comparing similar households. More specifically, around 7 percent of the treatment group households sharecropped-in land in the base year (2008), while the corresponding rate for those control group households is 10 percent. Similarly, Table 4.3 shows that more than 50 percent of households borrowed at least 20 Birr in the previous 12 months. 9 The most common source of credit was relatives, friends and neighbors, micro-finance institutions, and informal moneylenders (Arata Abedari). The distributions of these sources of credit are statistically comparable across the treatment and control group households, except for credit from informal sources. Notes: Column 1 and 2 present the mean factor market transactions for the treatment and control group households in the base year (2008) (with standard deviations in parentheses), while column 3 presents mean differences between both groups. In Panel A, we compare land transactions between both groups, while Panel B and C make a similar comparison for labor and credit transactions, respectively. ***, **, * indicate that differences are significantly different from zero at the 0.01, 0.05 and 0.10 levels, respectively.As discussed in Section 4.1, we exploit the variation in iddir membership across both surveys (2008 and 2010) to empirically identify the effect of this indigenous network in facilitating factor market exchanges. We use the difference-in-differences approach and compare factor market transactions of households that joined iddir networks (treatment group) with those nonmember households (control group), before and after the former joined iddir networks. Such an identification strategy helps us to cancel out time-invariant selection into iddir membership based on some time-invariant unobservable factors. Furthermore, to capture some time-varying factors that might induce iddir participation, we control for households' time-varying demographic and socio-economic characteristics, as well as their exposure to shocks. Note that iddir networks are formed with the aim of supporting members in case of death in the household or another type of idiosyncratic shock. These shocks can drive some dynamics in factor market transaction, and those households who recently suffered the death of a family member or other type of shock might be more likely to join these networks. Thus, we need to explicitly control for shocks that may induce iddir participation. More explicitly, we estimate the following difference-in-differences (DID) equation:where Yht is a binary variable that stands for the households' participation in land, labor, and credit transactions. Th is a dummy variable for households from the treatment group (equal to one if the household became an iddir member after the 2008 surveys, zero otherwise); while Post stands for a period after the treatment households joined iddir networks (a dummy that takes a value equal to one for 2010, zero otherwise). β1 captures pre-treatment potential differences in factor market transactions between the treatment and control group households. Our parameter of interest, β3, captures the interaction effect between iddir membership and the latter survey year (2010). β4 captures the effect of other time-varying and time-invariant covariates, while αv absorbs village-level fixed effects. εht captures other unobserved factors that may induce heterogeneity in factor market transactions.Our parameter of interest, β3, measures the effect of change in iddir membership status on the change in household's participation in factor market transactions across both surveys. Identifying β3 hinges on the common trend assumption. This assumption implies that in the absence of iddir participation those households who joined iddir networks (after 2008) would have had, on average, a similar growth pattern in their factor market transactions as those households who did not join. This assumption is not directly able to be tested, but the implication of the assumption can be tested using pre-treatment survey data. We have access to pre-treatment data from the 2006 and 2008 surveys for many of our outcome variables. Thus, we estimate equation (1) using the pre-treatment surveys (2006 and 2008), assuming placebo treatment for those households who joined an iddir after 2008. We know that our households from the treatment group joined iddir networks after 2008, thus, estimating equation (1) using the 2006 and 2008 survey should yield a treatment effect close to zero. Our placebo regression results (see Table A2 in Appendix) unambiguously confirm this argument. These estimates, along with the comparable pre-treatment factor market transactions shown in Table 4.3, suggest that our treatment effects are not driven by some sort of selection based on unobserved heterogeneity among the treated and control group households. Since all our outcome variables of interest are binary response outcomes, we estimate equation (1) using linear panel data models and probit models. We rigorously attempt different specifications of the covariates, including some nonlinear effects of the variables. As mentioned earlier, the intensity and prevalence of iddir networks can vary across woredas, and perhaps across villages. Thus, we also control for village-level fixed effects in some of our specifications. 10 For each factor market (land, labor, and credit), we estimate equation (1) without any control, with controls, and with village-level fixed effects. We estimate equation (1) for two land transaction outcomes of interest: probability of sharecropping-in and sharecropping-out of land in the main (meher) season. Similarly, we estimate equation (1) for households' tendency to participate in labor-sharing practices in the main season. Finally, we estimate equation (1) for modeling households' credit access from neighbors and friends, as well as their credit access from local moneylenders. For each of these estimations, we present treatment effects estimated through linear regression models and average partial effects (marginal effects) from probit models. Not surprisingly, the treatment effects from the linear regression models are very comparable with the implied marginal effects from the probit models.In this section, we present and discuss the main results. Table 5.1 presents the estimation results for the land transactions of households: sharecropping-in and sharecropping-out practices. Columns 1 to 3 present the estimation results for household's propensity to participate in sharecropping-in practices considering different specifications. In the first column, we present estimates without controls, while in the second column we control for demographic and socio-economic variables. In the third column, we extend the specification by controlling village level-fixed effects. Similarly, columns 4 to 6 of Table 5.1 present the estimation results for households' participation in sharecropping-out practices without controls, with controls, and with village-level fixed effects, respectively. 11 Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations for household's involvement in land transactions. The second and fifth columns include four regional dummy variables corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third and sixth columns include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation.Consistent with our hypothesis, iddir membership causally improves households' probability to participate in land markets through share tenancy, particularly by enabling them to enter into sharecropping arrangements, the most common and vibrant forms of land tenancy contracts in Ethiopia (Pender and Fafchamps 2005). Specifically, joining iddir networks improves households' probability to acquire access to land through sharecropping-in by about 9 percentage points, while also symmetrically improving landlords' probability to sharecrop/loan-out their land by around 6 percentage points. These results are quantitatively strong and stable over alternative specifications and robustness checks. Particularly, these estimates are robust to the inclusion of many covariates and village level-fixed effects. These estimates suggest that iddir networks do indeed bridge the gap between those who would like to offer their land for others to cultivate (for various reasons, including efficiency and risk pooling considerations) and those who would like to acquire access to land lease through share tenancy. This is particularly appealing in the Ethiopian context where formal land markets are inhibited by legal restrictions on land sales market; alternative tenancy mechanisms are subject to production risk, shirking on labor effort, and high cost of monitoring; and there are significant imperfections in other factor markets (e.g., seed and fertilizers). These estimates can plausibly be attributed to the role of iddir networks in reducing factor market inefficiency resulting from information asymmetry between demanders and suppliers of land, as well as to their role as a safety net by providing security and trust for agents interested in land transactions. As discussed in Section 2, iddir members meet regularly for general meetings or when members face idiosyncratic shocks. These kinds of events allow members to discuss their general activities and share information, including those relevant to their demand and supply of factor markets. This in turn, reduces search costs, reduces potential land use inefficiency due to information asymmetry, and reduces monitoring costs. Iddir networks thus play a crucial role in reducing transaction costs in relation to the screening and enforcement of land transactions. The fact that such networks strengthen friendship and trust among members implies that farmers reduce their screening cost as they have inside information about potential tenants and landlords. Furthermore, iddir networks reduce potential enforcement problems through strict iddir rules and the social stigma and social disapproval through which these networks punish rule-breakers.Table 5.2 presents difference-in-differences estimates on the effect of iddir membership on labor-sharing practices of households. Column 1 presents the estimation results without controlling for socio-economic and demographic variables, while column 2 presents results with these controls. In column 3, we additionally control for village level-fixed effects. 12 Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's involvement in labor transactions. The second column includes regional dummies corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third column include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. ¥ Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation.The estimates in Table 5.2 indicate that iddir membership causally improves the probability of households' participation in labor-sharing arrangements by about 10 percentage points. These estimates remain stable even after controlling for households' observable characteristics and regional and village level-fixed effects. Conceptually, this treatment effect represents a remarkable improvement in the households' demand for labor and the allocation of excess agricultural labor supply. Intuitively, iddir networks are well-suited institutions for creating paired partnerships and reciprocal group labor exchange through their frequent meetings and group level discussions. Iddir networks not only provide access to potential members who would like to engage in labor-sharing, but they also provide the needed labor at the right time by exploiting the seasonal variation in demand for labor among members of the network. Recalling previous studies on the effect of labor-sharing practices on farmers' productivity (Krishnan and Sciubba 2009), our results indirectly indicate that iddir networks can also boost smallholder farmers' productivity by generating social capital. In this sense, our results complement previous studies on the effect of labor-sharing networks on economic performance.Finally, in Table 5.3 we present the estimation results associated with the effect of iddir membership on credit access for households from different sources. Columns 1 to 3 present the estimation results for households' credit access from neighbors and friends, those households who are expected to be members of the iddir network. In the first column, we present estimates without controls, while the second column presents results with additional socio-economic and demographic controls. In the third column, we present the estimation results controlling for village level-fixed effects. Similarly, columns 4 to 6 present difference-in-differences estimates for households' credit access from local moneylenders (Arata Abedari) without controls, with controls, and with village-level fixed effects, respectively. 13 Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations for household's access to credit from different sources. The second and fifth columns include four regional dummy variables corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third and sixth column include 65 village (kebele)level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses.***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. ¥ Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation.The estimation results in Table 5.3 show that iddir membership, in the same fashion as the analyses of other factors presented earlier, causally improves households' access to credit from friends and neighbors by about 7 percentage points. The results are fairly stable across different specifications. These estimates tell a consistent story in the sense that friends and neighbors are commonly members of the iddir network, and hence the flow of credit from these members in the village should increase. These findings support previous studies in Ethiopia which argue that membership in social networks by smallholder farmers affect their credit access from semi-formal institutions (Berhane et al. 2009;Ali and Deininger 2014).Intuitively, this implies that iddir networks play an important role in overcoming households' liquidity constraints by availing potential lenders.14 This, in turn, suggests that iddir networks can play a potential role in overcoming some of the prevalent high transactions costs in rural credit markets by providing information and security against defections in credit transactions.13 Full set of estimates for all variables in the various specifications are given in Table A5 in the appendix.The estimation results in columns 4 to 6 of Table 5.3 show the effect of iddir networks in crowding-out credit sources that charge high interest rates. These results show that iddir membership crowds-out credit from local moneylenders (Arata Abedari) who are often blamed locally for being exploitative by charging very high interest rates. Households who joined iddir networks reduced their reliance on local moneylenders for credit by around 4 to 5 percentage points. These results highlight the potential of indigenous rural institutions and networks, such as iddir associations, for crowding-out other informal lenders that are not perhaps related to the network and charge higher interest rates. This is in contrast to the ineffectiveness of formal credit institutions in driving out informal moneylenders (Hoff and Stiglitz 1990;Bell 1990). This result potentially arises because, unlike formal credit institutions, iddir members have greater access to local information useful for dealing with problems of screening, monitoring, and enforcement, to which formal banks do not have access. Iddir member lenders have lower transactions costs than moneylenders. This has crucial implications for the supply of credit and the level of interest rates charged, which may drive moneylenders out of the market. For instance, Aleem (1990) argues that one reason why moneylenders charge high interest rates is that they have high average costs related to screening and enforcement. We also attempt to estimate the effect of iddir networks on crowding-out credit from formal government sources and microfinance institutions, but the treatment effect estimates were statistically insignificant. 15 This is of course not unexpected, given the low interest rate these institutions charge and their supply of reliable and substantially larger loans. This provides interesting policy implications for countries like Ethiopia, which are striving to provide formal credit access to smallholder farmers To summarize, the overall empirical results presented above are quite intuitive. The results generally highlight that informal indigenous networks can help the formation of physical and social capital that can improve factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Our findings are robust to alternative model specifications and explanations. We rigorously attempt to check alternative model specifications and explanations that we think may affect our identification strategy. For instance, some of the existing sociological literature on iddir networks in Ethiopia (for instance, Mariam 2003), which focused on specific regions and very few villages, suggests that households who are not iddir members are commonly new arrival immigrants. If such behavior somehow prevails in our data, it may confound the effect of joining iddir networks with some immigration or family (network) formation effect. To rule out such confounding effects, we estimate our models restricting the sample to those households whose household head was born in the village where he or she is currently living. Table A6 in the appendix presents these results. All estimates are quite similar in magnitude to the main estimates presented in Tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3.As mentioned in Section 4.3, we also test the implication of our common trend assumption using pre-treatment surveys. This assumption implies, that in the absence of iddir networks, both treatment and control group households would share identical time trends in factor market transactions. Our placebo estimation results (see Table A2 in the Appendix) indicate that both treatment and control group households share identical pre-treatment time trend in factor market transactions, as indicated by the insignificant and almost zero treatment effect estimates. 16 This evidence suggests that the treatment effects estimated, and hence our main results, are not driven by potential differential time trend between the treatment and control group households.One could also argue that some of the relationships and networks already built in labor-sharing and land transactions might lead to iddir formation, thereby suggesting reverse causality. There are two reasons why such a scenario should be ruled out. First, as discussed earlier, it is important to note that iddirs are traditionally intended for serving as insurance and risk-sharing networks and have been there since time immemorial. They are the most common and stable social networks of Ethiopia, including in urban areas. As such, they are more generic and less likely to be driven by such localized small group labor sharing practices. Second, technically, our identification strategy also rules out this type of reverse causality. We are identifying the effect of change in iddir membership status on change in labor-sharing practices. If the reverse causality is in effect, there would not be a change in labor-sharing practices, and hence we would not find any effect of joining iddir networks on these factor market transactions.As a further robustness exercise, we also use the fourth survey (2012 survey) instead of the third (2010 survey) in estimating our difference-in-differences equations for some of our outcome variables. We specifically assess the path of facthere is no significant association among the transactions in different markets. This is in line with the previous literature which generally show that direct credit linkages between landowners and tenants are rare in Ethiopia. 15 These results are available from the authors on request. 16 Since some of the households joined the survey at a later stage (at 2008), the sample size in these placebo regressions is slightly lower than the sample used for our main estimations.tor market performance of those treated households compared to the control group households even at later years. This exercise, for which the estimates are provided in Table A7 in the Appendix, provides two further insights. First, once households join iddir networks, they continue enjoying the benefits of the network as measured in the relative growth in factor market performance. Second, these results also avoid concerns on the timing of the measurement of some of our outcomes. For instance, the question related to credit access spans the last 12 months. However, we do not know exactly when the households joined these networks, only that they joined after the 2008 survey and before the 2010 survey. Thus, these estimates confirm that the effects of iddir networks persist even if we assume that the treatment group households joined the iddir networks at the onset of the 2010 survey. More generally, many of the results for the outcomes for which we have data are similar to the main estimates given in Tables 5.1, 5.2 and5.3. Finally, we carried out several other robustness checks. Compared to Amhara and SNNP regions, iddir networks are not widely practiced in Tigray region. To assess if such heterogeneity can confound some of the results, we estimate all our models excluding sample households from Tigray region, and confirm that many of results do not change.17 Although many of our explanatory variables do not vary much across the years, we also attempt to control for some background characteristics such as land, labor, and livestock assets of households from previous surveys to capture inertia effects and initial differences among the treated and control group households. However, doing this did not affect any of our estimates, perhaps because these assets did not exhibit substantial dynamics across the surveys. Finally, we attempt to assess if the effect of iddir networks varies across different types of households. However, we are slightly constrained in performing this exercise because we only know whether the household is a member of an iddir in the village. We cannot identify if they subscribe to more than one iddir network18 . As pointed out in Hoddinott et al. (2005) and Dercon et al. (2006), households (particularly richer households) may subscribe to more than one iddir, which suggests that the heterogeneous effect of iddirs cannot be ruled out. However, our sampling and identification strategy helps us to minimize such heterogeneity as we are comparing households who have just joined with those who have not. It is less likely that households would suddenly subscribe to many iddirs in such a short time.Using a detailed longitudinal household survey data from Ethiopia, we empirically show that indigenous social networks such as iddir associations can play a crucial role in facilitating factor market transactions. Iddir networks are the most popular and widely available social networks both in urban and rural areas of Ethiopia. The fact that these networks are inclusive, offers interesting context and perspective through which to investigate their role in overcoming some of the factor market imperfections in rural economies. While studies such as Krishnan and Sciubba (2009) investigate the compositional and architectural impact of social networks on economic performance (or agricultural output), we investigate the role of iddir networks in facilitating factor market transactions, which are key inputs for improving the economic performance of smallholder farmers. To circumvent the selection of households into iddir networks, we rely on a difference-in-differences approach by comparing the growth in factor market transactions between those households who joined iddir networks and those who did not, before and after the former joined the networks.The fact that iddir networks avail information, strengthen trust, and reduce enforcement costs has important implications in view of the binding factor market imperfections in rural economies. Owing to these qualities, iddir networks can substantially reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry among agents of factor markets, facilitating smooth transactions within factor markets. For instance, in countries like Ethiopia where land insecurity is a limiting factor in land transactions (Deininger et al. 2008;Ghebru and Holden 2008;Deininger and Jin 2008), understanding the role of iddir associations is crucial. In this context, our results indicate that iddir networks offer alternative ways to overcome land market imperfections by bridging the gap between those farmers who own excess land (in excess of their draft power), and those with excess draft power (in excess of their land endowment). 19 Similarly, we find that iddir networks can improve agricultural labor market imperfections by facilitating labor-sharing practices among households. While Krishnan and Sciubba (2009) find that social capital generated through labor-sharing arrangements matters for agricultural output, our results show that indigenous social networks, such as iddir associations, generate social capital by facilitating labor-sharing arrangements.Another important implication of iddir networks relates to credit markets and their role in easing the liquidity constraints of smallholder farmers. Access to credit is a central factor in transforming smallholder farming of the Ethiopian type. Dercon and Christiaensen (2011) emphasize that credit constraints and uninsured agricultural production are key factors that keep smallholder farmers in poverty. In this context, our results show that iddir networks boost the credit access of households from potential members of the iddir association. Iddir networks improve households' credit access from friends and neighbors. Interestingly, our findings also indicate that iddir networks crowd-out expensive and inefficient credit sources, including informal local moneylenders (Arata Abedari) without virtually affecting formal credit sources such as microfinance institutions. This is intuitively expected, because iddir members (both borrowers and lenders) have privileged access to information, which lowers the transaction costs associated with their credit transactions. Thus, households' access to alternative, and perhaps, cheaper credit sources through these networks can drive high cost informal lenders out of the credit market. This is particularly appealing in view of the fact that formal credit markets are commonly thought to be ineffective at crowding-out informal moneylenders in rural areas (Hoff and Stiglitz 1990;Udry 1990).To summarize, given the direct and indirect roles that iddir networks can play in factor markets and other development initiatives, new thinking regarding ways of supporting these networks is needed. As suggested by Dercon et al. (2006), policy makers may focus on scaling up the institutional capacity of these networks without diluting their institutional strength.Although our results highlight the potential of indigenous social networks, such as iddirs, in facilitating factor market transactions, further investigation into how to exploit the potential of these networks is needed. One possible dimension might be forming partnerships between iddir networks and other government and non-government organizations as suggested by Pankhurst (2008). Such partnerships may be vital in expanding formal credit institutions by combining the desirable qualities of iddir networks with the institutional capacity of the formal organizations. Whichever direction is considered, there needs to be an initiative to tap the potential that these networks offer.However, this study is not without its limitations. First, it is understood that we are estimating a reduced form equation where the mechanics and channels through which iddir networks affect factor markets are not clearly visible. Second, we only know whether the households are members of an iddir in the village. There might be heterogeneity among the services given by different iddirs, and, hence, households subscribing to different iddirs might be subject to heterogeneous treatment effects. Though not expected in such a short time span, households may also subscribe to more than one iddir association simultaneously. It would be interesting to investigate the heterogeneous effects of these networks and their policy implications. For instance, Krishnan and Sciubba (2009) emphasize that the impact of social networks on economic performance heavily depends on the size and type of the network. Finally, although iddir networks facilitate factor market transactions, further research on the efficiency of such transactions is worth considering. More generally and as also argued in Fafchamps (2006), social networks present both positive and negative externalities emanating from the complicated attributes of these networks; thus, further research on the potential of these indigenous networks would help in designing better policy interventions.  Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's involvement in land transactions. Except the first and fourth columns, all estimations include four regional dummies corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third and sixth columns include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.¥ Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation. Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's involvement in labor transactions. Except the first column, all estimations include four regional dummies corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third column include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. ¥ Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation. Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's access to credit from different sources. Except the first and fourth columns, all estimations include four regional dummies corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third and sixth columns include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.¥ Marginal effects are from a probit difference-in-differences estimation. Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's access to factor market transaction. . Except the first and fourth columns, all estimations include four regional dummies corresponding to the main regions of Ethiopia. Estimates on the third and sixth columns include 65 village (kebele)-level fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. Notes: Each column presents difference-in-differences estimations of equation ( 1) for household's access to factor market transaction using the data from the 2008 and 2012 surveys. In this table we are using the 2012 survey to estimate the long-run effects of joining iddir networks as a robustness exercise to corroborate our findings. We did this exercise for those outcome variables with complete information in all surveys. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * indicates significance level at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.","tokenCount":"8806","images":["1679886482_1_1.png","1679886482_26_1.png","1679886482_26_2.png"],"tables":["1679886482_1_1.json","1679886482_2_1.json","1679886482_3_1.json","1679886482_4_1.json","1679886482_5_1.json","1679886482_6_1.json","1679886482_7_1.json","1679886482_8_1.json","1679886482_9_1.json","1679886482_10_1.json","1679886482_11_1.json","1679886482_12_1.json","1679886482_13_1.json","1679886482_14_1.json","1679886482_15_1.json","1679886482_16_1.json","1679886482_17_1.json","1679886482_18_1.json","1679886482_19_1.json","1679886482_20_1.json","1679886482_21_1.json","1679886482_22_1.json","1679886482_23_1.json","1679886482_24_1.json","1679886482_25_1.json","1679886482_26_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"adacdea61f3bfa3866e03314516de382","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/53fc929f-2751-47b6-a924-8db6700cb113/retrieve","description":"In March 2019, the government of the Philippines promulgated a bill called the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL). It has dramatically changed the policy landscape in the rice sector and generated heated debates on how it would affect food security and poverty. This study explores the welfare effects of this reform across different types of households. We rely on the IRRI Global Rice Model to simulate the domestic price effects of the reform (Balié and Valera, 2020) and the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) to study the welfare impact of these price changes. Our results show that the RTL reduces consumer and producer rice prices, which affects households on the production and the consumption sides. Because a large majority of households are net buyers of rice and the policy reform reduces rice prices, most households benefit from the reform. Overall, the effects of the reform on poverty are beneficial. The poorest quintiles are positively affected, while the richest quintiles are unaffected or slightly worse-off. Spatially, the poorest regions also benefit the most. However, the rice growers who are net sellers are negatively impacted. The government should seek to mitigate the negative effects on non-competitive rice growers. Investments in public goods and services are a promising option to ease the emergence of on-farm and off-farm businesses as more profitable alternatives to rice production.","id":"840018821"},"keywords":["Welfare effects","regional analysis","price change","rice policy","Philippines. JEL: D60","F13","I32","Q17"],"sieverID":"7c5f2bdc-7f03-4ef3-996b-db925288b412","pagecount":"45","content":"in 1975, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. IFPRI's strategic research aims to foster a climate-resilient and sustainable food supply; promote healthy diets and nutrition for all; build inclusive and efficient markets, trade systems, and food industries; transform agricultural and rural economies; and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is integrated in all the Institute's work. Partnerships, communications, capacity strengthening, and data and knowledge management are essential components to translate IFPRI's research from action to impact. The Institute's regional and country programs play a critical role in responding to demand for food policy research and in delivering holistic support for country-led development. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world.The Philippines has a decades-long policy of protecting the rice sector and intervening in the rice market. Since the early 1980s, the country has maintained domestic rice prices above international prices. In March 2019, the government of the Philippines promulgated a bill called the Rice Tariffication Law (Republic Act No. 11203). The policy reform abandoned the quantitative restrictions on imports that have been in place for more than thirty years, replacing them with ad valorem tariffs to finally comply with the principles and rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Another important aspect of the reform was the elimination of the role of the National Food Authority (NFA) in rice imports. For many years, the NFA had a monopoly on the importation of rice, and more recently, it issued a limited number of import licenses to private traders. The NFA has long been considered a source of huge inefficiencies and inappropriate interventions in markets (Clarete, 2019;Galvez, 2019;Ramos, 2019). The RTL opened up the market to private sector traders, eliminating the de facto market power exercised by the NFA for decades. The role of the NFA is now limited to maintaining food security rice stocks procured from Philippine farmers.The quantitative restrictions are replaced by a 35% applied tariff on rice imported from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Imports from ASEAN countries are subject to in-quota applied tariff of 40% for volumes below 350 thousand tons and out-of-quota applied tariff of 50% for non-ASEAN countries for volumes above that amount (Briones, 2019;USDA, 2019). The bound tariff rate is 180% for imports from non-ASEAN countries above 350 thousand tons (NEDA, 2019).The new policy has not only eased restrictions on rice imports, it has also increased the government revenue arising from tariffs. The government adopted the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) to modernize rice farms and support the government's goal of increasing the sector's productivity. The RCEF is endowed with roughly USD 200 million (PhP 10 billion) annually for six years beginning 2019. By law, half of the RCEF (PhP 5 billion) will be used to annually procure rice farm equipment through the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PHilMech). The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) will receive 30 percent of the RCEF to develop, propagate and promote improved rice seeds to rice farmers and organizations of rice farmers. Meanwhile, the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines will be entrusted with 10 percent of the fund for the creation of a credit facility with minimal interest rates and collateral requirements. The remaining 10 percent of the RCEF will be dedicated to capacity development in rice crop production, modern rice farming techniques, seed production, farm mechanization, and knowledge and technology transfer through farm schools nationwide.This policy reform has generated important debate, often spilling over into the popular media. The Law has been criticized by some policymakers, notably members of congress, prominent farmers' groups, and a few members of academia. The main argument is that by reducing paddy price, it would impoverish small rice growers who are already close to the poverty line and vulnerable to market and other shocks. Other stakeholders have pointed out the risk for the national food security of increasing the import dependence, becoming more exposed and vulnerable to shocks in the international rice market. Some farmers groups and cooperatives are particularly vocal regarding the reduced role of the NFA due to the RTL (ABS- CBN News, 2019;Simeon, 2020).Proponents of the RTL argue that the losses to rice farmers are small compared to the gains to consumers and the country as a whole. They point out that poor urban households would gain from lower rice prices. Furthermore, they note that the tariff revenue can be used to support farmers with rural investments (Habito, 2019a and2019b;Briones, 2019). Javier (2019) defends the RTL but advocates for using the tariff revenue to provide cash assistance to rice farmers. However, both sides agree that agriculture should remain a priority. Most of the tenets of this pro-agriculture stance argue that priority should be placed in infrastructure development and modernization including irrigation maintenance, flood retardation infrastructure, farm-to-market roads, and food terminals that would increase farmer productivity and income. These priorities denote a preference for investments in public goods. As such, they only partially align with those of the RCEF which primarily emphasize production.While it has been heavily debated, the potential effects of the reform had not been extensively studied to date. To our knowledge, there are no studies exploring the potential distributional effects of the reform across types of households of the country. In this study, we propose to fill this gap in the literature. We look at the possible effects of the reform at household level and across regions. We rely on the family income and expenditure survey (FIES) for 2015. To get a sense of the magnitude of the price effect, we build on the study by Balié and Valera (2020) which used the IRRI Global Rice Model (IGRM) with useful regional disaggregation to capture the differentiated outcomes across regions. This paper aims to provide greater insights for policymakers in the Philippines as well as development partners on the actual effects of this controversial reform. The findings are relevant beyond the Philippines as other countries in the region are currently contemplating a reform of their rice price policy. This research also adds to the literature both from a methodological and an empirical standpoint. Methodologically we show how useful it is to combine the result of a partial equilibrium model with an analysis of the distributional impact of a change in the households' demand system. Specifically, we estimate the proportional change in income associated with a rice price change, where the household may be a consumer and/or producer of rice. In doing so, we build on the Deaton's (1989) approach to approximating the compensating variation (CV) of price changes, extending it to take into account second-order effects (that is, the effect of producer and consumer response to the price change) and the fact that producer and consumer prices may not change in the same proportion.We find that the RTL reduces consumer and producer rice prices, which affects households on the production and the consumption sides. Because a large majority of the households are net buyers of rice and the policy reform reduces rice prices, most households benefit from the reforms. Overall, the effects of the reform on poverty are positive. The poorest quintiles are positively affected. The richest quintiles are unaffected or slightly worse-off.Spatially, the poorest regions also benefit the most. As a result, this policy reform can be qualified as pro-poor and also somewhat redistributive. However, the rice growers who are net sellers are negatively impacted. The role of the government would be to adopt accompanying measures to help these farmers to adapt and develop profitable business in or outside agriculture.In that sense, the RCEF is a move in the right direction. It is hoped that the RCEF will also allow for investments in infrastructure and other public goods that would enable the business in agriculture as well as outside agriculture. Investments and policy support measures are needed in rural areas of the Philippines to create more opportunities for on-farm diversification towards higher value crops than rice and off-farm income-generating activities to supply the goods and services demanded by the agricultural sector.The paper is structured as follows. The second section provides an overview of the literature on policy reforms with a focus on the rice sector and the welfare analysis of changes in food prices. Section 3 describes the data used and their sources, while Section 4 describes the methods used in the analysis. Section 5 presents the main results and offers a discussion of these results. The last section concludes and proposes a few policy recommendations.Previous studies on the price effect of rice trade policy reform specifically distinguish its impact on the world and domestic prices of rice. However, only a few of these studies consider the impact of changes in the domestic price of rice on the welfare and poverty of different groups of households. In this section, we present and discuss related literature in two strands: the impact of rice policy trade reforms on the domestic prices of rice and the impact of price changes in rice and other food commodities on poverty.Trade policy reforms undertaken in major rice trading countries, including export liberalization and import liberalization, can result in either higher or lower rice prices. The price of rice is a major determinant of the well-being of poor families in many developing countries where rice is a major food commodity. Any significant swing in rice prices associated with trade policy reforms is a matter of serious concern for policymakers in developing countries. Higher rice prices reduce the purchasing power of the urban poor who spend a relatively large share of their budgets on rice. Conversely, lower farm prices reduce income for rice farmers, particularly those who are large net sellers of rice.Few studies have estimated the distributional domestic price effect of rice trade policy reforms. Deaton (1989) studied the impact of higher rice prices resulting from Thailand's export liberalization program. He found that middle-income farmers gained the most from such a price shock because their net sales were large relative to their income. Simulating the effect of export liberalization on rice prices in Vietnam using a spatial-equilibrium model, Minot and Goletti (1998) showed that eliminating the rice export quota would increase the average retail price of rice by 19-26% depending on the region. They used household survey data to show that these price changes would have a slightly beneficial impact in terms of poverty reduction. Bakhshoodeh (2010) examined the impact of the change in price of imported rice due to exchange-rate unification on the domestic rice prices among the households in Iran. The author reported that the percentage increase in the domestic rice prices between 2002 and 2003 was higher for the poorest households (39%) than for the richest households (20%) in the rural areas. Ha et al. (2015) studied the impact of quota policy and free trade scenarios on Vietnam's domestic rice prices. They showed that rice prices would fall by 17% in the Mekong River Delta and 18% in the South East region with an export quota, while prices would rise by more than 30% in those two regions under a free-trade scenario. Ali et al. (2019) estimated that the domestic rice price in Malaysia would drop by 15.8% under a free-trade scenario and 16.5% under a scenario combining free trade and achieving self-sufficiency through a positive productivity shock.There are existing empirical studies of the rice trade policy reforms in the Philippines. Acosta and Kagatsume (2003) used a spatial-equilibrium model to show that the domestic prices of rice would decrease by 20% when the AFTA tariff is eliminated in combination with an overall reduction of tariffs and domestic support to comply with WTO rules. Likewise, Briones (2012) simulated a tariff reduction to 35% from its baseline tariff rate of 50% and showed that farm and retail prices in the Philippines would decline by 8.0% and 8.7%, respectively.Using the IRRI Global Rice Model (IGRM), Hoang and Meyers (2013) investigated the impact of trade liberalization in five major rice trading countries of Southeast Asia. The results of their simulation for the Philippines showed that the retail price of rice would decline by 19% in 2020 when state trading enterprises (STE) implicit tariffs are eliminated. Moreover, they showed that retail prices of rice in the Philippines would decline more by 33% in 2020 when both the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) and STE tariffs are removed. Also for the Philippines, Perez and Pradesha (2019) used the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) International Model for the Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) and estimated that both farm and retail prices of rice would decrease by 26% when quantitative restrictions (QR) are removed and a 35% import tariff is imposed. More recently, Balié and Valera (2020) used the IGRM and examined the impact of the QR removal in 2019 and the imposition of different import tariff scenarios on the domestic rice prices. Their study revealed that farm and retail prices at the national level would decrease by 30% and 17% in 2019, respectively. At the regional level, they found a heterogeneous production response to the policy reform, with rice farm prices falling between 14% in the ARMM region and 23% in SOCCSKSARGEN region (the acronyms are spelled out in Table 1).There are also empirical studies on the impact of rice trade policy reform in the Philippines based on computable general equilibrium models. Cockburn et al. (2008) estimated that the domestic price in the Philippines would decrease by 2.7% for irrigated paddy rice and 3.3% for non-irrigated paddy rice when the tariffs for all agricultural and industrial sectors are fully eliminated. Also, Cororaton and Yu (2019) showed that the elimination of the QR and imposition of 35% tariff in the Philippines would lower farm and retail prices by 3.7% and 10.9%, respectively.As the above discussion suggests, the existing literature focuses only on the impact of rice trade policy reforms on the domestic rice prices. In this study, we contribute to the literature by investigating the distributional effects of lower domestic rice prices associated with import liberalization in the Philippines on the welfare of different households and across regions. In doing so, we build on Balié and Valera (2020) who estimated the percentage fall in farm prices by region, average percentage decrease in retail price, and supply elasticity of rice by region.In this study, we combine household survey data with information on the supply and demand elasticities for rice and region-specific poverty lines. This enables us to offer new perspectives on the impact of the Philippine Rice Tariffication Law in a number of ways. First, this study allows us to take into account second-order effects (e.g. the welfare impact of producer and consumer response to the rice price change), and the fact that producer and consumer prices of rice may not change in the same proportion. Second, this study offers an explicit analysis of how the effect of rice tariffication on total consumption expenditure as a measure of household welfare, and poverty varies across household groups, regions, rural and urban locations, farmer groups, and sex of household heads. Third, the use of household data allows us to examine the types of rice consumed by different households and analyze the importance of rice in household budgets. Fourth, this study quantifies the number of households who are net buyers and net sellers of rice.The issue of whether poor households gain or lose from higher food prices has motivated a large body of literature. However, empirical evidence on the impact of rice price changes on poverty remains equivocal. Ravallion (1990), who analyzed first-order effect of rice price in Bangladesh, showed that poor rural households suffer from higher rice prices and induced changes in wages while rich rural households gain. Applying Deaton's approach based on the first-order effect of prices, Ivanic and Martin (2008) found that higher rice prices reduce rural and national poverty rates in Pakistan and Vietnam, while raising the urban poverty rate. They also showed that higher rice prices increase rural, urban and national poverty rates in Bolivia, Cambodia, Madagascar, Nicaragua, and Zambia. Analysis of first-order effect of price changes also showed that higher rice prices increase poverty rates in Burkina Faso (Badolo and Traore, 2015), and Latin American countries (Robles and Torero, 2010). In addition, Dimova and Bakou (2013) found that poor rural households gain from the increase in rice prices in Cote d'Ivoire, while middle income urban households lose.A few studies analyzed the distributional impact of rice trade policy reforms using the first-order effect of rice prices. For the Philippines, Lasco et al. (2008) combined first-order impact and induced wage effect of lower rice prices associated with import liberalization. Their research showed that decreasing rice prices adversely affect households that are highly reliant on agricultural wages for income, while other households benefit from it.Meanwhile, most studies also employ first-order approximation of the welfare impact of higher prices of other food commodities. Some examples of these studies include Arndt et al. (2008), Ivanic and Martin (2008), Wodon and Zaman (2008), Simler (2010), Dimova and Bakou (2013), Badolo and Traore (2015), Jacoby (2013), Ivanic and Martin (2014), Caracciolo et al. (2014), Levin and Vimefall (2015), and Martuscelli (2017). Overall, a very mixed picture is obtained as to whether higher food prices raise or reduce poverty in developing countries.First-order approximations of the welfare impact of price changes do not capture the response of consumers or producers to the price changes (Minot and Dewina, 2015). As a result, the aforementioned studies at most can only evaluate the short-run effects of price changes that occur before households have time to adjust production and demand (Martuscelli, 2017). In this case, as pointed out by Mghenyi et al. (2011), the first-order approximation lacks the ability to further evaluate the welfare effect of a large discrete price change since supply and demand responses to such a major price change may be substantial.To address this problem, the second-order impact of price changes on welfare and poverty are calculated in several studies. This approach allows for the welfare-enhancing responses of producers and consumers to price changes (Minot and Dewina, 2015). Among the few studies that employed this approach within the rice trade reforms setting, Minot and Goletti (1998) used a spatial-equilibrium model to simulate the effects of export liberalization on rice prices in Vietnam. Using household survey data, they estimated second-order impact of price changes on household welfare and poverty. They found that higher rice prices slightly reduced the incidence and depth of poverty in Vietnam. Looking at the lower rice price due to liberalization of trade in irrigation equipment and fertilizer markets in the early 1990s in Bangladesh, Klytchikova and Diop (2006) found that the poorest households benefit from this reform while large rice net sellers are the main losers. Moreover, in Bangladesh, Hasan (2016) found that a sharp rise in rice price worsens the country's poverty situation on the basis of the rice per capita consumption gap.Several studies have also estimated the second-order welfare effect of higher food prices. Some examples of these studies include Minot and Daniels (2005), Robles and Torero (2010), Mghenyi et al. (2011), Vu andGlewwe (2011), Ferreira et al. (2013), Minot and Dewina (2015), Tiberti andTiberti (2018), andVan Campenhout et al. (2018).As shown above, only a few studies analyzed the distributional impact on welfare and poverty of lower rice prices associated with rice trade liberalization. To our knowledge, there are no studies investigating the welfare effect of rice tariffication or the distributional consequences across regions of the Philippines. Thus, our study fills a potential gap in the existing literature by capturing producer and consumer responses to rice price changes due to the 2019 RTL in the Philippines, and estimating second-order welfare effects within a partial-equilibrium approach.The effects of rice tariffication on household welfare occur through prices. The reform leads to lower domestic rice prices, resulting in reduced income for rice farmers but increased purchasing power for rice consumers. Our analysis employs data based on three sources in order to simulate the impact of lower prices of rice on different types of households.First, we use the simulated decline in farm and retail prices due to the rice trade policy reform from Balié and Valera (2020). The authors used the IRRI Global Rice Model (IGRM), a partial equilibrium model comprising 25 countries and four regional aggregates. The model incorporates net imports by origin, linkage between national retail price and regional farm prices, and a regional supply response of rice. In their simulation, they removed the QR on rice imports and imposed a 35% tariff on imports from ASEAN countries and a 40% tariff on non-ASEAN WTO member countries within the minimum access volume. The model simulates the impact of the rice tariffication on farm-gate and retail prices in each region of the Philippines.Second, we obtained estimates of the compensated and uncompensated demand elasticities for rice from Lantican et al. (2013), supply elasticities from Balié and Valera (2020), and regional poverty lines from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) (see Table 1). Lantican March 2019. We use this information to simulate the impact of lower domestic prices on the welfare of each household in the sample. We assume that rice consumption patterns and income sources did not change significantly between 2015, when the survey took place, and 2019, when domestic rice prices decreased following the reform. We also assume that the estimated demand and supply elasticities are still valid.In this study, we choose to adopt the definition of the 17 regions covered in the 2015 FIES data. Table 1 shows the demand and supply elasticities for rice and the poverty line for each of the 17 regions of the Philippines. For the purpose of this study, households were classified along five dimensions: urban and rural households, male-and female-headed households, the 17 regions, rice farmers and other households, and five quintiles of per capita consumption expenditure. All the analyses used sampling weights estimated by the PSA for the 2015 FIES data to compensate for over-and under-sampling in the FIES sample design. The methods used in this study can be divided into two parts. First, we use the IGRM to simulate the impact of the rice tariffication reform in the Philippines on producer and consumer rice prices in different regions of the country. Second, we use the 2015 FIES to estimate the impact of these rice price changes on welfare and poverty among different types of households in the Philippines.In the IGRM, each country model has four major components that include supply, demand, trade, and price relationships. Supply is composed of production, beginning stocks and imports. Demand comprises domestic consumption, ending stock and exports. The Thai FOB 5% broken price, which is the world reference price for the IGRM, is solved to close the model such that the net exports of Thailand equal the sum of the net trade of the remaining countries.We build on Balié and Valera (2020) in simulating the price effect of the QR removal and the imposition of applied tariffs for imports from ASEAN and non-ASEAN WTO member countries. The procedure by which this simulation was facilitated is twofold. First, the QR is captured first into net import imports coming from Vietnam and Thailand, other ASEAN countries, and non-ASEAN countries. Accordingly, the QR and net imports by origin are taken into account in solving for market clearing farm price. The market clearing farm price is determined by the sum of net imports, total milled production, beginning stocks equal to the sum of total consumption and ending stocks. Second, the market clearing farm price is linked to national retail price, which is also a function of the world price of rice. The national retail price is then linked to the regional farm prices. This allows us to estimate changes in regional farm prices and national retail price when QR is eliminated and applied tariffs are imposed.The second part of the analysis uses these rice price changes and household survey data to simulate the distributional impact of rice tariffication. Deaton (1989) was one of the first studies to use nationally representative household survey data from a low-income country to estimate the impact of price changes on welfare of each household, a method sometimes called microsimulation. To measure the welfare impact on a household of a price change of a commodity that the households buys and/or sells (such as rice), Deaton (1989) proposed the following formulation:where \uD835\uDC36\uD835\uDC36\uD835\uDC36\uD835\uDC36 is the compensating variation measure of welfare, \uD835\uDC4C\uD835\uDC4C is household income or expenditure, \uD835\uDC5E\uD835\uDC5E is the value of production of the commodity as a share of expenditure, \uD835\uDC60\uD835\uDC60 is the share of total expenditure spent on the commodity, and \uD835\uDC5D\uD835\uDC5D̂ is the proportional change in the commodity price. This expression is a first-order Taylor-series approximation of the proportional compensating variation associated with a price change.Deaton calls (\uD835\uDC5E\uD835\uDC5E -\uD835\uDC60\uD835\uDC60) the net benefit ratio (NBR) and notes that it can also be interpreted as the short-term elasticity of household welfare with respect to the price of the commodity. If the household is a net seller, the NBR will be positive, implying that an increase in the commodity price will raise household welfare. If it is a net buyer, the NBR will be negative and higher prices will reduce welfare (ignoring second-order effects).This expression is quite useful in applied policy analysis because it does not require any information on household responses to price changes. However, the equation relies on several simplifying assumptions:• that the proportional change in consumer prices is equal to the proportional change in producer prices,• that consumers do not respond to the change in consumer prices or that the time frame is too short to reflect a demand response,• that farmers do not respond to the change in producer prices or that the time frame is too short to reflect a supply response,• that there is no change in input or factor prices or that these changes have a negligible effect on household income.In this study, we use an extended version of Deaton's equation that relaxes the first three of the four assumptions:where \uD835\uDC5D\uD835\uDC5D̂\uD835\uDC43\uD835\uDC43 is the proportional change in producer prices, \uD835\uDF00\uD835\uDF00 \uD835\uDC46\uD835\uDC46 is the elasticity of supply of the commodity, \uD835\uDC5D\uD835\uDC5D̂\uD835\uDC36\uD835\uDC36 is the proportional change in consumer prices, and \uD835\uDF00\uD835\uDF00 \uD835\uDC37\uD835\uDC37 is the Hicksian elasticity of demand. By distinguishing between the proportional change in producer prices and consumer prices, we relax the first assumptions that they are identical. By adding the second and fourth terms on the right side, we take into account the producer and consumer response to the new prices in calculating the welfare impact, thus relaxing the second and third assumptions. In graphic terms, these are the \"triangles\" in the diagrams of consumer and producer surplus.Because these second-order effects are positive, the welfare impact obtained from equation (2) will be somewhat more positive than that obtained from equation (1). It can be shown that equation ( 2) is the second-order Taylor-series expansion of the proportional compensating variation associated with a price change (see Minot and Dewina, 2015).Equation ( 2) can be used to estimate the change in income due to the commodity price change for each household in a household survey. This information allows us to determine whether a household is below the poverty line before and after the price change. If the household survey is nationally representative, we can use sampling weights and household size to aggregate these results to calculate the incidence of poverty (also called headcount poverty) at subnational or national levels before and after the price change. For example, we can estimate the impact of the price change on the incidence of poverty for different categories of households such as rice farmers, urban households, and those living in each region.As mentioned in Section 3, we use a partial equilibrium model to simulate the effect of the rice tariffication law on producer and retail rice prices and household income and expenditure survey data to simulate the impact of rice price decreases on the real income (or purchasing power) of each household in the 2015 FIES. The results are then aggregated to different types of households, defined by location, gender of households, region, farmers group, and expenditure quintile.This section begins with a description of household characteristics based on the 2015 FIES, particularly the patterns of rice production and consumption. Next, we review the results of a prior study on the impact of the rice tariffication reform on rice prices. With this information, we examine the impact of these rice price changes on the welfare of different types of households. Finally, we explore the effect of rice tariffication on two measures of poverty, the incidence of poverty and the poverty gap.It is useful to describe first the characteristics of households prior to estimating the impact of rice price changes on the welfare of different households. There are many more of these non-rice farmers than there are rice growers even though rice is the single most important staple crop in the Philippines.Table 3 presents characteristics of rice growers and other households. Household size is similar, with both groups having slightly fewer than 5 members on average. Rice farming households are more likely to be male headed than other households. Average income and expenditure per capita are both lower for rice growers than other households. The share of food expenditure is slightly higher for rice growers (52%) than for other farmers (49%), reflecting their lower income. The incidence of poverty rate is noticeably higher among rice farmers (35%) than other households (27%), and a similar pattern holds for the poverty gap.  As expected, the per capita consumption of high-quality (well-milled) rice increases with income (see Figure 1). For example, consumption of high-quality rice by the richest quintile is fourfold that of the poorest quintile. Conversely, the poorest quintile consumes nearly twice as much ordinary rice and 20 times more NFA rice compared to the richest quintile. Unsurprisingly given the gap in income, urban households consume twice as much high-quality rice than rural households, who tend to consume more of the ordinary and low-quality NFA rice (see Figure 2). Table 4 shows the importance of rice consumption in total expenditure and the value of rice production as a proportion of total expenditure for different types of households. The difference between these two ratios is the value of net sales as a share of expenditure, also called the net benefit ratio (NBR). As discussed earlier, a negative NBR in rice means the household (or group of households) is a net buyer (in value terms) and will gain from lower rice prices.Conversely, a positive NBR implies net sales of rice, so the household will lose from lower rice prices. Overall, the value of rice production represents about 5.3% of household expenditure, while the value of rice consumption is 11.7% of expenditure, implying a net benefit ratio of -6.4%. The negative NBR reflects the fact that the Philippines is a rice-importing country (implying that consumption exceeds production) as well as the fact that rice consumption is valued at the higher retail price while production is valued at producer prices.Table 4 also provides information about different types of households. For rice farmers, about half (49%) of income (including in-kind income) comes from rice production, while rice consumption represents 16% of their budgets. For households that do not grow rice, rice consumption represents 11% of the budget.As expected, rural households get a larger share of their income from rice than urban households. However, rural households are also spending a larger share of their budget on rice (14%) compared to urban households (8.6%). The rice NBR is negative in both urban and rural areas, but it is slightly more negative (-0.08) in urban areas than in rural areas (-0.06), indicating that the former would benefit more from the policy reform in terms of the proportional change in real income.In value terms, Cagayan Valley is the only self-sufficient or surplus region, in that rice production accounts for 22% of household income, while rice consumption represents 13% of the total. Thus, the NBR is positive (0.096), suggesting that the region would be harmed by a reduction in rice prices (if we ignore second-order effects). Meanwhile, all other regions have negative NBRs, meaning they would gain from lower rice prices. This is notably true in EasternVisayas, where the NRB is -0.148. The results show that the importance of rice consumption as well as rice production in the budget is much greater for the poorest quintiles (Figure 3). These shares decline consistently as we move toward richer quintiles. The NBR is negative for all five expenditure quintiles, but it is more negative for the poorest quintile (Figure 4). This means that every quintile gains from lower rice prices, but the poorest quintile gains the most. The graph confirms that the net benefit ratio rises from below -10% in the first quintile to close to zero in the fifth quintile. This means that, on average, poor households gain significantly from lower rice prices, while households in the highest quintile are affected very little. Given that net buyers gain from lower prices while net sellers generally lose, it is useful to consider the proportion of each among different types of households. As expected, the proportion of households that are net buyers of rice (in value terms) is higher in urban areas (97%) than in rural areas (84%) (see Table 5). However, the large share of rural households that are net buyers is somewhat surprising. This reflects the large number of rural households that own no land themselves, cultivate plots that are too small to produce a surplus, or perhaps grow other crops. These households must purchase rice at markets to meet their consumption needs.  Even among the rice growers, we still find nearly 25% are net buyers. Although we do not have farm-size data to confirm this, it is likely that these net buyers are small rice farmers who are not able to produce enough to meet their rice consumption requirements. The smallest share of net buyers is observed in the Cagayan Valley (73%) while in all the other regions more than 80% are net buyers (Figure 6). The proportion of net buyers of rice is highest in NCR, a highly urbanized region with many high-income households. Likewise, the proportion of net buyers of rice is high in CALABARZON where extensive land conversion for housing subdivisions or industrial parks has taken place in the past three decades.In terms of gender difference, female-headed households are more likely to be net buyers than male-headed households. Both rice production share in income and consumption share in the budget are higher for male-headed households than for women-headed households (Table 4).Because the households in the poorest quintiles are primarily net buyers, these households are likely to benefit from a decrease in rice prices. The largest farmers, who are typically net sellers, are more likely to be hurt by lower prices, but they also have more ability to adjust and adapt. The 2019 RTL reformed the policies regulating rice imports in the Philippines. Before the RTL, the NFA imported rice subject to quantitative restrictions, which limited rice imports. The RTL allows private-sector rice imports and uses import tariffs rather than quantitative restrictions to maintain some level of protection for Philippine rice farmers. Based on an analysis using the IGRM (Balié and Valera, 2020), the RTL will allow an increase in rice imports and reduce producer and consumer rice prices. This study estimated that the RTL will reduce consumer prices by 17.4%, and decrease producer prices between 13.6% and 22.6% depending on the region (see Table 6).In this section, we simulate the effect of rice price changes associated with tariffication on per capita real expenditure as a measure household welfare. We calculate the welfare effect of these price changes for each household in the FIES 2015, taking into account the importance of The decline in price due to rice tariffication has a more positive impact on female-headed households. Although the share of rice consumption in the budget is somewhat higher for maleheaded households than female-headed households, male-headed households are much more dependent on rice production as a source of income. The latter effect dominates, so male-headed households gain less from price reductions associated with rice tariffication.Most of the regions would have higher welfare after the reform (Figure 7). Just three of the 17 regions exhibit a decline in welfare, namely Cagayan Valley, MIMAROPA and Central Luzon. It should be noted that rice growers are the main losers with a decline in welfare of 7.7%.Meanwhile, non-rice farmers (including other farmers and urban households) benefit from the drop in rice price as they are net buyers. The increased purchasing power allows them to increase their consumption of rice and other goods.The results also show that the welfare of the poorest households increases much more than that of the wealthiest ones with 2.3% increase in expenditure for the poorest as opposed to  The previous section shows that reducing rice prices through rice tariffication increases household welfare on average. However, policymakers are also interested in the effect of the policy reform on the poor. This section examines the effect of rice tariffication on two measures of poverty, the incidence of poverty and the poverty gap. Table 8 examines the impact on the incidence of poverty, defined as the proportion of the population living in households below the poverty line. Overall, we observe a 1.2 percentage point decline in the incidence of poverty as a result of rice tariffication, with the effect being slightly larger in rural areas and smaller in urban areas.Interestingly the poorest regions of Eastern and Western Visayas or Bicol Region are the ones that exhibit the most pronounced reduction in the incidence of poverty (at or above 2 percentage points) as shown in Figure 9. However, rice growers are again the main losers with an increase in poverty of 3.6 percentage points.  The incidence of poverty may be misleading as a poverty indicator because it provides no information on income differences among the poor. The poverty gap gives us information about the proportion of the population that is poor and the average gap between their income and the poverty line. By this measure as well, the reform is clearly poverty reducing with a net reduction in the poverty gap of 1.7 percentage points for the poorest household quintile (see Table 9). The second poorest quintile shows a smaller reduction since most of these households are already above the poverty line. The other quintiles do not have any poor households, so they do not show any improvement. We also find that the poorest region of Eastern Visayas and ARMM witness the most pronounced reduction in the poverty gap among all the regions (Figure 10). The urban dominated regions are only very marginally affected. Rice tariffication increases the poverty gap in just two regions, MIMAROPA and Cagayan Valley. In the other 15 regions, poverty gap decreases. Rice farmers are also losing out as can be seen from the rise in poverty gap of 1.5 percentage points.The reform is welfare increasing nationwide. As in any policy reform, there are losers, and in this case, they are the surplus rice farmers.  Because of the importance of rice in the Philippine economy and diet, rice prices are a politically sensitive topic. Thus, it is not surprising that the Rice Tariffication Law, passed in March 2019, has been controversial. The RTL converts a series of quantitative restrictions on rice imports into ad valorem import taxes of 35% for imports from ASEAN countries and 40-50% on imports from other countries. This change represents a reduction of the role of the government in managing rice imports as well as a reduction in the level of protection provided to local rice farmers. Opponents of the RTL argue that it will hurt rice farmers and increase rural poverty, while proponents note that urban consumers will benefit from lower rice prices.In order to address this issue, our study uses the IRRI Global Rice Model to simulate the impact of the RTL on producer and consumer rice prices in different regions of the Philippines and then uses the 2015 Family Income and Expenditure Survey to estimate the effect of these price changes on household welfare and poverty. We find that rice the tariffication reform reduces the consumer prices of rice by 17.4%, and decreases the producer prices of rice between 13.6% and 22.6% depending on the region. Thus, households are affected both as producers and consumers of rice.The 2015 Family Income and Expenditure Survey suggests that, since a large majority of households are net buyers of rice, most households benefit from the lower rice prices that result from the rice trade reform. Overall, the effects of the reform on poverty are positive. The poorest quintiles are better off. The richest quintiles are unaffected or slightly worse-off. Spatially, the poorest regions also benefit the most. As a result, this policy reform can be qualified as pro-poor and also somewhat redistributive.However, the rice growers who are net sellers are negatively impacted. The government can adopt accompanying measures to help these farmers to adapt and develop profitable business in agriculture or outside. In that sense, the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund is a move in the right direction. It is expected that the RCEF will increase investment in infrastructure and other public goods that would stimulate agricultural and non-agricultural activities. The RCEF establishes a program with four components, namely: 1) rice farm mechanization, 2) improved rice seed development, propagation, and promotion, 3) expanded rice credit assistance, and 4) rice extension services. Investments and policy support measures are needed in rural areas of the Philippines to create more opportunities for on-farm diversification towards higher value crops than rice and off-farm income-generating activities to supply the goods and services demanded by the agricultural sector.With respect to methods, we show the value of using a spatially-disaggregated partialequilibrium model to simulate the impact of policy on prices and nationally-representative household survey data to examine the impact of the price changes on welfare and poverty. In using a partial-equilibrium model, we assume that the impact of policy on other sectors and","tokenCount":"7012","images":["840018821_1_1.png","840018821_23_1.png","840018821_23_2.png","840018821_26_1.png","840018821_26_2.png","840018821_29_1.png","840018821_32_1.png","840018821_33_1.png","840018821_36_1.png","840018821_38_1.png"],"tables":["840018821_1_1.json","840018821_2_1.json","840018821_3_1.json","840018821_4_1.json","840018821_5_1.json","840018821_6_1.json","840018821_7_1.json","840018821_8_1.json","840018821_9_1.json","840018821_10_1.json","840018821_11_1.json","840018821_12_1.json","840018821_13_1.json","840018821_14_1.json","840018821_15_1.json","840018821_16_1.json","840018821_17_1.json","840018821_18_1.json","840018821_19_1.json","840018821_20_1.json","840018821_21_1.json","840018821_22_1.json","840018821_23_1.json","840018821_24_1.json","840018821_25_1.json","840018821_26_1.json","840018821_27_1.json","840018821_28_1.json","840018821_29_1.json","840018821_30_1.json","840018821_31_1.json","840018821_32_1.json","840018821_33_1.json","840018821_34_1.json","840018821_35_1.json","840018821_36_1.json","840018821_37_1.json","840018821_38_1.json","840018821_39_1.json","840018821_40_1.json","840018821_41_1.json","840018821_42_1.json","840018821_43_1.json","840018821_44_1.json","840018821_45_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"067a1f0455394582d4de84f5246ed4a1","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/586a7b44-0e3f-4992-9747-235a99c41671/retrieve","description":"The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by geographical location. Ethiopia’s diverse landscape defines certain agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and local population densities, which determine both labor availability and local demand for food. Understanding the geographical expression of Ethiopia’s agricultural and rural development options provides greater information for more locally targeted policy options.","id":"-606188236"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d1a9187d-1b69-4059-9906-ce308a3a783a","pagecount":"32","content":"The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by geographical location. Ethiopia's diverse landscape defines certain agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and local population densities, which determine both labor availability and local demand for food. Understanding the geographical expression of Ethiopia's agricultural and rural development options provides greater information for more locally targeted policy options.These conditions not only vary over space but change over time as well. New and improved roads, greater telecommunications, improved access to electricity, and ongoing urban growth continue to lower transaction costs and improve market access. Evolving production opportunities and technologies continue to provide greater flexibility of livelihood decisions within defined biophysical endowments. As Ethiopia continues to invest in infrastructure and technology, its agricultural landscape continues to be reshaped and redefined into broader areas of opportunity and growth.The objectives of this chapter are twofold. First we provide an overview of the geographical features that constitute a basic reference for understanding production systems and the geography of agricultural production in rural Ethiopia. This characterization is organized around the economic logic of comparative advantage for a variety of generalized production decisions of relevance in Ethiopia. Second we extend this framework to organize evidence for and discussion of important areas of dynamism in Ethiopia's rural economic landscape, including a discussion of land tenure policy and its effects on the level of investments in the agricultural sector. Thus, this chapter is mainly a descriptive assessment of important production contexts and the manner in which these contexts are evolving.In large and heterogeneous countries such as Ethiopia, agricultural potential is unevenly distributed over space, and the distribution of production patterns 2 Ethiopian Agriculture:A Dynamic Geographic Perspective JORDAN CHAMBERLIN AND EMILY SCHMIDT reflects this landscape. Mapped zones of smallholder production systems have long been recognized as important in Ethiopia precisely because of such landscape heterogeneity (for example, Westphal 1975;De Pauw and Bruggeman 1988;Hurni 1998). To provide a useful characterization of agricultural landscapes, geographical perspectives seek a balance between too little information and too much. On the one hand, spatial characterization is motivated by the fact that average national statistics and one-size-fits-all development strategies are insufficient for effective rural planning. On the other hand, a surfeit of detail may render mapped classifications useless for planning on the basis of shared conditions: hundreds of subcategories, whether on a map or in a table, even when they accurately portray local variation, usually contain too much information to be tractable as a planning aid. Thus, characterizations generally seek to reduce complexity by prioritizing characteristics that are most meaningful to the production systems of interest. Agroecological zones are perhaps the predominant methodology used to understand actual and potential agricultural production across geographic space. Agroecological zonation uses biophysical attributes of soil, terrain, and climate to organize land-use types or production systems into relatively homogenous units (FAO 1978;Hurni 1998). Hurni (1998) implemented a set of agroecological zone definitions for Ethiopia based on traditional zone designations widely used by rural residents. He linked these designations with specific elevation and rainfall parameters, which allowed mappable boundaries to be imposed on agroecological zones (Figure 2.1).In Ethiopia most agricultural production takes place in the weyna dega and dega zones (highland areas from 1,500 to 2,300 and from 2,300 to 3,200 meters above sea level), where land productivity has traditionally coincided with the densest rural populations. Figure 2.1 shows these zones in midtone gray, scattered throughout the highlands. Specific crops and livelihood choices within and outside this band are conditioned by moisture and temperature regimes, among other factors. The crops most suited to grow in the weyna dega and dega zones are also the most commonly produced crops in Ethiopia. Most producers in these zones are smallholders occupying less than a hectare of land per household on average. 1 Smallholder production is dominated by five major cereal crops accounting for almost three quarters of the total cultivated area and about 68 percent of total production. Each of the major cereals-teff, maize, wheat, sorghum, and barley-has its own distribution, defined primarily by bioclimatic ranges (Table 2.1).Rural livelihoods are strongly influenced by environment because biophysical conditions and cropping patterns vary widely across Ethiopia (Figure 2.2). Nonbiophysical factors, such as access to markets, labor availability, local demand (and markets) for food, and export linkages, may impose additional limitations on locally viable production options. Here we briefly describe some of the major crops-cereals, tubers, and pulses-that make up the Ethiopian agricultural economy, emphasizing the conditions under which they are produced.Teff (Eragrostis tef ) is the preferred staple food in much of the highlands. It is grown by nearly half of all farming households (to a greater extent if only highland households are considered) and accounts for 28 percent of all cultivated land, more than any other single crop. Although traditionally grown in the highlands, teff can be grown under a wide variety of agroclimatic conditions, including elevations from zero to 2,800 meters above sea level (masl), under a similarly wide variety of moisture, temperature, and soil conditions. Its optimal growing conditions coincide with its traditional production areas: an average elevation of 1,800-2,100 masl, average annual rainfall of 750 -1,000 millimeters (mm), and average annual temperature of 10-27°C.Maize is the second most widely cultivated cereal in Ethiopia in terms of area but is produced by more farms than any other crop. It accounts for the largest share of production by volume at 18.8 percent and appears to be increasing throughout Ethiopia. In addition to being a foodgrain, parts of the maize plants are also used as fodder, fencing materials, and cooking fuel.Although maize is becoming more widely grown, it is less tolerant of cold than teff, barley, and wheat. Teff can grow at elevations up to 2,800 masl; there is only limited maize production above 2,400 meters. In Ethiopia, the highest maize yields require an annual rainfall of 800-1,500 mm. More than 60 percent of maize production comes from Oromiya region, followed by Amhara, with about 20 percent of total production.Sorghum accounts for about 17 percent of all area planted with cereals and for about 18 percent of production. Relative to other cereals, sorghum is gener-  Ethiopia, CACC (2003).ally drought tolerant and is also accepting of excess water conditions. These characteristics give sorghum a large range of feasible climate regimes, although it grows best in semiarid conditions, especially in comparison to other cereals. For example, sorghum can produce grain in areas too dry for maize (those receiving less than 250 mm average annual rainfall). However, it is sensitive to cold temperatures and is rarely found at higher altitudes (2,500 masl may be considered a ceiling). Wheat accounts for similar shares of national cereal production as sorghum, with 17 percent of planted area and 19 percent of production. Varieties include Durum, Emmer, and so-called bread wheat. Durum wheat is often grown for domestic pasta fabrication. Emmer (aja in Amharic) is grown mainly in eastern Oromiya (Arsi and Bale) and Amhara (Shewa and Wollo). Bread wheat is widely grown throughout the highlands and transitional areas. Ethiopian wheat production typically takes place at altitudes of 1,600-3,200 masl, in areas with average annual rainfall of 400-1,200 mm and average annual temperatures of 15-25°C.Unlike the other major cereals cultivated in Ethiopia, for which the highest cereal yields are achieved at lower elevations (between 500 and 2,300 masl), barley grows well at high altitudes, and its share of area cultivated generally increases with altitude. At elevations above 2,500 masl it is frequently the only cereal grown. Nationally, barley is grown by about a third of all cereal producers and occupies about 9 percent of cultivated land. Many local varieties of barley are produced in Ethiopia, with a range of production and consumption characteristics such as rate of maturation and size of grain. Ethiopian barley varieties are reported to be relatively quick growing and more drought tolerant than other varieties (NRC 1996).In addition to the five major cereals grown in Ethiopia, enset (Ensete ventricosum, sometimes referred to as false banana) is an important staple in large parts of the southern highlands, where it has been estimated that more than 10 million people depend on enset for food, fiber, and other uses (Brandt et al. 1997). Enset, which is cultivated solely in Ethiopia, is planted at elevations ranging from 1,100 to 3,100 masl, although its optimal range is 2,000-2,750 masl. Enset does not tolerate frost, and it is not drought resistant. Thus, optimal growing environments are humid and temperate. Annual rainfall in ensetgrowing areas ranges from 1,100 to 1,500 mm, with average annual temperatures of 10-21°C.Farming systems, encompassing bundled sets of agricultural livelihood choices, including crop type and production technologies, are related to agroecological space because production choices must be viable given the available technology and the physical parameters required for plant growth. To the extent that the latter are reflected in agroecological zones, the spatial expression of traditional farming systems in Ethiopia is at least partially coincident with agroecological zone maps. Westphal (1975) identified four major farming systems for Ethiopia: seed farming, enset planting, shifting cultivation, and pastoral complexes. The seedfarming complex focuses on the production of grain, particularly cereals, but also pulses and oilseeds. Grain-based, seed-farming production systems are found throughout the central, northern, and eastern highlands and involve the majority of Ethiopian small farmers. Crop choice within the grain-based systems varies widely, with these systems found from kolla (lowlands, between 500 and 1,500 masl) to wurch (highlands, between 3,200 and 3,700 masl), and in moisture conditions ranging from dry to wet. Similarly, the enset-planting complex (in moist and wet dega and weyna dega) allows for flexibility of production whereby enset could be the principal staple, a co-staple with cereals and/or tubers, or a minor component of cereal-or tuber-based systems. Finally, shifting cultivation and pastoral complexes are most common in the western and eastern lowlands, respectively. In the humid western lowlands (primarily moist kolla), disease is a limiting factor for livestock. The arid and semiarid lowlands in the eastern part of the country (mostly bereha, less than 500 masl) lack available moisture, which limits rainfed crop production. In both areas, population densities are low, reflecting the low carrying capacities of land resources under current technologies.The classification systems described earlier are roughly contoured. They may easily be (and frequently are) further refined on the basis of more detailed environmental data such as soil type, seasonality, terrain, technology specificity, or local production idiosyncrasies. For example, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) organizes crop management research by 18 major and 49 minor agroecological zones, which are refined from the traditional agroclimatic zones outlined earlier. 2  For policy guidance, however, more detail may not be what is most required for identifying overarching challenges to the agricultural sector and corresponding investment priorities. Emphasizing the importance of moisture availability for the country's rainfed production systems, the Government of Ethiopia has long framed basic agricultural policy discussions within the 2. EIAR was called the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization (EARO) until 2006. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was involved in identifying 18 major and 42 minor agroecological zones in the late 1980s, and EIAR has now subdivided some of these zones, with a total of 49 currently. These agroecological zones were developed under an FAO-led project within the Ministry of Agriculture, described by De Pauw (1987).\"Three Ethiopias\": moisture-reliable highlands, drought-prone highlands, and pastoral lowland areas.3 For many rural experts, these basic regimes of moisture availability and the production systems therein are the critical distinctions when evaluating first-order strategic options for rural development across the country.However, production choices are a function of not just biophysical endowments but also socioeconomic conditions and the man-made environment. These include the local availability of labor, demand for food, cost of transportation between farms, and presence of input and output markets. Development domains are used in an attempt to build on basic information on agricultural potential by adding economic information within a framework of potential production choices.Development domains were developed out of work by Pender, Wood, and colleagues based on household-and community-level research in Ethiopia, Honduras, and Uganda (Pender, Place, and Ehui 1999;Wood et al. 1999;Pender et al. 2001aPender et al. , 2001b;;Pender, Scherr, and Durón 2001;Nkonya et al. 2004;Pender 2004aPender , 2004b;;Pender et al. 2004;Pender, Ehui, and Place 2006;Pender, Place, and Ehui 2006). Drawing on the theory of comparative advantage and location theory (von Thünen 1826; Chomitz and Gray 1996) and the literature on the evolution of farming systems in tropical agriculture (Boserup 1965;Ruthenberg 1980;Binswanger and McIntire 1987;Pingali, Bigot, and Binswanger 1987;McIntire, Bourzat, and Pingali 1992), we can understand key components of an area's agricultural development endowment in terms of a relatively reduced set of factors: agricultural potential, access to markets, and population density.Agricultural potential is determined by crop characteristics, inputs (including seed and fertilizer), and the biophysical environment. The income potential of alternative cropping patterns and livelihoods, however, depends on access to markets and population density, as well as agricultural potential. For example, an area with high and reliable rainfall and good soils may have an absolute advantage in producing high-value perishable vegetables but may have little comparative advantage in this livelihood if it is remote from markets. Population density, by affecting local land-labor ratios, influences the comparative advantage of labor-intensive livelihoods. High land-labor ratios in areas with poor access to markets and low agricultural potential endowments may encourage labor-intensive but low-external input production strategies. All three fac-tors together influence the profitability of different commodities, production technologies, and land management practices.Implementing development domains means applying this conceptual framework to identify mappable conditions that broadly enable or constrain development options of national importance. This implies that two decisions must be made. First, the scale of strategic planning must be determined. For national strategy formulation, sectorwide perspectives require some level of generalization greater than that typically used in commodity- or technology-specific recommendation domains. A second decision is how best to represent these factors given local conditions and the relevant scope of perspective. In practice, this means identifying the best indicators to represent relative levels of agricultural endowments for rainfed (and irrigated) agriculture, access to market opportunities, and the availability of labor relative to land.In Ethiopia, Chamberlin, Pender, and Yu (2006) defined development domains by starting with the long-standing moisture regime distinctions featured in policy discussion of the \"Three Ethiopias\" and further distinguishing between highland and lowland areas of rainfed agriculture. This yielded a total of five basic zones of agricultural potential (moisture-sufficient highlands, moisture-sufficient lowlands, drought-prone highlands, drought-prone lowlands, and pastoralist areas). Socioeconomic characteristics were also included in the characterization: two classes of market access (low and high) and three classes of population density (high, medium, and low). The resulting 25 domains were significant predictors of a range of rural livelihood variables at the woreda (district) level.These domains highlight important aspects of the Ethiopian rural context. Of particular note is the predominance of low market access conditions. In 1994, 92 percent of land resources and 69 percent of rural populations were located in areas with low market access, as defined here ( Figures 2.3 and2.4;  Tables 2.2 and2.3). These conditions have improved considerably, with reductions to 79 percent of land and 40 percent of population in 2007, and represent one of the dimensions of greatest change in Ethiopia over the past two decades. 4Nonetheless, the portion of the country's land and population resources that may be fairly characterized as remote is still very high. Although high-density areas are becoming even denser (and are accounting for larger shares of total populations), almost half of Ethiopia's land and people are still in low-and medium-density areas. Many of these areas are also characterized by poor market access.Although crop choice is heavily influenced by biophysical parameters (at least partially captured in the agricultural potential dimension of the domains),Highlands, high-density, high-access Highlands, high-density, low-access Highlands, low-density, high-access Highlands, low-density, low-access Lowlands, high-density, high-access Lowlands, high-density, low-access Lowlands, low-density, high-access Lowlands, low-density, low-access access to markets and land-labor ratios appear to wield considerable influence on production choices and market orientation. Chamberlin, Pender, and Yu (2006) evaluated grain yields (using the Agricultural Census [Ethiopia, CSA 2002]) with regard to the development domains classifications and found that yields (except for those of oilseeds) tend to be higher in high-access and highdensity areas, although not strongly or uniformly so. In general, the positive impacts of market access and population density on yields likely reflect the greater availability of inputs and labor in these areas and higher returns to using inputs and labor in areas with better access. However, the relatively small differences in grain yields in high-and low-access areas may suggest that factors other than market access are constraining the use of inputs such as fertilizer. A future agricultural census, with disaggregated crop production data, may be able to highlight these issues when evaluated over time, taking into consideration infrastructure improvements and greater access to markets in certain highpotential areas of the country.Cereal commercialization is generally greater in moisture-reliable areas as opposed to drought-prone areas, reflecting greater productivity and marketable surplus in these higher-potential areas. However, in moisture-reliable   areas, the highest commercialization rates are found in areas with low access, whereas the highest commercialization rates in drought-prone areas are in high-access areas. In high-potential areas, cereals are likely less profitable than higher-value commodities such as vegetables in areas with high market access but may have a strong comparative advantage in areas with low market access. In more drought-prone areas, cereals may be the most profitable and/or least risky option for farmers with relatively good market access (but without access to irrigation). Consistent with this explanation, in the drought-prone highlands we find the highest commercialization rates for cereals in areas with favorable market access, whereas in the moisture-reliable lowlands we find the lowest commercialization rate for cereals in areas with high access. These domains were used to structure a set of tables containing generalized strategic recommendations. It is the purpose of these tables not to narrowly define recommendations for specific locations but rather to help link strategic planning within the agricultural sector (and in other sectors). Identifying conditions that could be associated with specific places may allow for aggregate strategic planning that corresponds with locally meaningful development priorities. Further definition of those local priorities would most appropriately take place at the local level.Implicit in these recommendations is a choice of scale, the \"resolution\" of information, and spatial extent. For example, recommendations for a particular variety of maize are more detailed than for all varieties together, and thus the spatial expression of the optimal conditions will also vary. Generally speaking, maize may have a wide and loosely defined envelope of optimal growing conditions. A given variety, on the other hand, may require soil, slope, temperature, and growing season parameters that are more restricted in space and require more detailed data to map. More detailed assessments of this sort, sometimes referred to as technology-specific recommendation domains, may be essential components of addressing specific questions.The contexts of rural production outlined earlier have transformed over the last decade given changes in rural infrastructure, expanding urbanization, and the adoption of new technologies. As noted earlier, market access and population density are increasing due to expanded transportation and communication networks, as well as greater urbanization. Because these transformations mirror, in some respects, the components of the development domains' conceptual framework, we follow our empirical assessment of the change in development domains from 1994 to 2007 with a brief analysis and discussion of the evolving socioeconomic landscape with regard to increased investments in infrastructure and technology and greater urbanization. Finally we review land tenure policy as it pertains to agricultural investment and urbanization.Ethiopia's unique geography continues to play a major role in defining not only suitable areas for specific crop production and development domains but also the country's economic transformation on the whole. The development of rural areas and agricultural production is characterized by fragmented and dispersed landholdings (the average plot size is 0.5 hectare [Ethiopia, CSA 2002]), limited irrigation potential in the highlands, and limited infrastructure in peripheral areas of the country. 5 Related to Ethiopia's biophysical geography is the challenge of building and maintaining infrastructure in a mountainous landscape. Not only improving the physical mobility of people, goods, and services via transportation networks but also increasing access to telecommunication systems and electrical grids may open opportunities for improved farming and marketing conditions to better realize agricultural potential. It is important to take into account the multidimensionality of access when viewing change in Ethiopia. For example, information asymmetries are a feature of remoteness and may be mitigated by nonroad investments in such things as liberalized telecommunications and information markets. In addition, a growing literature on land tenure and ownership suggests that Ethiopia's policy of state-owned land remains an obstacle to sustained agricultural growth and rural development, regardless of improved or expanded infrastructure. We will address each of these issues (changes in roads, telecommunications, and electricity in addition to land policy variations) and how improvement over the last several decades has opened up the potential for significant increases in productivity and output.Given the limited infrastructure during the 1980s and early1990s, the Ethiopian government prioritized transportation infrastructure investment in order to enhance linkages between cities in the highlands. In 2007, almost 62 percent of the country's population was within 5 hours' travel time of a city of at least 50,000 people (Figure 2.5; Table 2.4). This shows a remarkable improvement in market access from 1994, when only 33 percent of the total population was within 5 hours' travel time of a major city.Currently, only 3.2 percent of the population in Amhara and 4.5 percent in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR) are more than 10 hours from a major city. SNNPR showed the most improvement in travel time by connecting 45 percent more people to a city within 3 hours' travel time (Table 2.5). In Tigray and Oromiya, 21 percent of the population improved 5. Highland systems in Ethiopia tend to have smaller catchments and feed from gravelly rivers in the upper parts of basins. Flash floods are more common and difficult to predict than floods in lowland systems. Command areas are relatively small, defined by fluctuating topography.    market access from more than 10 hours to between 3 and 10 hours from a city. At present, every region except Gambella has a city of at least 50,000 people, and many of these cities have built key transportation infrastructure in order to harness the potential of economic corridors between cities. Although urban centers are linked to other large cities through improved infrastructure, only 5-13 percent of the population in any region is within 1 hour's travel time of a city of at least 50,000, except in Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, and Harari, where 100 percent of the populations are less than 1 hour from a major city.It is important to note, however, that population densities and the quality or density of transportation infrastructure affect diverse administrative regions in different manners. In Ethiopia, the central and peripheral regions represent two very different economic, geographic, and demographic landscapes. Although in the main central administrative regions (Amhara, Oromiya, SNNPR, and Tigray) higher population densities and a more integrated road network are characteristic of the economic landscape, in the peripheral administrative regions limited road access and dispersed settlements create larger challenges for linking remote populations to the benefits of agglomeration economies. Improving transportation infrastructure along main access roads will benefit those already in densely populated areas, but maintaining and building select rural road infrastructure in areas with economic (agricultural) potential will be critical for poverty reduction and economic growth strategies in the more remote areas.Large investments in hydroelectric power over the last 30 years have dramatically changed the lives of many individuals living in cities in Ethiopia. In the 1960s, Ethiopia increased its electricity-generating capacity from approximately 65 megawatts to an estimated 1,918 (planned) megawatts at the end of 2011, an increase of 8.9 times on a per capita basis (Table 2.6). The comparison with 1958 is even more striking, because there was essentially no electricity generation in Ethiopia at that time, with the nation having only 2.3 megawatts of diesel-powered capacity. The introduction of hydroelectric power in subsequent decades, and especially the large surge in capacity since 2005, increased the nation's electricity-generating capacity 834-fold between 1958 and 2011, a 29-fold increase on a per capita basis.Actual electricity use is generally 35-45 percent of theoretical generating capacity because there is insufficient water behind the hydroelectric power dams for full-scale operation throughout much of the year. Domestic use accounted for 30 percent of total use in 2006/07, whereas commercial and industrial use accounted for 20 and 28 percent, respectively (Dorosh and Schmidt 2010). Overall, electricity use grew at an average rate of 12.5 percent per year from 2002/03 to 2006/07, with the highest growth rate for street lighting (27.1 percent per year).Recent research on the productivity effects of electrification suggests that benefits from improved and extended hours of access could be very large, particularly as measured by output per worker. A 2008 survey of small-scale handlooms in Addis Ababa and SNNPR (Ayele et al. 2009) indicates that productivity per worker was about 40 percent higher in electrified versus nonelectrified firms in SNNPR. Workers in nonelectrified rural villages on average worked only 7.2 hours per day, whereas their counterparts in other electrified (but rural) villages worked 10.7 hours per day. This productivity effect is achieved in large part because in towns with electricity access, producers work longer hours and firms share work spaces with electric lights at lower rental costs.Ethiopia is gradually becoming connected. Individuals who once had to walk hours to gain information about market prices and supply are steadily joining a network of connected individuals who are able to let their fingers do the walking. In 2003, some 405,000 fixed telephone lines were in place and only 51,000 cell phone subscriptions existed throughout the country (Figure 2.6; Table 2.7). By 2008, cell phone subscriptions had catapulted to 3.17 million subscribers and fixed telephone lines had more than doubled. Infrastructure plans reported that cell phone subscriptions might reach as many as 9.9 million users by 2010. It is important to note, however, that only 3.9 percent of the total population had cell phone subscriptions in 2008 (5.3 percent of subscribers were located in connected areas), whereas the share of the population with cellular subscrip-  tions within a connected area in Sub-Saharan Africa reached 32.5 percent of the population. The total number of cell phone subscribers in Africa amounted to 245.6 million people, while a total of approximately 3.17 million Ethiopians benefited from a cellular subscription.Ethiopia's recently published 2007 census reports urban population figures at the city level and allows for greater insight into how Ethiopia's demographic landscape has evolved. Schmidt and Kedir (2009) provide an analysis of city growth and expansion using city populations, infrastructure networks, and population density in order to provide a standardized comparison of urban growth over the last three census periods (Table 2.8).  2004); Schmidt and Kedir (2009); population estimates based on data from the past three Ethiopian censuses.notes: Population density per square kilometer (derived by GRUMP, the Global Rural -Urban Mapping Project, and LandScan for the year 2000), a major component of the agglomeration index, was projected using a growth rate of 3 percent per annum to adjust for different census years. SNNPR = Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region; n.a. = not available. a Population figures for 1984 were approximated due to changes in administrative boundaries after 1984. In order to maintain consistency across all years, we geographically allocated population to the current regional boundaries.Urban estimates from the 2007 census are similar to those developed by Schmidt and Kedir (2009) using the agglomeration index methodology, yet when comparing urban growth over time, these estimates show a dramatic difference (Table 2.9). This difference is primarily derived from the definition of an urban area used for the two estimates. The Central Statistical Agency (CSA) measures urban areas as all administrative capitals of regions, zones, and woredas, as well as localities with at least 1,000 people who are primarily engaged in nonagricultural activities, and/or areas where the administrative official declares that the locality is urban. In comparison, the agglomeration index provides a measure of the economic strength of urban areas rather than a definition of urban based on political status, administrative boundary, or the presence of particular urban services or activities.Evaluating Ethiopia's urban growth using the agglomeration index methodology shows that urbanization growth rates are much higher (approximately 9 percent on average) than previously calculated by the CSA (on average 4 percent over the last three decades). Although Ethiopia's agglomeration index suggests significant levels of urban clustering and growth over time, when compared with other countries in the region, Ethiopia remains one of the least urbanized nations in East Africa. In 2000, agglomeration in Ethiopia was measured at 11.9 percent, whereas the rates in most other East African countries were between 25 and 32 percent. Overall, Ethiopia's agglomeration index is 10 percentage points below the average agglomeration index for East Africa. Given the overwhelming revenue generated from agricultural activities in Ethiopia, policymakers have focused primarily on ADLI (Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization), but continuous growth of urban centers requires a greater understanding of the dynamic geographic and economic transformations occurring throughout the country. Urban areas facilitate social and economic interactions. These exchanges lead to increased efficiency in flows of goods and services, more efficient matching of workers to jobs, and enhanced information and knowledge spillovers. Increased access to markets also affects development domains, allowing for improved access to new technologies, necessary inputs to boost production and yields, and increased opportunity for cash-crop development for export. Earlier evidence by Chamberlin, Pender, and Yu (2006) suggests that grain yields tend to be higher in highaccess and high-density areas. Previous studies on the adoption of technology (such as improved seeds and fertilizer) find clear spatial patterns suggesting that access to main roads and market centers determine the success and pace of adoption (Staal et al. 2002;Croppenstedt, Demeke, and Meschi 2003;Yu et al. 2010). Further investment in connective infrastructure that reduces the distance to areas of greater density and enhances access to information and markets is likely to accelerate adoption. Finally, land tenure policies that ensure land security also play a crucial role in incentivizing investment and promoting labor mobility that allows for greater information exchange and more interactive development between rural and urban areas.Land tenure policies have changed dramatically over time in Ethiopia, and there continues to be an ongoing debate on land tenure and privatization. This discourse centers on the trade-offs between state protection and equity versus privatization and increased market efficiency. Given Ethiopia's relatively recent history of land tenure reforms associated with regime change, the current government policy is based on state ownership that ensures free access to land for all peoples of Ethiopia so as to prevent a small number of wealthier landowners from acquiring a majority of land through distress sales and other mechanisms. State ownership of land is thus designed to protect against conditions experienced under the imperial regime, whereby a majority of rural farmers worked under tenancy contracts with exploitative labor agreements (Jemma 2001;Rahmato 2004). However, concerns have been raised that state ownership and limits to land transfers are restricting the development of key land markets, producing negative spillovers in agricultural productivity and off-farm labor (EEA/EEPRI 2002; Deininger et al. 2004). This section briefly outlines land policy in Ethiopia since the imperial regime and provides a synthesis of the ongoing dialogue about land tenure as it relates to agricultural production and development within the country.Land tenure policy in Ethiopia can be categorized into three general periods characterized by the past three political regimes. During the imperial regime of Haile Selassie , the land tenure system was multitiered, spatially diverse, and one of the most complex systems used in Africa (Joireman 2000). In the north, usufruct land tenure was defined by a rist, or communal system that allowed farmers (who were usually politically connected) to claim access to ancestral land, as well as trade land in the rental market, but not to sell or mortgage any land. In the south of Ethiopia, however, land transfers through sales and mortgages were allowed through gebbar, or private ownership contracts (Rahmato 1984;Teklu 2004). In addition to communal land allocated by the state (madeira or mengist), other land was owned by the church (samon) or given as grants (gult) to individuals. Absentee landlords, insecure tenure due to arbitrary evictions, and exploitative labor agreements were widespread during this period and, some argue, were among the primary reasons that the regime was toppled in 1974 (Jemberre 2000;Adal 2001;Deininger et al. 2003).The Marxist Derg regime (1974-91) that ruled after the overthrow of Haile Selassie quickly set forth to redefine and reorganize the land tenure laws. The Proclamation to Provide for the Public Ownership of Rural Lands (Proclamation 31/1975) dissolved the previously exploitative landlord-tenant relations by nationalizing all rural land and redistributing land rights to all farmers. The regime constructed peasant associations (PAs) to organize redistribution contingent on proof of permanent physical residence within the PA. This system required each farmer to be a member in the PA, with the leadership of each PA entitled to expropriate land from landholders and redistribute it equally among members. Land transfers were granted only by bequest to an immediate family member, and leases or rentals, exchanges, and mortgages were prohibited. Plot sizes were restricted to a maximum of 10 hectares, and the use of hired agricultural labor was prohibited under Article 5 of the Proclamation (Crewett, Bogale, and Korf 2008).Given that land distribution was organized around permanent residency and membership in a PA, the option of migration was highly risky, involving the possible loss of not only land but also membership in the PA, the administrative unit that distributed land. Because of this limited migration, however, PAs steadily began to confront land scarcity, while new claimants declared usufruct rights under Proclamation 31/1975. Thus, expropriation and redistribution became frequent in more densely populated areas, and tenure security was undermined by the PA leadership's ability to redistribute land for political reasons, while wealthier farmers used bribery to ensure that they received betterquality or larger land parcels (Ege 1997;Azeze 2002). The scale and frequency of redistribution varied by region and area; while some areas faced frequent redistributions made in an effort to maintain the egalitarian approach of land access, less pressured PA leadership reallocated land only once during the land reform (Rahmato 1984;Clapham 1988;Holden and Yohannes 2002).The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front government that took power in 1991 pursued an economic strategy that was, overall, more open than that of the previous socialist Derg regime. Although many groups called for land tenure reform involving privatization of land ownership, the new constitution of 1995 confirmed state ownership of all land in Ethiopia, and few revisions were made to the previous land tenure regime under the Derg (FDRE 1995 [Article 40];Adal 2001;Belay and Manig 2004). Of the revisions that were enacted, several stand out as important modifications: (1) land redistribution was to be reduced; (2) regional governments were given responsibility to enact laws regarding land rights, transferability, and taxation as long as these laws adhered to national guidelines; and (3) land rental was deemed lawful (Pender and Fafchamps 2006). Although these amendments to the earlier Dergdefined land tenure laws significantly improved farmers' perception of their land security, researchers have found mixed evidence of land or labor market improvement and enhanced off-farm employment incentives in an already dense rural population (studies of land tenure are discussed later).Since 1995, earlier land tenure laws outlined in the constitution have been primarily modified by regional governments (Crewett, Bogale, and Korf 2008). For example, Tigray region declared an end to all administrative land redistribution; Oromiya region restricted redistribution to only those lands with irrigation potential, whereby farmers would be compensated with reasonable rainfed land (Regional Government of Oromia 2002, Article 14.4;Crewett, Bogale, and Korf 2008). Other regional bylaws have been designed to limit the renting of land: farmers in Oromiya are able to rent out only 50 percent of their total holdings for a maximum of 3 years if using traditional farming methods or 15 years if modern technologies are employed (Deininger et al. 2003). Some argue that although land tenure security has improved under the current government, the imprecise language of the regional regulations, as well as the seemingly nontransparent legal framework used in a variety of regional amendments, may increase the probability of corruption and political interference (Rahmato 2004).In 2005, the central government issued a revised proclamation designed to increase subjective tenure security within the state-owned land law by emphasizing the importance of land measurement, registration, and certification of land plots (Rural Land Administration and Land Use Proclamation 456/2005). Piloted in Tigray region in 1998, and later in Amhara in 2003 and in Oromiya and SNNPR in 2004, land registration and certification aim to provide farmers with a legal document that outlines their perpetual user rights, along with the right to receive compensation for investments made in the land in case of loss, the right to bestow land on family members, and the right to lease out a defined share of the land for a limited period.The certification program was organized at the village level through elected land use and administration committees in order to ensure participatory assessments within a short time frame. In addition, the cost of implementing a comprehensive land registration program (approximately $3.5 per household) was dramatically reduced given the decentralized nature of implementation and was significantly lower than the costs of other similar programs that have been evaluated previously (Deininger et al. 2008;Deininger, Ali, and Alemu 2009). Farmers' favorable evaluations of the process, their willingness to pay for certificates, and the perceived decrease in the risk of land redistribution suggest that the implementation was successful. According to Alemu (1999) and Holden and Yohannes (2002), these certificates have improved land tenure security. A survey conducted by Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru (2009) found that 84 percent of households felt less at risk of being evicted from their land after receiving a certificate.According to economic theory, tenure security is linked to many positive spillovers, such as decreased land disputes, increased investment in land, more efficient land markets, and hence greater production yields. 6 Several recent studies in Ethiopia suggest that indeed, increased tenure security in the form of registration and certification enhances investment. Deininger, Ali, and Alemu (2009) evaluated the impact of the land certification program implemented in Tigray region on investments in soil and water conservation (SWC) and land productivity using farm-plot panel data. Their findings suggest that the effects of certification on SWC is positive and significant in that certification supports an increase of investment in trees, improved maintenance of soil conservation structures, and enhanced land productivity. Another study by Deininger et al. (2007) drew from a second-round nationwide panel survey of 2,300 households to look at the impact of certification on land investments between 2004 and 2006. The authors found that plots that had been certified at least a year before the second-round survey period were 5 percent more likely to receive new investment. In addition, the amount of new investment was 4.4 percent higher on those plots as compared to noncertified plots receiving investments.Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru (2011) evaluated certification programs in terms of women's empowerment initiatives in Tigray using a panel dataset from 1997, with follow-up rounds from two, five, and eight years after certification started. Given that traditionally women move into their husband's home upon marriage and that they do not customarily engage in land management, femaleheaded households tend to rent out much of their land (Ghebru and Holden 2008). Prior to the registration and certification program, female-headed house-6. Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru (2009) provide a comprehensive list of such studies in and on a variety of countries and continents.holds confronted difficulties in staking a claim to their land due to their limited ability to till the land with oxen, which prompted land encroachment by male inlaws and blood relatives. After certification, Ghebru and Holden (2008) found that female-headed households rented out, on average, 1.1-1.6 more tsimdi if they had rented out land previously; 7 in addition, women who had not rented out land previously were more inclined to do so after receiving a land certificate. These findings suggest that female-headed households perceive that they have greater land security after certification and, in turn, are able to rent out land without risking the loss of possession.Although many assessments of the current land policy and registration process suggest that there have been improvements in individuals' perception of their tenure security, other studies point to areas that could be improved or further researched. Teklu (2004) argues that increasing land scarcity, increasing rent costs, and fees incurred for rights to rent are distorting rental land markets. Given that land sale is prohibited in Ethiopia, rental markets pursued through sharecropping and cash rental are becoming increasingly important determinants of access to land. Land-constrained farmers who otherwise have the necessary assets, such as oxen, key inputs, and labor, seek to increase their area of operation through renting agricultural land. Conversely, farmers with large agricultural holdings but insufficient capital to buy farm implements or hire labor (for example, female heads of households) seek to rent out their land in exchange for labor or oxen. Akin to the empirical analysis of Teklu (2004), that of Deininger et al. (2003) suggests that land transfers in Ethiopia follow econometric theory in that large, less efficient producers rent out land to smaller, more efficient farmers, although many farmers who rent out land perceive that they have a higher risk of losing their land in a future redistribution. 8 Similarly, those who engage in off-farm labor have a 10-15 percent greater perception that they are at risk of future land loss. This suggests that the degree of land transaction that could take place in a secure market may be stifled by fears of ongoing tenure insecurity.Other analyses have looked into the restrictive transferability rights in Ethiopia (no transfers are allowed through sales, exchanges, mortgages, and so on) in terms of off-farm labor development and rural-urban migration. Their hypotheses build on economic theories of property rights (Harris and Todaro 1970;Posner 1973) whereby privatization of land provides the underlying incentive for long-term investment, management, and maintenance in order to increase and sustain productivity, which in turn (given income disparities, among other issues) allows outmigration of less productive farmers to other off-farm and urban sectors of the economy. Current land policy states that the transfer of usufruct land rights is permissible only through bequests to family 7. A tsimdi is equivalent to 0.25 hectare. 8. The analysis of Deininger et al. (2003) was based on the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey of 1999. members residing in the village who are engaged in or wish to engage in agriculture. This may be inhibiting rural-urban migration, because land cannot be sold to finance outmigration, and seasonal or temporary migrants risk losing access to land in their home village when they return. A recent analysis by Gete et al. (2008) in Amhara region found that most seasonal outmigrants are single young men with no land use rights or dependent family members. In addition, migrants cite lack of sufficient food, shortage of farmland, and lack of employment opportunities in the village as underlying reasons for seasonal migration. Ongoing studies continue to assess how rural-urban migration can help to reallocate labor from the agricultural sector to greater income-earning sectors and provide migrants with alternative income sources. Improving the mobility of rural farmers through transparent land tenure guidelines (and, in the future, possibly the privatization of land) may enhance the network effect of agglomeration economies as discussed previously, as well as reduce the burden of an extra person on the farm and increase household earnings through possible remittance income (De Brauw et al. 2010).Further research assessing land tenure policy as it relates to land certification and tenure security will be important as Ethiopia continues to urbanize and as additional investments in connective infrastructure redefine the rural landscape. Deininger et al. (2007) outline a series of issues that should be resolved in order to maintain a legitimate certification program. These include the need to identify and promote clear updating procedures (especially in rapidly developing areas) to ensure that old certificates are voided prior to distributing updated documents. In addition, public access to land certification data and information, as well as clear guidelines that identify the varying responsibilities of institutions in registration and updating of documents, is important to secure trust and enhance land security. Finally, well-defined compensation definitions and procedures to use in case of land redistribution should allow farmers to better gauge their risk and investment decisions.The underlying biophysical features and unique topographic environment of Ethiopia strongly influence but do not strictly determine the success of agricultural production and output in the country. Although natural endowments are significantly linked to agricultural suitability, the changing economic landscape is beginning to blur the boundaries between actual suitable areas and the potentially productive locations. Access to input and output markets, expanding urbanization, and improved technologies are transforming the landscape, as well as the activities and opportunities within previously constrained agroecological zones. Understanding the geographical expression of these factors is an important way to make sense of Ethiopia's agricultural and rural development options and to guide the definition of supporting policies.Investments in connective infrastructure are facilitating the movement of ideas, technologies, goods and services, and labor to areas that demand specific products and distribute other outputs. Improving and restoring primary road infrastructure reinforces secondary and primary market interactions. Maintaining and constructing rural roads that connect agricultural surplus areas with small towns and urban centers also bolster inclusive geographic supply and demand networks. A continuum of population density creates a portfolio of interrelated places, and these places, when functioning properly, will bring about greater economic interaction and ultimately spur development within all spatial spheres.Clearly, the transformations that have taken place in recent decades with regard to market access, technology investment, and urbanization have facilitated and influenced not only city development and productivity but rural economic growth and potential as well. This growth requires policy decisions that shape the rate of growth and integration between rural and urban areas, as well as a framework for how Ethiopia can best benefit from enhancing the already (actual) agriculturally productive areas while bolstering areas that have significant potential for greater output.Land tenure policy in Ethiopia continues to be studied and debated as to how to best develop the agricultural sector in an efficient as well as an equitable manner. Recent evaluations of the ongoing land registration and certification programs suggest that farmers perceive that they have greater tenure security after receiving certificates. Although comparative studies argue that land privatization could be an important policy instrument to promote long-term investments and remove a major obstacle to rural-urban migration, such a major move toward a fully functioning land market appears to be unlikely in the current environment.","tokenCount":"7842","images":["-606188236_3_1.png","-606188236_5_1.png","-606188236_10_1.png","-606188236_11_1.png","-606188236_15_1.png"],"tables":["-606188236_1_1.json","-606188236_2_1.json","-606188236_3_1.json","-606188236_4_1.json","-606188236_5_1.json","-606188236_6_1.json","-606188236_7_1.json","-606188236_8_1.json","-606188236_9_1.json","-606188236_10_1.json","-606188236_11_1.json","-606188236_12_1.json","-606188236_13_1.json","-606188236_14_1.json","-606188236_15_1.json","-606188236_16_1.json","-606188236_17_1.json","-606188236_18_1.json","-606188236_19_1.json","-606188236_20_1.json","-606188236_21_1.json","-606188236_22_1.json","-606188236_23_1.json","-606188236_24_1.json","-606188236_25_1.json","-606188236_26_1.json","-606188236_27_1.json","-606188236_28_1.json","-606188236_29_1.json","-606188236_30_1.json","-606188236_31_1.json","-606188236_32_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"60df1c0b076b94308efb6691ea6aa17a","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/86fbda27-39e6-40d4-bfac-7db30aade873/retrieve","description":"","id":"1882916979"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"416f460d-96e3-4cd6-8446-b3ae0f838c55","pagecount":"4","content":"Depuis le début des années 70, des investissements publics soutenus dans les installations d'irrigations, l'infrastructure rurale, la recherche agricole et les services de vulgarisation ont aidé les exploitants agricoles bengladeshis à obtenir une augmentation marquée de la production alimentaire. S'inscrivant en faux de son image antérieure de sempiternel récipiendaire d'aide alimentaire, le Bangladesh aujourd'hui atteint sa quasi autosuffisance rizicole, sa denrée alimentaire primordiale. La production de blé, seconde céréale par ordre d'importance, connaît également une augmentation, bien que les importations de blé restent importantes afin de remplir la demande intérieure en nette croissance.Bien que l'Etat bangladeshi apporte son appui marqué aux producteurs de riz, ce même concours semble moins affirmé pour les producteurs de blé. Certains décideurs vont jusqu'à s'interroger sur une éventuelle régression des subventions du blé, en prenant pour référence des études selon lesquelles la production de blé ne serait pas rentable et constituerait une utilisation inefficace des ressources. Mais la production de blé au Bangladesh est-elle réellement peu profitable pour les exploitants agricoles et non économique pour le pays ? Il s'agit là d'interrogations importantes, car jusqu'à ce qu'on y réponde, les décideurs ne pourront savoir s'il convient d'encourager les agriculteurs à amplifier plus avant la production rizicole ou à diversifier leurs activités par le blé et d'autres cultures.Les chercheurs de l'IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute -Institut international de recherche sur les politiques alimentaires) et du CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center -Centre international d'amélioration du maïs et du blé) ont récemment étudié les arguments pour et contre la production de blé au Bangladesh. Dans le rapport de recherche n 106, \"Wheat Production in Bangladesh : Technological, Economic and Policy Issues\", les auteurs, Michael L. Morris, Nuimuddin Chowdhury et Craig Meisner, ont eu recours aux éléments d'analyse financière et économique afin de comparer la production de deux cultures irriguées (blé et riz boro) et de trois cultures non irriguées (blé, oléagineux et légumineuses) dans cinq zones de culture du blé. Leur but consistait à déterminer dans quelle mesure les politiques publiques et les échecs commerciaux provoquaient un différend entre la rentabilité financière et économique. En cas de dichotomie entre ces deux dernières, les exploitants agricoles sont soumis à des incitations faussées et des réformes peuvent se révéler nécessaires pour les encourager à opérer dans le droit fil des objectifs de rentabilité.Le Bangladesh est l'un des pays de plus forte densité démographique du monde. Sa rapide croissance démographique et ses traditions de legs fonciers à tous les héritiers ont abouti à la fragmentation des exploitations. La biculture est la norme et de nombreux agriculteurs produisent jusqu'à trois récoltes par an (figure 1). Le riz prévaut le schéma agricole dans la plupart des régions du pays et se cultive en trois saisons différentes : aus, aman et boro. Le riz boro, exigeant une irrigation, est cultivé à la même époque que le blé, pendant la saison d'hiver, fraîche et sèche, ou \"rabi\". Avec la généralisation de la technologie d'irrigation de petite échelle, le riz boro a pris en importance. Etant donné que les rendements du riz boro sont plus élevés que ceux d'autres types de riz, cette culture représente aujourd'hui un pourcentage par trop élevé de la production rizicole.Bien que le riz reste l'aliment de prédilection de la plupart des Bengladeshis, la consommation de blé a connu une rapide augmentation, aiguillonnée en partie par la politique de l'Etat consistant à tabler sur les importations de blé les années de production nationale déficiente. Au début des années 70, inquiet face à l'afflux croissant d'importations de blé (importations commerciales et aide alimentaire), les pouvoirs publics ont introduit des mesures visant à encourager les agriculteurs à accroître la production nationale de blé. Au fil du temps, ces mesures ont entraîné des résultats : la superficie cultivée de blé a augmenté de 15% par à la fin de années 70 par rapport à une faible base, et les rendements ont augmenté de 3% par an (figure 2). Cette croissance de la production s'est toutefois ralentie vers la fin des années 80, accompagnant la disponibilité accrue de l'irrigation permettant aux agriculteurs de passer à la production de riz boro, plus rentable.Afin de déterminer si la production de blé au Bangladesh est rentable et économique, les chercheurs de l'IFPRI et du CIMMYT ont interrogé 421 producteurs de blé, au cours de la saison du rabi de 1992/93. Les données rassemblées au cours de cette enquête ont servi à élaborer des budgets agricoles pour le blé, le riz, les légumineuses et les oléagineux. Deux séries de prix (financier et économique) ont été affectés à tous les intrants et extrants de production. Les prix réels réglés par ou aux agriculteurs constituent les prix financiers, impôts et subventions inclus. Les prix économiques sont les prix virtuels tirés de l'ajustement des prix financiers pour tenir compte des incidences des mesures de l'Etat, des échecs commerciaux et autres distorsions. Ces deux prix ont servi à calculer la rentabilité financière et économique du blé par rapport à d'autres cultures, de substitution.Les résultats de cette analyse de rentabilité viennent de fait appuyer le point de vue classique selon lequel le riz boro est extrêmement avantageux par rapport à d'autres cultures. L'analyse de sensibilité indique, par ailleurs, que le riz boro conservera sans doute son avantage tant que le Bangladesh reste un importateur net de riz. La rentabilité du riz boro diminuera toutefois, au fur et à mesure que l'on se rapprochera de l'auto-suffisance rizicole et que les prix du riz de production nationale baisseront (ce qui se produit déjà). A l'heure actuelle, le riz boro constitue la culture la plus rentable dans quatre des cinq zones de production rizicole, relevées par les auteurs. Pourtant, dans la zone australe-centrale, où se concentre la plus grande partie de la production rizicole bangladeshi, le blé irrigué constitue la culture la plus rentable (figure 3).La rentabilité relative des activités de production de substitution a été déterminée en calculant la valeur des ressources intérieures exigées pour produire ou pour économiser une unité de devise. Les cotes de rentabilité se sont, dans l'ensemble, alignées sur les résultats de l'analyse de rentabilité. Sur les parcelles irriguées, la production de riz boro reste plus rentable dans les zones nord -ouest, nord -centre et sud-ouest. Et la production de riz irrigué est la plus rentable dans la zone australe-centrale, alors que celle des oléagineux est la plus rentable dans le nordest. En ce qui concerne les parcelles non irriguées, la production de blé constitue l'utilisation la plus économique des ressources, dans toutes les zones, à l'exception du nord -est où les oléagineux conservent un avantage.Les auteurs ont mis à l'épreuve la sensibilité de ces résultats aux modifications des valeurs des paramètres techniques et économiques prépondérants, afin de déterminer si l'on peut escompter que les cotes actuelles de rentabilité se maintiennent à l'avenir, ou si elles fluctueront en raison des changements futurs de la technologie, des prix mondiaux ou de deux à la fois. Selon les conclusions, les cotes se sont révélées vigoureuses dans l'ensemble, même si elles pourraient être touchées par des variations dans certaines zones. Par exemple, dans de nombreuses zones non irriguées, une chute de 10% des prix mondiaux du blé permettrait aux légumineuses de supplanter le blé à titre de substitution de production la plus rentable.Ces résultats viennent appuyer l'une des conclusions importantes d'études antérieures : dans de nombreuses régions du Bangladesh, notamment dans les zones irriguées, le riz boro est plus rentable que les autres cultures, pour les exploitants agricoles. Bien que la rentabilité financière de la production de riz boro ait diminué à l'heure actuelle, alors que le Bangladesh atteint son autosuffisance rizicole, et que les prix du riz, sur le marché intérieur, ont chut, le riz boro reste l'option la plus rentable dans les régions où la production de ce dernier reste techniquement réalisable.Bien que cette conclusion ne constitue pas une surprise, le rapport met également en exergue une réalité importante, souvent écartée du débat politique. Le riz boro ne peut être cultivé partout : les différences d'altitude et de composition des sols sont significatives. Les échantillons et autres mesures pédologiques relevées à l'échelon des parcelles indiquent que les agriculteurs plantent le riz boro principalement sur des sols lourds, situés dans des zones de faible altitude, bien desservies par une infrastructure d'irrigation. Le riz boro est rarement cultivé sur des sols plus légers, situés à de plus hautes altitudes, et il n'est jamais cultivé en l'absence de services d'irrigation fiables. Dans les zones impropres à la production de riz boro, la production de blé constitue non seulement l'option de substitution la plus rentable, du point de vue de l'exploitant agricole, mais elle représente souvent également une utilisation économique des ressources intérieures.Le rapport souligne en outre qu'au Bangladesh, la sécurité alimentaire constitue souvent la motivation des décisions relatives au choix des cultures. De nombreux ménages ruraux produisent du blé pour éviter les pénuries alimentaires saisonnières : selon deux tiers des agriculteurs interrogés, ils produisent du blé afin d'assurer la disponibilité de denrées alimentaires pendant la saison \"de la faim\", au préalable de la récolte de riz. Ces ménages conservent une partie de leur récolte de blé pour leur propre consommation, afin de leur permettre de passer cette période de pénurie. Ainsi, il s'agit là d'un argument supplémentaire en faveur du blé, assurance alimentaire des familles pauvres, trop démunies pour acheter des aliments.Les auteurs décrivent un certain nombre de modifications d'orientation qui pourraient appuyer et stimuler l'accroissement de la production de blé, à condition que les décideurs bengladeshis décident de l'intérêt d'une augmentation de la production de blé. Par exemple, les politiques discriminatoires à l'heure actuelle, défavorisant la production de blé, pourraient faire l'objet de réformes. A l'heure actuelle, l'aide alimentaire en blé et les importations commerciales de blé, subventionnées, freinent la production de blé en bridant les prix intérieurs du blé. La révision des politiques d'aide alimentaire, en remplaçant par exemple le blé par d'autres denrées ou en monétisant l'aide alimentaire, permettraient de relever les prix du blé que reçoivent les agriculteurs bengladeshis, ce qui renforcerait les incitations favorisant la culture intérieure de blé et mènerait à une diminution de l'assujettissement du Bangladesh aux importations.Des modifications de la politique de recherche agricole pourraient également avoir une incidence profonde pour améliorer davantage encore la compétitivité du blé. La plupart des variétés de blé amélioré, mises en circulation au Bangladesh, conviennent davantage à la production irriguée. Il manque encore des variétés améliorées, présentant une bonne adaptation aux zones de culture en sec.Et enfin, l'on pourrait améliorer les mesures de vulgarisation agricole. A l'heure actuelle, la différence reste importante entre les rendements de blé tirés des parcelles expérimentales et ceux des parcelles des agriculteurs. L'envergure et la persistance de ce \"fossé du rendement\" semble indiquer qu'il reste fort à faire pour améliorer les compétences de gestion des agriculteurs.Ces résultats du Bangladesh comportent des conséquences importantes pour d'autres pays, souhaitant maintenir la croissance de leur productivité, face à l'intensification agricole. De nombreux pays en développement ressemblent au Bangladesh pour avoir éprouvé un schéma inégal de croissance de leur productivité, à la suite de la révolution verte. Le maintien de la croissance de la productivité de l'agriculture sera tributaire de l'accroissement de celle des cultures secondaires et des denrées \"créneau\", qui tirent parti d'avantages situationnels et saisonniers. Les analyses économiques réalisées à un haut niveau d'agrégation omettent souvent ces sources potentielles de croissance. Cette étude sur le blé au Bangladesh illustre l'importance des détails saisonniers et situationnels, et indique comment l'analyse décisionnelle, réalisée à un niveau idoine de désagrégation peut permettre de cerner des activités de production rentables, sinon méconnues.Veuillez me faire parvenir un exemplaire de l'ouvrage \"Wheat Production in Bangladesh : Technological, Economic, and Policy Issues\" de Michael L. Morris, Nuimuddin Chowdhury et Craig Meisner.","tokenCount":"1957","images":["1882916979_1_1.png","1882916979_1_2.png","1882916979_4_1.png"],"tables":["1882916979_1_1.json","1882916979_2_1.json","1882916979_3_1.json","1882916979_4_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8df16c269a1d7148ae37e21c93198c25","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/006c0704-6f5e-40d2-ac26-725a0f464795/retrieve","description":"Along with high economic growth over a period of somewhat more than the past three decades, poverty, household food insecurity, and undernutrition have substantially declined in Ghana. Ghana was one of the first African countries that achieved the first MDG, that of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Recently, Ghana achieved (lower-) middle-income-country status. Economic growth has been accompanied by a structural transformation of the economy and progressing urbanization. Household income growth improves people’s ability to afford nutritious foods and diversified diets, and allows them to utilize superior healthcare and higher education, contributing to healthier and more productive lives for themselves and their children. However, improvements in people’s living standards and changes in their livelihood activities and lifestyle usually also lead to a nutrition transition and give rise to new nutritional challenges, including increasing prevalence of overweight/obesity and related NCDs. To successfully address these new nutritional challenges, governments may need to launch new health and nutrition programs and revisit established food policies that have become inefficient in reducing food insecurity and malnutrition or even detrimental under the new circumstances.","id":"830141765"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"6751d8b9-b7a1-49a8-ba68-f739aca8749b","pagecount":"23","content":"ince the launch of its economic recovery program and the adoption of a market-oriented approach in 1983, Ghana has experienced high economic growth. Ghana's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 5.6 percent (2.9 percent on a per capita basis) between 1984and 2014(World Bank 2016). The value-added share of the agricultural sector in GDP dropped from 52 percent in 1984 to 22 percent in 2014, and the value-added share of the service sector increased from 37 percent to 50 percent (World Bank 2016). 4 As in several other countries south of the Sahara, labor is gradually flowing out of agriculture and into more productive sectors of the economy, contributing to Ghana's high economic growth (Hassen et al. 2016;McMillan, Rodrik, and Verduzco-Gallo 2014;McMillan and Harttgen 2014). Associated with structural transformation of the economy, the urban population increased from an estimated 33 percent in 1984 to an estimated 54 percent in 2014 (UN-DESA 2016). Besides migration of family members or entire families from rural to urban areas, rural households have been increasingly diversifying their livelihoods through participation in the rural nonfarm sector (Kolavalli et al. 2012;Lay and Schüler 2008). High economic growth and economic transformation contributed to Ghana's impressive progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular, the first goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Ghana achieved the targets of halving extreme poverty and halving the prevalence of child underweight between 1990 and 2015 as one of the first countries in Africa and ahead of the 2015 deadline (NDPC and UNDP 2015).Along with continuing, rapid economic development, Ghana-like several other developing countries-is likely to face a rapid \"nutrition transition,\" too. This term describes the shifts in physical activity levels and dietary patterns that go along with improvements in people's living standards and changes in their livelihood activities and lifestyles (Popkin 1993(Popkin , 1994)). For example, motorized transportation replaces walking and carrying of goods, mechanization in agriculture reduces its heavy physical workload, a growing share of the population moves out of agriculture and engages in less physically demanding employment, and sedentary activities and leisure become part of the lives of more people. All of this reduces people's physical energy requirements. Food sourcing increasingly shifts from own production for home consumption to market purchases, and the share of processed foods in people's diet grows. Shifts in dietary patterns include large increases in the calorie density of people's diet and in the per capita intake of animal-source foods (Popkin and Du 2003;Speedy 2003).The proportion of the population that suffers from acute food insecurity drops, and the proportion of people consuming a high-fat diet increases rapidly. Further down the road, the diet of an increasing number of people becomes overly rich in fat-especially from animal-source foods-as well as cholesterol, sugar, and other refined carbohydrates, and low in polyunsaturated fatty acids and fiber.These shifts in dietary patterns give rise to new nutritional challenges: overweight/obesity and related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and hypertension become increasingly prevalent and evolve to become major public health problems.As a consequence, private and public healthcare costs increase, and productivity losses to the individual and the society mount (Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, and Wang 2003;Finkelstein, Ruhm, and Kosa 2005;Popkin et al. 2006;Trogdon et al. 2008). Globally, overweight and obesity are increasingly prevalent in developing countries. Deaths related to NCDs are projected to increase worldwide by 15 percent between 2010 and 2020, with the largest increases expected to exceed 20 percent in Africa south of the Sahara, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (WHO 2011). Evidence from cross-country comparisons suggests that the described shifts in dietary patterns and physical activity levels are occurring at greater speed and at earlier stages of countries' economic and social development today than in the past (Popkin 2003). A rapid nutrition transition has been observed in many middle-income countries that have experienced high economic growth and economic transformation (Popkin 1998(Popkin , 1999(Popkin , 2002)).Ghana entered the group of lower-middle-income countries just recently, with implications for the country's continuation on a steady economic development path.Overweight and obesity typically increase faster than declines in (chronic) undernutrition. This leads to a situation in which overnutrition and undernutrition coexist. This coexistence is often referred to as the \"double burden of malnutrition.\" This double burden may occur not only at the population level (for example, overweight/obesity among the rich and chronic undernutrition among the poor) but also within the same family (for example, overweight/obese mothers with stunted children) and even within the same individual (for example, a stunted but overweight/obese child) (Ecker et al. forthcoming;Prentice 2006;Schmidhuber and Shetty 2005;Shrimpton and Rokx 2012). Where the double burden of malnutrition is common at the family and individual levels, it is possible that the same circumstances the household and the individual face are capable of contributing to both under-and overnutrition. Such circumstances may be partially the result of obsolete or poorly targeted public policies and programs. For example, food and agricultural subsidies as well as household cash transfers-designed to reduce household food insecurity-have been shown to contribute to rising overweight and obesity and to be ineffective in reducing chronic child undernutrition or micronutrient malnutrition (Ecker et al. forthcoming;Jensen and Miller 2011;Kochar 2005;Leroy et al. 2013;Tarozzi 2005).Hence, countries that face a nutrition transition, like Ghana, are increasingly confronted with new nutritional challenges and may need to revisit established food policies for further advancing people's well-being and economic prosperity. Against this background, this chapter first provides an overview of trends and patterns in key development and food supply indicators in Ghana. Then the analysis turns to the household level and explores household consumption data from the fifth and sixth rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, conducted in 2005-2006and 2012-2013 (GLSS5 and GLSS6). The household-level analysis describes typical food consumption patterns and shows how the consumption of particular food groups changes with household income growth. The findings from this study may be useful in informing ongoing food policy reform processes and for designing and implementing food security and nutrition-related policies and programs more generally.The analysis pays particular attention to the consumption of proteinrich foods and especially animal-source foods for several reasons. First, changes in the consumption of animal-source foods (such as meat, fish/ seafood, eggs, and dairy products) are key indicators of shifting diets and thus of the nutrition transition described above. Consistent with the theory of consumer demand, households will diversify into higher-value foods such as animal-source foods and, to a lesser extent, vegetables and fruits only when they have satisfied their basic dietary energy needs. Hence, as poor people become richer, they gravitate away from relatively tasteless staple foods and toward more protein-and micronutrient-rich foods that also impart greater taste and therefore utility (Jensen and Miller 2010). In doing so, they tend to substitute vegetal sources of protein with animal sources of protein. Second, in undernourished populations, the consumption of protein-rich foods, and animal-source foods in particular, is associated with improved nutrition outcomes including reduced nutritional deficiencies (Black et al. 2008;Murphy and Allen 2003;Neumann et al. 2003;Sandstrom and Cederblad 1980), improved linear growth of children and reduced risk of child stunting (Allen 2003;Caulfield et al. 2006;Bwibo and Neumann 2003;Marquis et al. 1997;Neumann et al. 2003;Rivera et al. 2003), and improved cognitive functioning (Black 2003, Black et al. 2008;Dror and Allen 2011;Gewa et al. 2009). Animal-source foods, especially meat and fish/seafood, are rich sources of high-quality protein as well as the micronutrients whose deficiencies cause widespread illness in developing countries (including iron, zinc, vitamin A, and folate). Third, (over)consumption of animal-source foods has been linked to overweight/obesity and higher risks of nutrition-related NCDs (Larsen 2003;Popkin and Gordon-Larsen 2004;Popkin 2006Popkin , 2009)). For example, excess intake of cholesterol is widely known to increase the risk of coronary disease and stroke (HPSCG 2004;LaRosa et al. 1990;Yusuf et al. 2001aYusuf et al. , 2001b)).Economic Growth, Poverty, and Child Undernutrition Ghana has been experiencing steady economic growth since 1984-after the launch of an economic recovery program and the adoption of a marketoriented approach. Ghana's GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.6 percent (2.9 percent on a per capita basis) between 1984 and 2014. Economic growth was particularly high during the last of the three decades (Figure 4.1), with average annual growth rates for total GDP of 7.3 percent and for per capita GDP of 4.7 percent. Even the lowest annual growth during this threedecade period-in 1990-was positive and moderate, with a total growth rate of 3.3 percent and a per capita growth rate of 0.5 percent (World Bank 2016). The GDP per capita grew by almost 2.3 times, from US$337 in 1984 to US$764 in 2014 (at constant 2005 prices). During just the last decade, it grew by almost 1.6 times, from US$468 in 2004, compared with 1.4 times during the first two decades.Ghana's economic growth trickled down to the poor and contributed to a large reduction in poverty. Measured by the international line for extreme poverty, poverty dropped from 62.8 percent in 1988 to 25.2 percent in 2005 (Figure 4.1). This equals an annual average reduction of 2.2 percentage points, or 5.2 percent. Although somewhat less rapidly, poverty reduction has continued at high rates in more recent years. Measured by the national line for extreme poverty (which is higher than the international threshold), poverty dropped from 31.9 percent in 2005-2006 to 24.2 percent in 2012-2013 nationwide (Table 4.1). In absolute terms, the largest share of this reduction occurred in rural areas, where 52.0 percent of the total The national prevalence rate of child underweight-indicating overall (that is, 5 Due to considerably higher population growth in urban areas than in rural areas in recent years, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas today. In 2014, the proportion of urban population accounted for an estimated 54.0 percent of the total population (World Bank 2016).Source: Authors' representation based on data from World Bank (2016). Note: Poverty rate is defined by the international US$1.90-a-day threshold (at 2011 purchasing power parity), marking extreme poverty. GDP = gross domestic product. Nonetheless, Ghana's progress in reducing child undernutrition is clearly above average in the international comparison (World Bank 2016).In more recent years, Ghana achieved a faster reduction in chronic child undernutrition than in poverty, and this in addition to rapid poverty reduction. The national prevalence of child stunting dropped from 28.0 percent in 2008 to 18.8 percent in 2014 (Table 4.1). This equals an average annual reduction of 1.3 percentage points, or 5.5 percent, over a seven-year period. Over a period of identical length and large time overlap, national poverty declined by 1.1 percentage points, or 3.9 percent, per year, and from a higher initial rate of 31.9 percent. Child stunting declined more rapidly in rural areas than in urban areas, and the rural-urban gap in child stunting prevalence was less pronounced than it was for poverty. Child stunting in rural areas was about 1.5 times more prevalent than in urban areas in 2008 and 2014. The progress achieved in reducing the prevalence of child stunting also reflects in the decline in the prevalence of child underweight. The reduction in chronic child undernutrition points to a significant improvement in the diets of young children and of their mothers during pregnancy and lactation (in addition to improvements in women's and children's health conditions).   Food (protein)Animal-source foods (protein)Fish & seafood (protein) Food (calories)Protein (grams) Calories (kcal)6 In the FBS database (FAO 2016), the per capita food supply in a country available for human consumption-referred to as \"food availability\" in this chapter-is calculated as the residual of total quantity of foodstuffs produced plus the total quantity imported; minus the total quantity exported; adjusted for any change in stocks; and minus the total quantities used for livestock feed and seed, put to manufacture for food and nonfood uses, and lost during storage and transportation. Quantities of per capita food availability are converted into levels of calorie, protein, and fat availability by applying appropriate food composition factors for all primary and processed products (FAO 2016).There is also no indication of a shift in the composition of total protein availability toward greater shares of protein from animal-source foods at the national level until 2011 (Figure 4.2). Rather, the opposite appears to have been the case. While the per capita availability of total protein steadily increased between 1984 and 2011, the per capita availability of animal protein stayed fairly constant. Accordingly, the increase in the per capita availability of total protein was driven by an increase in per capita availability of protein from vegetal sources. The share of animal protein in total protein declined from a five-year average of 34 percent at the beginning of indicating limited substitution of fish/seafood with meat (during times of high fish/seafood prices).Consistent with the trends in extreme poverty and child undernutrition, the trends and patterns in food and macronutrient availability suggest that, at least between 1984 and 2011, Ghana went through a phase of the nutrition transition that is characterized by a steady reduction in ubiquitous, severe food insecurity and hunger, described as a phase of \"receding famine\" by Popkin (1994).Although this FBS data analysis can provide a useful first glance at Ghana's long-term trends and patterns of per capita food and macronutrient availability, the precise estimates should not be overinterpreted. The FBS database provides only averages at the country level. Thus, these estimates do not allow us to draw inferences on food and macronutrient availability trends and patterns at the subnational level. For example, they provide no information on whether the observed countrywide food and macronutrient availability trends are mainly driven by changes in urban areas or in rural areas, or on whether food and macronutrient availability trends in southern and northern Ghana conform to one another or vary from each other. Moreover, the FBS data cannot reveal any evidence on actual household food consumption, given the methodology underlying the data computation. 7 For that, detailed food consumption data from household surveys are needed, which, unfortunately, are usually unavailable for extended time series-unlike the FBS data.To complement and specify the first-glance findings of the FBS data-based analysis, the household-level analysis in this section makes use of food consumption data from the GLSS5 in 2005-2006 and GLSS6 in 2012-2013. 8   The analysis consists of two parts. The first part uses descriptive statistics and visualization techniques to examine the composition of average Ghanaian    The average share of food consumption in total consumption expenditure varied considerably between urban and rural areas and between southern and northern Ghana (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). In 2012-2013, food consumption in urban areas added up to 39 percent of total consumption expenditure in the south and 46 percent in the north. Food consumption shares were much higher in rural areas, at 54 percent in the south and 60 percent in the north. This pattern is largely consistent with regional differences in the prevalence of poverty and household food insecurity found in previous studies (Coulombe and Wodon 2012a, 2012b; QuayeThe south-north gap in household wealth may also be reflected to a large extent in regional differences in the food consumption shares for animal-source foods (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). Compared with foods of vegetal origin, animal-source foods are typically more expensive sources of dietary energy and considered to have greater taste, both characteristics of superior goods (whose shares in total consumption tend to increase as people's income rises). In 2012-2013, animal-source foods accounted for 30 percent of total food consumption in both urban and rural areas in southern Ghana, compared with 24 percent in urban areas in northern Ghana and only 18 percent in rural areas in northern Ghana. Fish and seafood were the most important sources of high-quality protein across Ghana and especially in rural areas. The food consumption shares of fish and seafood were markedly larger than those of all meats in the urban and rural south and in the rural north. In the urban north, the food consumption share of fish and seafood and that of all meats were about equal.Mainly because of different local staple foods, the food consumption shares of cereals were higher in northern Ghana than in southern Ghana, and the shares of roots and tubers were higher in southern Ghana than in northern Ghana, especially in rural areas (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). Nonetheless, cereals accounted for sizable food consumption shares in urban and rural areas in both northern and southern Ghana. In 2012-2013, cereals made up 25 percent of total food consumption in the urban north and 29 percent in the rural north. The food consumption shares of cereals in the urban and rural south were 19 percent. Roots and tubers accounted for 12-13 percent of total food consumption in the urban south and in the urban and rural north; in the rural south the share was 21 percent.Pulses and nuts accounted for considerable food consumption shares in northern Ghana, but much less so in southern Ghana (Tables 4.4 and4   (2005-2006 and 2012-2013, respectively). Note: Consumption is measured in monetary value terms, in Ghanaian cedi. Household consumption levels are expressed in units per adult equivalent per day. ***, **, * Mean difference is statistically significant at the 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent level, respectively.there are no clear trends in the FBS data at the national level). This is consistent with the theory of nutrition transition, given that Ghana's regions are at different stages of the nutrition transition. Overall, the observed changes in the average composition of food consumption suggest that the quality of average Ghanaian diets in all regions improved between 2005-2006 and 2012-2013 and provide no evidence for a widespread increase in the risk for nutrition-related NCDs due to a diet overly rich in animal-source foods.However, it is important to note that the average food consumption patterns presented here provide no information on food consumption at different household income levels, such as among the rich and the poor, and on the likely trends in food consumption patterns beyond 2012-2013, when households' income continues to grow. The following section can provide some insights in these respects.  2005-2006 and 2012-2013, respectively). Note: Consumption is measured in monetary value terms, in Ghanaian cedi. Household consumption levels are expressed in units per adult equivalent per day. ***, **, * Mean difference is statistically significant at the 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent level, respectively.   2005-2006 and 2012-2013. 12 The Engel curves illustrate the associations between food group consumption levels and income levels across households, providing evidence on how food group consumption is likely to change when income rises. Table 4.6 presents point elasticities that were derived from the Engel curve estimates. The elasticity estimates are calculated at sample median income levels. The elasticities have large values and may overrate the true effect of household income growth on changes in food (group) consumption levels. 13 Therefore, the precise values of the elasticities should not be overinterpreted. Rather, the elasticities (which are all based on estimation models with identical properties) serve to complement the descriptive analysis of the estimated Engel curves and, in particular, to compare the consumption-income associations of the different food groups with each other. Overall, the results of the estimations based on the 2005-2006 data and the 2012-2013 data are highly consistent.The shape of the estimated Engel curves suggests that the consumption of all analyzed food groups increases (almost) linearly with rising income across most households of the estimation sample populations (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). A linear curve implies that the marginal increase in food group consumption is constant across the considered income levels. Thus, the estimated Engel curves suggest that households with high incomes and households with low incomes will spend a similar (absolute) amount for the consumption of the considered food group when their incomes grow by the same (absolute) amount. 14   The slopes of the estimated Engel curves suggest that income growth in southern Ghana is associated with the largest (absolute) increases in the consumption of animal-source foods in both urban and rural areas, followed by increases in the consumption of cereals and-in rural areas-roots and tubers (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). In urban and rural areas in northern Ghana, household income growth seems to come along with the largest (absolute) increases in the consumption of cereals in addition to animal-source foods. The finding that in the rural south and the urban and rural north, household income growth is associated with large (absolute) increases in the consumption of the food groups that contain the main local staple food indicates that household food insecurity is still widespread in these regions. The estimated Engel curves for the consumption of pulses and nuts are flat and show low consumption levels across all regions, suggesting that when income rises, the consumption of pulses and nuts is likely to remain at low (absolute) levels across Ghana, compared with other main food groups.The elasticity estimates suggest that the consumption of animal-source foods increases at higher rates than total food consumption with increasing household incomes in urban areas in southern Ghana and in both urban and rural areas in northern Ghana and at similar rates in rural areas 12 Section A4 of the Technical Appendix (http://resakss.org/node/2190) presents the Engel curve estimations.13 Large elasticity estimates may be partly due to the chosen reduced-form demand model underlying all estimations (which does not account for structural changes in consumption), omitting of variables from the estimation equations that possibly determine food consumption and are correlated with household income (such as household size, education, food preferences, local food prices, and so on), and using reported household consumption expenditure as proxy for household income (which ignores household saving and income transfers, which occur mostly in richer households). 14 Food consumption is measured in monetary value terms. Hence, differences in food quality and nonnutritive attributes, as well as local price differences, may influence the found relationship.Source: Authors' estimation based on Ghana Living Standards Survey 5 and 6 data (2005-2006 and 2012-2013, respectively). Note: The y-axis identifies household food group consumption per adult equivalent per day; the x-axis identifies household income (as proxied by total household consumption expenditure) per adult equivalent per day. The vertical gray lines mark income quintiles in the sample populations. The presented graphs are excerpts of the estimated Engel curves, excluding households with income levels below the 10th percentile and above the 90th percentile of the estimation samples.   (2005-2006 and 2012-2013, respectively). Note: The y-axis identifies household food group consumption per adult equivalent per day; the x-axis identifies household income (as proxied by total household consumption expenditure) per adult equivalent per day. The vertical gray lines mark income quintiles in the sample populations. The presented graphs are excerpts of the estimated Engel curves, excluding households with income levels below the 10th percentile and above the 90th percentile of the estimation samples. in southern Ghana (Table 4.6). According to the estimates based on the 2012-2013 data, at median income levels, a 1 percent increase in household income is associated with an almost equivalent percentage increase in the consumption of animal-source foods in the urban and rural south and the urban north, and even an overproportional increase in the rural north. In both urban and rural areas of southern Ghana, the consumption of pulses and nuts tends to increase most with rising incomes (in relative terms), and that of vegetables and fruits tends to increase at similar rates to the consumption of animal-source foods (according to estimates based on the 2012-2013 data). The consumption of cereals and of roots and tubers tends to increase at lower rates than total food consumption and the consumption of all other food groups. Thus, the elasticity estimates together suggest that income growth in southern Ghana is associated with diversification of people's food consumption from a heavily staple-laden diet toward a diet richer in high-quality protein foods of both animal and vegetal origin and in vegetables and fruits.The trends in northern Ghana's food consumption patterns implied by the elasticity estimates seem to differ from the trends observed for southern Ghana mainly regarding the consumption of roots and tubers and of vegetables and fruits (Table 4.6). According to the estimates based on the 2012-2013 data, the consumption of roots and tubers tends to increase at similar rates to total food consumption in urban areas and even at higher rates in rural areas. In both urban and rural areas, the consumption of vegetables and fruits tends to increase at somewhat lower rates than total food consumption and the consumption of roots and tubers. As in southern Ghana, the consumption of the food group containing the main local staple food (which is cereals in northern Ghana) tends to increase at lower rates than total food consumption in both urban and rural areas. Thus, the elasticity estimates together suggest that income growth in northern Ghana is associated with diversification of people's food consumption from a cereal-dominated diet toward a diet richer in animal-source foods, denser in (calorie-rich and protein-poor) roots and tubers, and with constant or even declining shares of vegetables and fruits.Along with high economic growth over a period of somewhat more than the past three decades, poverty, household food insecurity, and undernutrition have substantially declined in Ghana. Ghana was one of the first African countries that achieved the first MDG, that of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Recently, Ghana achieved (lower-) middle-income-country status. Economic growth has been accompanied by a structural transformation of the economy and progressing urbanization.Household income growth improves people's ability to afford nutritious foods and diversified diets, and allows them to utilize superior healthcare and higher education, contributing to healthier and more productive lives for themselves and their children. However, improvements in people's living standards and changes in their livelihood activities and lifestyle usually also lead to a nutrition transition and give rise to new nutritional challenges, including increasing prevalence of overweight/obesity and related NCDs.  2006,2009). To complement a first-glance analysis of long-term trends in food and macronutrient availability at the national level, a household-level analysis explored food consumption patterns and trends at the subnational level in great detail. The findings of the study may be useful in informing ongoing food policy reform processes and for designing and implementing food security and nutrition-related policies and programs more generally.The national-level analysis suggests that in the 1980s, 1990s, and first decade of the 21st century, Ghana went through a phase of the nutrition transition that is characterized by a steady reduction in widespread, severe food insecurity, hunger, and undernutrition. Until the end of this threedecade period, there had been no indication of a transition into a phase in which overnutrition-especially overconsumption of animal-source foods-and associated adverse health consequences become major public health problems. The household-level analysis suggests, however, that there are considerable regional differences within Ghana and that some regions are about to transition into this next phase. Urban areas-primarily in the south-are at a later stage of the nutrition transition than rural areas, with the rural north being least progressed. Household food insecurity is still widespread in the rural north, and meeting dietary energy requirements seems to still dominate food choices in many households.The analysis also provides indications that Ghana as a whole, as well as its single regions appear to closely follow the nutrition transition path that has been observed in other developing countries. The results from the Engel curve estimations suggest that, along with continuing household income growth (and urbanization), the consumption of animal-source foods is likely to rapidly increase primarily-but not exclusively-among Ghana's growing urban middle class. The derived elasticity estimates indicate that with rising incomes, diets in Ghana's urban areas and even in the rural north become denser in protein-rich foods of animal origin. The estimated elasticities also suggest that when incomes grow, the consumption of pulses and nuts tends to increase faster than total food consumption in southern Ghana, where (absolute) consumption levels of pulses and nuts are very low, considerably lower than in northern Ghana. Hence, with rising incomes, the diet in southern Ghana is likely to become somewhat richer in highquality protein of vegetal origin, too. The consumption of vegetables and fruits tends to increase, at best, at similar rates to that of animal-source foods in all regions, while the consumption of the main local staple food tends to further increase in absolute amounts but at lower rates than that of nonstaple foods.In conclusion, it is now a good time to review existing food policies (including agricultural subsidies) with respect to their potential nutritional ","tokenCount":"4732","images":["830141765_5_1.png","830141765_5_2.png","830141765_5_3.png","830141765_5_4.png","830141765_5_5.png","830141765_5_6.png","830141765_5_7.png","830141765_5_8.png","830141765_5_9.png","830141765_5_10.png","830141765_16_1.png","830141765_16_2.png","830141765_16_3.png","830141765_16_4.png","830141765_17_1.png","830141765_17_2.png","830141765_17_3.png","830141765_17_4.png"],"tables":["830141765_1_1.json","830141765_2_1.json","830141765_3_1.json","830141765_4_1.json","830141765_5_1.json","830141765_6_1.json","830141765_7_1.json","830141765_8_1.json","830141765_9_1.json","830141765_10_1.json","830141765_11_1.json","830141765_12_1.json","830141765_13_1.json","830141765_14_1.json","830141765_15_1.json","830141765_16_1.json","830141765_17_1.json","830141765_18_1.json","830141765_19_1.json","830141765_20_1.json","830141765_21_1.json","830141765_22_1.json","830141765_23_1.json"]}

data/part_2/6153759753.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"c5ffefcd4b24fcf2842cd599a3f3db5f","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/410d6295-cfe3-435d-b78d-f496197dabc7/retrieve","description":"The intervention implemented evaluated through the Improving Hygiene Practices in Slaughterhouses in Western Kenya study (Ambler, et al., 2024) aimed to address poor hygiene practices in slaughterhouses, which contribute to foodborne illnesses and unsafe meat. Conducted in 140 slaughterhouses across 6 counties in Western Kenya, the intervention focused on training workers, provision of basic hygiene equipment, and the use of monetary incentives to improve compliance with recommended hygiene practices. After the intervention period, key informant interviews (KIIs) were conducted with stakeholders including six County Directors of Veterinary Services (CDVSs), nine sub-county veterinary Officers (SCVOs), one Public Health Officer (PHO), and ten meat inspectors (MIs). \n\nThis report summarizes findings from the KIIs regarding perspectives on the intervention, sustainability, challenges with implementation, and provides a basis for recommendations on refining and scaling up or this approach.","id":"-1965763419"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"a91e5334-768c-46bd-b316-47b295674ffe","pagecount":"5","content":"The intervention implemented evaluated through the Improving Hygiene Practices in Slaughterhouses in Western Kenya study (Ambler, et al., 2024) aimed to address poor hygiene practices in slaughterhouses, which contribute to foodborne illnesses and unsafe meat. Conducted in 140 slaughterhouses across 6 counties in Western Kenya, the intervention focused on training workers, provision of basic hygiene equipment, and the use of monetary incentives to improve compliance with recommended hygiene practices. After the intervention period, key informant interviews (KIIs) were conducted with stakeholders including six County Directors of Veterinary Services (CDVSs), nine sub-county veterinary Officers (SCVOs), one Public Health Officer (PHO), and ten meat inspectors (MIs).This report summarizes findings from the KIIs regarding perspectives on the intervention, sustainability, challenges with implementation, and provides a basis for recommendations on refining and scaling up or this approach.The intervention was positively received by all groups involved, though their perspectives varied based on their roles and responsibilities.CDVSs unanimously recognized the value of the intervention in addressing persistent hygiene challenges in slaughterhouses. They saw the structured training and monitoring as critical steps toward improving meat safety and expressed a willingness to adopt similar practices as part of routine operations if resources allowed.SCVOs, who were directly involved in implementing the training, highlighted the program's practical nature and long-overdue focus on capacity building. Many noted that the intervention addressed an important knowledge gap among workers, which enabled them to understand the rationale behind hygiene protocols.The MIs appreciated the intervention for improving hygiene in slaughterhouses. Over 90% noted significant changes in hygiene practices, such as workers washing hands, cleaning equipment, and adhering to personal protective equipment (PPE) use. Training was widely recognized as critical, with MIs emphasizing that it improved workers' understanding of safe practices. However, about 30% raised concerns about sustainability, particularly when resources like soap and cleaning tools were not consistently available after the intervention.SCVOs reported that other stakeholders, such as facility managers, butchers and local administrators were generally receptive to the training. About 80% of these attendees provided positive feedback, appreciating the practical aspects of the training. However, a few of managers expressed concern about the cost of maintaining hygiene standards long-term without ongoing external support.The training component emerged as a highlight for many participants. SCVOs said workers liked the use of visual aids, such as posters and demonstrations, which made the concepts easy to understand. They especially appreciated that the training was practical and addressed the daily tasks at slaughterhouses directly. The availability of training material in Swahili and vernacular translations ensured inclusivity, allowing workers with varying literacy levels to follow along with the training.The provision of hygiene equipment was another widely appreciated aspect of the intervention. It was reported that workers expressed gratitude for the PPE provided, which most could otherwise not afford, handwashing stations, and cleaning supplies, which enabled them to apply the practices they had been taught. In many facilities, the introduction of the three-bucket cleaning system for knives and tools was well-embraced, helping in cleaning during slaughter operations.For facilities that received incentives, these were a strong motivator for compliance. Workers in these facilities often encouraged each other to meet the standards set during training, with many noting that the monetary rewards were a much-needed boost to their incomes. However, the incentives were not always praised, as some stakeholders felt that they might not be sustainable in the long term. Some stakeholders felt that monetary incentives created dependency and reduced intrinsic motivation to maintain hygiene practices.SCVOs reported that most workers responded positively to the training. Workers were especially excited about receiving PPE (i.e. gumboots and aprons). Posters were well-received, the workers referencing them as reminders of the correct hygiene practices. Incentives also played a role in motivating workers, with many SCVOs reporting that the prospect of earning incentives helped increase adherence to hygiene standards.MIs reported that workers initially showed resistance, with about 60% of MIs noting hesitation about the intervention. However, this changed as they became familiar with the practices and benefits. Provision of PPE and weekly payments significantly motivated workers, with many MIs reporting positive feedback once workers understood the purpose of the intervention.Workers in facilities that received incentives were particularly motivated. The prospect of earning weekly rewards encouraged adherence to hygiene protocols, even among those who had initially been reluctant.In non-incentivized facilities, motivation levels were more variable, and compliance often depended on the presence of meat inspectors to enforce standards.Despite the training and resources provided, the practices workers found most challenging included: Proper carcass handling techniques during flaying (avoiding simultaneous contact with hides and meat to prevent cross-contamination) was identified as a challenge by over half of respondents. According to the SVCOs, most workers forgot to wash their hands after handling meat or using equipment, despite being trained to do so. Consistent washing of knives was difficult, with workers in most of the facilities struggling to maintain the recommended cleaning frequency. Some found scalding pigs on scrubbing tables hard to implement, with some citing physical discomfort and preferring to do it on the floor. Hoisting carcasses prior to skinning, due to the weight of the full animal.These challenges were attributed to insufficient time to wash hands during busy periods, resistance to the additional effort required, and resource shortages. Facilities without access to potable water or proper carcass hoists found it nearly impossible to comply fully with the intervention's recommendations. High turnover rates were also identified as a significant barrier, as new workers often required retraining, which could be difficult to maintain. According to SCVOs and MIs, workers prioritized speed and output during slaughter over compliance with hygiene practices. Some viewed training as a disruption and inconvenience to their workflow. Limited access to potable water hindered compliance. Around 50% of slaughterhouses faced issues with inadequate water infrastructure, cleaning supplies, or storage facilities, making consistent implementation of hygiene practices difficult. Dependence on external provision of hygiene materials posed a challenge. Facility owners were reluctant to invest in consumables such as soap and water treatment solution when those provided through the study were depleted.Stakeholders provided several recommendations to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of future interventions. Regular refresher training was a common suggestion, with SCVOs recommending quarterly or biannual sessions to address staff turnover and reinforce hygiene practices. Non-monetary incentives, such as certificates or public recognition for compliant facilities, were suggested as a sustainable alternative to monetary rewards. Investing in infrastructure, including potable water systems and proper waste disposal facilities, was identified as critical for long-term success.Counties expressed strong interest in adopting the intervention, with all CDVSs indicating a willingness to integrate training and monitoring into routine operations. However, they emphasized the need for external support to sustain training and equipment provision.Key resource needs included funding for training materials, training logistics, additional personnel to handle monitoring in slaughter facilities and infrastructure improvements to address gaps in water access.Most stakeholders were open to exploring alternative methods for decontaminating meat, such as spraying carcasses with food-safe chemicals. While the majority expressed a willingness to promote such methods if proven effective, some raised concerns about costs and consumer acceptance.The intervention improved awareness and hygiene practices in slaughterhouses but highlighted persistent challenges in resource sustainability, infrastructure, and behavioral compliance. Counties demonstrated a strong willingness to adopt the intervention, provided the necessary resources are available. Future efforts should focus on reinforcing practices through policy integration, regular training, and infrastructure development to ensure long-term impact.The hygiene intervention successfully demonstrated the potential for improved practices in slaughterhouses for safer meat production and better public health outcomes. However, long-term success requires addressing systemic challenges, including resource sustainability, infrastructure gaps, and behavioral resistance. By integrating these practices into routine operations and policy frameworks, the intervention can serve as a model for broader adoption in Kenya and beyond. ","tokenCount":"1284","images":["-1965763419_1_1.png"],"tables":["-1965763419_1_1.json","-1965763419_2_1.json","-1965763419_3_1.json","-1965763419_4_1.json","-1965763419_5_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fd3d7aed18ee4c9eef315024cee40f74","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/6e979582-f4c1-432c-ad74-f19201ff8e06/retrieve","description":"Our 2020 report on responses to COVID-19 discussed national pandemic response plans in developing countries (Díaz-Bonilla 2020). Those integrated plans, it was argued, would require a centralized crisis-management office led by the president, prime minister, or equivalent, with participation of the relevant public and private sector representatives. A strong fiscal and monetary response was needed to support these plans, including unconventional monetary policies, such as those used by what were labeled “developmental central banks” during the 1960s and 1970s (Díaz-Bonilla 2015). Expansion in money supply during the pandemic would finance the fiscal deficit related to public expenditures on health and non-health programs as well as programs to maintain private sector production. We noted that central banks in developed countries have followed a similar monetary approach, now called “quantitative easing,” since the 2008–2009 financial crisis, an approach they ramped up during the pandemic.","id":"-187935344"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"c6c5afa4-7ce1-41be-91cb-faa2a9b44df2","pagecount":"10","content":"Our 2020 report on responses to COVID-19 discussed national pandemic response plans in developing countries (Díaz-Bonilla 2020). Those integrated plans, it was argued, would require a centralized crisis-management office led by the president, prime minister, or equivalent, with participation of the relevant public and private sector representatives. A strong fiscal and monetary response was needed to support these plans, including unconventional monetary policies, such as those used by what were labeled \"developmental central banks\" during the 1960s and 1970s (Díaz-Bonilla 2015). Expansion in money supply during the pandemic would finance the fiscal deficit related to public expenditures on health and non-health programs as well as programs to maintain private sector production. We noted that central banks in developed countries have followed a similar monetary approach, now called \"quantitative easing,\" since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, an approach they ramped up during the pandemic.Other recommendations included strong support from the international organizations through capital increases at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and multilateral development banks (MDBs); an additional allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs 1 ) (double the amount provided in the 2008-2009 crisis was suggested); establishment of a debt-resolution mechanism for developing countries focused on debt coming due in the next two years; and the use of co-lending by MDBs and private sector banks and investors.In this chapter, we provide an update on relevant economic developments, and close with a brief discussion of the fiscal and monetary challenges ahead.interventions, many countries resorted to strong fiscal and monetary expansions (see Table 1 for 2020 data reported by the IMF). 2Fiscal and monetary responses were strongest in the advanced economies and more restrained in lower-income countries. On the fiscal side, differences have been greater in the non-health components of the fiscal packages, while expenditures on health as a percentage of GDP have been similar. However, in value terms, there are also large differences in health spending; of the US$1,346 billion spent on health measures, almost 90 percent was spent in the advanced economies (and more than half in the United States alone) (IMF Covid Tracker). On the monetary side, developing countries have less margin for expanding money supply -primarily because of the likely impacts on exchange rates for their currencies -so liquidity expansion in developing countries (and particularly low-income countries) trailed the advanced economies (Table 1). The fiscal expansion increased public debt 3 (see Table 2).While advanced economies significantly increased their debt (as percent of GDP) from levels that were already high, their central banks financed part of that increase, meaning that their net debt increase 4 has been smaller (14.1 percent of GDP, rather than the 15.5 percent shown in Table 2). 5 Lowincome countries, which have implemented smaller fiscal packages, have also experienced relatively lower increases in debt-to-GDP ratios. However, the emerging economies and middle-income countries, which increased spending but did not have the option of strong monetary expansion, are facing greater debt problems. Here it is important to separate China from other developing countries, given its size and particularly large debt increase (projected to jump from 57.1 percent of GDP in 2019 to 74.5 percent in 2023). Among the other developing countries, the greatest debt problems are emerging in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), where the IMF projects debt will reach 74.2 percent of GDP in 2023, up from 68.3 percent in 2019. 6   Several international initiatives have aimed to alleviate the economic impact of the pandemic. Multilateral financial institutions more than doubled annual net financial lending in the first year of the pandemic, from US$64 billion to almost $129 billion (World Bank, International Debt Statistics, 2021), which financed part of the increase in spending in all developing countries. In April 2020, the G-20 countries launched the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) to assist 73 of the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries. The DSSI instituted a suspension period, allowing countries to temporarily pause debt payments to some international financial organizations falling due from May through December 2020, and later extended to end-December 2021. However, the DSSI is only a temporary remedy and leaves out many middle-income countries, some of which have been hard hit by the pandemic.6 Public debt can be internal or external. Looking at external debt, which can be public or private, World Bank data show that the largest increase in debt-to-GNI (gross national income) in 2020 compared to 2019 also occurred in LAC. However, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (excluding India) saw the largest increases in the debt-to-exports ratio (World Bank, International Debt Statistics, 2021). Source: Data from IMF Fiscal Monitor.Note: *Gross debt includes intragovernmental debt.In addition, the IMF approved the largest-ever emission of SDRs (US$650 billion), more than double the response to the 2008-2009 crisis ($250 billion). However, following the rules on allocation of SDRs (which is proportional to country shares in IMF capital), about 60 percent of the new SDRs were allocated to developed countries. Because of that, IMF members are considering ways to reallocate a share of the SDRs from rich countries, which will not use them, to the developing countries that will.Options include expanding the existing Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust,7 which would provide highly concessional loans to low-income countries; a possible new Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), now being discussed at the IMF, that would finance poor and vulnerable countries facing structural transformation challenges, including climate-related challenges; and supporting multilateral development banks (MDBs) in their direct lending to developing countries.These initiatives are commendable, but they may not be enough in terms of the scale of funding needs, the coverage of countries, or the activities they are considering.The pandemic has affected developing regions' economies very differently. Table 3 shows growth rates in 2020, projections for 2021, and the overall change from 2019. Latin America and the Caribbean has been particularly affected. Among developing regions, LAC experienced the deepest economic recession in 2020 and is projected to recover more slowlyit is the only region where 2021 GDP will be lower than 2019 GDP.8 Many countries in the region were experiencing economic problems before the pandemic (median growth in 2019 was a meager 1 percent9 ) as a result of the downswing of the cycle (Díaz-Bonilla 2019). But in 2020, the region's decline in economic activity was general: all countries, except Guyana (driven by oil discoveries), experienced negative growth in 2020, with a median rate of almost -9 percent. LAC's economic recession reflects its relatively tough mobility restrictions compared to other (and more rural) developing regions, which were a response to the region's larger health shock. With only about 8 percent of the global population, LAC has suffered about a third of the world's confirmed COVID-19-related deaths as of this writing (Johns Hopkins Database). The health calamity in LAC appears to be related to several regional characteristics, namely high levels of inequality, significant urbanization, and high prevalence of obesity (a risk factor for COVID-19) (Díaz-Bonilla and Piñeiro 2021). Moreover, regional economic stagnation prior to the pandemic had affected investments in health systems, the vitality of LAC's democracies, and people's confidence in governments, making it difficult to manage the political aspects of the pandemic.In 2021, a global economic recovery is expected: advanced economies are projected to grow at 5.2 percent while developing countries are projected to grow at 6.4 percent (Table 3). Overall, the rebound from the lockdown, advances in controlling the pandemic, and the fiscal and monetary expansion have supported the recovery.10 In the context of overall economic contraction, agricultural production (with forestry and fishing) generally did better in 2020 than other economic sectors. Table 4 provides World Bank agriculture sector data for 2020: no region saw declines in agricultural GDP, but LAC again underperformed other regions (projections for 2021 are not yet available). The relatively strong global supply performance of the agriculture sector has been due in part to both governments' support to the sector and to the fact that food production and distribution were considered essential activities by most countries and so faced fewer mobility restrictions. However, impacts on the demand for agrifood products were larger, due to declines in incomes and employment (see, for example, Graziano da Silva et al. 2021).Inflation in general was subdued in 2020, despite the fiscal and monetary stimulus, but projections suggest an acceleration of inflation in 2021, which should be monitored. Figure 1 shows average and median consumer price inflation in 191 countries (IMF, WEO database). 11 Still, inflation remains below the values observed during the rebound from the last global price shock in 2011, when the average was 6.5 percent and the median was 4.7 percent; and certainly, it has not reached the levels driven by the shocks of 1970s, when inflation rates were in the double digits, and even triple digits for some countries. The process of withdrawing the current expansionary monetary policies in developed countries will also have a negative impact on many developing countries, if it leads to sustained increases in interest rates.As we look forward, we are handicapped by our weak understanding of the relationship between health and economic disruptions, responses, and interactions. Initially, countries hoped to eliminate COVID-19, but it now appears that it will become an endemic disease -the world will need to learn to manage it and live with it. This continuing health problem will compound both existing and new challenges arising in low-and middle-income countries.Key issues we need to understand are why some countries were more severely affected than others, and what policies worked or did not work to address the pandemic. Studies have shown that lockdowns slowed the spread of COVID-19, but their effectiveness differed across continents (Sulyok and Walker 2020) and their impact on employment and incomes was both heavy and unequal. For example, Peru imposed a strict lockdown but has suffered a very high death rate (as of this writing, it is the highest in the world at more than 600 deaths per 100,000 people). Mexico and Brazil, however, which did not impose strict lockdowns, reported fewer deaths per capita (Mexico: 225 deaths per 100,000; Brazil: 287 deaths Average per 100,000). Moreover, Peru pursued a strong fiscal and monetary response to the economic downturn, spending about 18 percent of GDP, but still suffered a deep recession (an 11 percent drop in GDP). Yet in Brazil, where the combined fiscal and monetary stimulus was 14 percent of GDP, and Mexico, where it was less than 2 percent of GDP, the economic declines were smaller, at -4 percent and -8 percent, respectively. Looking across all developing countries, we found no correlation between the percentage of GDP spent on health-related COVID-19 measures and the per capita death rate (the simple correlation between those two variables in 2020 was very small and negative; p=-0.04).While important questions about how best to address the pandemic's impacts remain, the recommendation we made in 2020 still holds true: Countries need to design integrated pandemic recovery programs under a centralized crisis-management office with high-level leadership (Díaz-Bonilla 2020). Those recovery programs will require strong support from the international community, which must encompass not only lower-income countries but also middle-income countries.To address the ongoing crisis, the first step is for developing countries to accelerate vaccinations, which are progressing slowly, while strengthening their health systems to cope with future epidemics (see Financing the Global Commons 2021).As of late August 2021, almost 60 percent of the population in advanced economies was fully vaccinated, and almost 70 percent by the end of October 2021 (Our World in Data). However, in the developing countries, the vaccination rate had not reached 20 percent by the end of August, with much lower rates in low-income countries. Some African countries had not even reached 10 percent by the end of October 2021. This situation leaves the less-developed countries and their populations particularly vulnerable to more dangerous COVID-19 variants and the economic impacts that threaten already fragile economies. Using the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) emitted during the pandemic to de-risk the issuance of \"pandemic recovery bonds\" by developing countries could mobilize private investors with broader social goals, while offering an adequate balance of risk and reward. Such recovery bonds, or similar options, could crowd-in the large private liquidity existing in global markets to help finance credible pathways out of the pandemic for developing countries. How would these bonds work? Advanced economies (which collectively are receiving about US$375 billion in SDRs and which hold about $180 billion from previous allocations) could assign a percentage (say 10 percent, or about $55 billion) to establish a Guarantee Trust Fund (GTF) to support the issuance of special pandemic recovery bonds (PRBs). These bonds would be consoles or perpetual bonds; 1 issued in dollars; paying an adjustable rate with a cap (perhaps 5 percent 2 ); and callable, with call protection (for example, until 2050). With a GFT of $55 billion guaranteeing the interest rate payments on the PRBs, the value of the bonds that can be issued by developing countries is multiplied several times, depending on how the guarantee is structured.For instance, assuming a maximum interest rate of 5 percent, and maintaining a rolling guarantee of three to five years in interest payments, the total amount of PRBs that can be guaranteed may be between $220 and $367 billion (as a comparison, the current allocation of SDRs to developing countries was about $275 billion). That multiplier effect may be larger, depending on the interest rates assumed; the potential defaults on interest payments (which may be similar to the lower levels of the IMF or the MDBs); and whether the losses in the GFT can be covered by additional international public money.To ensure the funds are used effectively, middle-and low-income countries would only be eligible to issue the guaranteed bonds if they have a credible and sustainable pandemic recovery program with a multilateral development bank (MDB), encompassing health, social, economic, and environmental components. Part of the issuance of the PRBs may be used to replace the shorter-term and more expensive debt that some countries had to issue during the pandemic, thus helping with debt sustainability. The quota of PRBs by country may be determined by a combination of indicators such as poverty, health impact of the pandemic (total deaths and deaths as percentage of population), and the depth of the economic recession. This scheme could be especially relevant for LAC countries, perhaps as a component of the program to be agreed at the Summit of the Americas that will take place in mid-2022.The GFT would also help capital markets by supporting an additional asset with an attractive combination of risk and return, which can help absorb some of the global liquidity while supporting broader humanitarian and developmental objectives. It would also benefit advanced economies by helping to put an earlier end to COVID-19 and its global consequences.There may be other options for applying the additional SDRs strategically (such as using them to strengthen the lending capabilities of MDBs, as mentioned). And this proposal may not be the best alternative for every low-and middle-income country, some of which will need direct debt relief. Yet, using a share of the SDRs to create a guarantee fund for the type of pandemic recovery bonds outlined here is worth considering as another weapon in the arsenal to defeat the virus and thus improve global health, economic, social, and political conditions.Getting vaccines to everyone will require additional financing. According to the Rockefeller Foundation (2021), getting shots to half the adult population of the world's lowest-income countries in 2021 will require US$9.3 billion. That estimate includes 92 nations (representing about 3.8 billion people) that are eligible for vaccine access through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private global health partnership. With that money, the Alliance could purchase 1.8 billion vaccine doses. A recent IMF study estimates the additional cost of vaccinating at least 60 percent of the global population by mid-2022, plus the costs of diagnostics, therapeutics, and personal protective equipment, at $50 billion ($35 billion in donor grants and $15 billion from national sources) (Agarwal and Gopinath 2021). Yet, the additional funding required is far less than the costs that further waves of the virus could impose.Second, in addition to the vaccination and health interventions, developing countries need additional fiscal and monetary resources to recover from the economic and human costs of the pandemic. Human capital in developing countries has been affected by the gap in education for the current generation of students; the nutritional problems associated with insufficient and less-healthy diets; and the weakening of job abilities due to long unemployment periods. Yet, while needing further financial resources, these countries are already burdened by the pandemic-related increases in debt. They also continue to contend with a host of pre-existing economic and social problems, while tackling the current and future challenges of climate change. Doing all that is a very tall order.The international community can take some important steps to help ensure fiscal sustainability for these countries, while also helping to normalize monetary policies: Support debt relief. Several countries will need debt restructurings and write-offs (Díaz-Bonilla 2020), for which speedier and better methods must be designed. It will be important to recognize differences in solvency and liquidity problems among the different developing countries to devise appropriate debt relief programs (Kharas and Dooley 2020).Increase capital of MDbs. While some MDBs have recently received capital increases (World Bank in 2018; African Development Bank in 2019), others will need similar treatment. At a minimum, all MDBs must optimize their balance sheets, increasing their leverage ratios and negotiating with the rating agencies for more flexible criteria that account for the current market and pandemic conditions. leverage global liquidity. Scarce international development funds must be used more strategically to leverage and mobilize the vast liquidity in global private capital markets, orienting those markets toward larger humanitarian and developmental objectives. This is particularly relevant in relation to the debate about more effective use of the IMF's SDRs. The Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and the proposed Resilience and Sustainability Trust do not seem to have the needed multiplier effect. The option of allocating the SDRs to MDBs may create greater leverage (about $3-4 of additional financing per dollar of SDRs reallocated). Another option with potential for a greater multiplier effect (from 4 to close to 7) would use a share of the SDRs to create a trust fund to guarantee the emission of \"pandemic recovery bonds\" (Box 1; Díaz-Bonilla 2021b; also Diaz-Bonilla 2021a; von Braun and Díaz-Bonilla 2021).Today, the world is still in the midst of the pandemic, with the possibility of new waves and strains of COVID-19. It is imperative to act now to address both the health crisis and the economic crisis. ","tokenCount":"3095","images":[],"tables":["-187935344_1_1.json","-187935344_2_1.json","-187935344_3_1.json","-187935344_4_1.json","-187935344_5_1.json","-187935344_6_1.json","-187935344_7_1.json","-187935344_8_1.json","-187935344_9_1.json","-187935344_10_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"292bd32f18bddfe1843cdcf3574e1ada","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/9492195d-8c83-4c45-8539-fed1f9f1d46d/retrieve","description":"The recent food crisis, combined with the energy crisis and emerging climate change issues, threatens the livelihoods of millions of poor people as well as the economic, ecological, and political situation in many developing countries. On top of these crises, the decades of shrinking global investment in agricultural research are leading to slower growth in agricultural productivity. Progress in achieving development goals-such as cutting hunger and poverty in half by 2015-has been delayed significantly. In fact, the number of hungry people actually increased by at least 75 million from 2004 to 2007 and probably by even more in 2008. Investment potential in developing-country agriculture is improving, but realizing this potential requires policy action. Addressing these challenges will require the world to develop a more productive and sustainable food and agricultural system. More and more experts and policymakers agree that investment in agriculture and in related, research-based innovations must be accelerated. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is particularly well positioned to contribute to the global effort to foster sustainable food production, increase access to food, and reduce poverty and hunger in rural and urban areas. Its 15 international research centers generate publicly available research on everything from dryland and tropical agriculture, to livestock, to agroforestry, to water management and fisheries. They have decades of experience in agricultural research and participate in a worldwide network of partnerships. The CGIAR is now redesigning its structure and organization to address these global challenges, but it also requires increased funding.","id":"-838785147"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"7c9ca2e0-d4eb-4f92-9b62-fe3d51f288d7","pagecount":"4","content":"he recent food crisis, combined with the energy crisis and emerging climate change issues, threatens the livelihoods of millions of poor people as well as the economic, ecological, and political situation in many developing countries. on top of these crises, the decades of shrinking global investment in agricultural research are leading to slower growth in agricultural productivity. Progress in achieving development goals-such as cutting hunger and poverty in half by 2015-has been delayed significantly. In fact, the number of hungry people actually increased by at least 75 million from 2004 to 2007 and probably by even more in 2008. Investment potential in developing-country agriculture is improving, but realizing this potential requires policy action.ddressing these challenges will require the world to develop a more productive and sustainable food and agricultural system. More and more experts and policymakers agree that investment in agriculture and in related, research-based innovations must be accelerated. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is particularly well positioned to contribute to the global effort to foster sustainable food production, increase access to food, and reduce poverty and hunger in rural and urban areas. Its 15 international research centers generate publicly available research on everything from dryland and tropical agriculture, to livestock, to agroforestry, to water management and fisheries. They have decades of experience in agricultural research and participate in a worldwide network of partnerships. The CGIAR is now redesigning its structure and organization to address these global challenges, but it also requires increased funding.On behalf of the CGIAR, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) considered the impact of doubling spending on agricultural research and development (R&D). Researchers found that increasing investments in public agricultural research from about US$4.6 billion to US$9.3 billion (including an increase in CGIAR investment from US$0.5 to US$1.0 billion) would significantly raise agricultural output and reduce poverty.The exact numbers would depend on how investments were allocated. Targeting new resources toward maximizing total agricultural output, which would reduce global food price increases, would mean allocating more to East and Southeast Asia. This approach would raise agricultural output growth from 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points a year. Such an increase in agricultural growth is highly significant and would reduce the number of people living on less than US$1 a day by 204 million by 2020. If, on the other hand, expanded investments were targeted toward maximizing poverty reduction, relatively more would need to be spent on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Overall agricultural growth would increase from 0.5 to 1.1 percentage points a year and lift about 282 million people out of poverty by 2020.Greater agricultural research investments would also help avert future food crises by significantly reducing food prices. Researchers modeled the effects of high investments in agricultural R&D on food prices and found that such investments could reduce the price of maize by 67 percent in 2025, wheat by 56 percent, and rice by 45 percent, while also reducing farmers' unit costs of production.How can agricultural research investments achieve these goals? Scientists and research leaders have produced an illustrative list of \"best bets\" for CGIAR investments in coming decades that would produce the greatest share of sustainable poverty reduction. This list is neither comprehensive nor complete but indicative. It shows key examples of promising investments and their likely impact, grouped according to the CGIAR's three strategic objectives, and they build upon the CGIAR's past contributions and successes in combating hunger and poverty through agricultural research.Increasing agricultural productivity, not only to raise farmers' incomes but to ensure affordable food for growing urban populations, is one of the main tasks of the CGIAR and its partners. Achieving this goal is becoming more difficult in many areas where the land and water resource base is under pressure and where climatic fluctuations and pests or diseases threaten production. \"Best bets\" for CGIAR investments in this area focus on increasing the productivity of crop and livestock systems, reducing biotic and abiotic stress, and improving the nutritional quality of food.systems of Asia-In the 1990s the growth of cereal yields in Asia stalled, setting the stage for the higher food prices. Accelerating innovation and translating agricultural production into food, nutrition, and livelihood security for the poor require the right institutions and policies. \"Best bets\" in this area focus on genetic resource management, strengthening markets, ensuring women's participation in agriculture, and understanding the links between agriculture and health.Because of restrictive rules and technologies that prevent the reproduction of seeds, farmers' ability to use plant genetic resources for food and agriculture to improve agricultural production and enhance food security has been limited. Through the CGIAR Systemwide Genetic Resources Programme, CGIAR crop centers collaborate in implementing an international treaty that creates a common pool of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, which is made freely available to all parties to the treaty for research and breeding. total investment: uS$15 million. People reached: global impact, with a focus in developing countries.Value chains involve a complex network of assemblers, brokers, wholesalers, processors, retailers, and exporters, all working within an environment of imperfect information. The CGIAR has identified a strong set of research programs that could benefit billions of people, but progress is constrained by a lack of funds. The CGIAR's \"best bets\" are only partially funded, and the centers' heavy reliance on project-related funding reduces the efficiency of implementation because of a lack of continuity and staffing. With doubled funding, the centers could fully implement these and other \"best bets\" as well as the needed core activities of germplasm storage, maintenance breeding, and other essential support programs. They could also take advantage of expanding frontiers in agricultural science and policy, such as biotechnology, information systems, and nanotechnology. The investments required are large by the standards of agricultural research but small compared with other general development investments. They are enormous, however, in terms of the number of people reached and the returns to investment-improved well-being for billions of people.","tokenCount":"985","images":[],"tables":["-838785147_1_1.json","-838785147_2_1.json","-838785147_3_1.json","-838785147_4_1.json"]}

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fb7b9c8108ecd6c6330ba5dbb424cc37","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/0d02b3df-86bf-4c0f-9fb8-a43c2f50276e/retrieve","description":"The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.","id":"1026120720"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"4ebf7ede-2d8a-4268-a0f3-529114d99b56","pagecount":"2","content":"Under-5 wasting b Under-5 overweight a WRA anemia, 2011 b EBF a NA NA NA Off course NA Sources: a Definitions of progress developed by GNR's Independent Expert Group with guidance from WHO/UNICEF; b WHO 2014. Notes: Currently it is only possible to determine whether a country is on or off course for five of the six WHA targets. The year refers to the most recent data available; on/off-course calculation is based on trend data. WRA = women of reproductive age. EBF = exclusive breastfeeding. NA = not available.Source: World Bank 2015. Notes: *0 = perfect equality, 100 = perfect inequality. † The countries with a Gini index are ranked from most equal (#1) to most unequal (#145). NA = not available. ADOLESCENT AND ADULT ANTHROPOMETRY (% POPULATION) ","tokenCount":"128","images":[],"tables":["1026120720_1_1.json","1026120720_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/6698932822.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"c86a451e0f689ae1f7b28627c735a750","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/59cd1e9e-37ea-44e9-a7d3-fb8e0306c170/retrieve","description":"","id":"2093198482"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"166ef249-d1c6-4818-b3ef-b405d4733db9","pagecount":"4","content":"District Nutrition Profiles (DNPs) are available for 707 districts in India. They present trends for key nutrition and health outcomes and their cross-sectoral determinants in a district. The DNPs are based on data from the National Family Health Survey NFHS-4 (2015NFHS-4 ( -2016) ) and NFHS-5 (2019NFHS-5 ( -2021)). They are aimed primarily at district administrators, state functionaries, local leaders, and development actors working at the district-level.  Note: NA refers to data unavailable for a given round of NFHS/Census.• What are the trends in infant and young child feeding (early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, timely initiation of complementary feeding, and adequate diet)? What can be done to improve infant and young child feeding? • What are the trends in IFA consumption among pregnant women in the district? How can the consumption be improved?• What additional data are needed to understand diets and/or other determinants? • How can the district increase women's literacy, and reduce early marriage, if needed?• How does the district perform on providing drinking water and sanitation to its residents? Since sanitation and hygiene play an important role in improving nutrition outcomes, how can all aspects of sanitation be improved? • How can programs that address underlying and basic determinants (education, poverty, gender) be strengthened?• What additional data are needed on food systems, poverty or other underlying determinants? Note: NA refers to data unavailable for a given round of NFHS/Census.• How does the district perform on health and nutrition interventions along the continuum of care? Does it adequately provide both prenatal and postnatal services to women of reproductive age, pregnant women, new mothers and newborns? • How has access to health and ICDS services changed over time (food supplementation, health and nutrition education and health checkups)?","tokenCount":"289","images":["2093198482_1_1.png","2093198482_1_2.png","2093198482_1_3.png","2093198482_1_4.png","2093198482_1_5.png","2093198482_1_6.png","2093198482_1_7.png","2093198482_1_8.png","2093198482_1_9.png","2093198482_1_10.png","2093198482_1_11.png","2093198482_1_12.png","2093198482_2_1.png","2093198482_2_2.png","2093198482_2_3.png","2093198482_2_4.png","2093198482_2_5.png","2093198482_2_6.png","2093198482_2_7.png","2093198482_2_8.png","2093198482_2_9.png","2093198482_2_10.png","2093198482_2_11.png","2093198482_2_12.png","2093198482_3_1.png","2093198482_3_2.png","2093198482_3_3.png","2093198482_3_4.png","2093198482_3_5.png","2093198482_3_6.png","2093198482_3_7.png","2093198482_3_8.png","2093198482_3_9.png","2093198482_3_10.png","2093198482_3_11.png","2093198482_3_12.png","2093198482_4_1.png","2093198482_4_2.png","2093198482_4_3.png","2093198482_4_4.png","2093198482_4_5.png","2093198482_4_6.png","2093198482_4_7.png","2093198482_4_8.png","2093198482_4_9.png","2093198482_4_10.png","2093198482_4_11.png","2093198482_4_12.png"],"tables":["2093198482_1_1.json","2093198482_2_1.json","2093198482_3_1.json","2093198482_4_1.json"]}

data/part_2/7096608685.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fb4717b2eefab3eafa165e60969004f4","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/f825d876-7441-48a4-9ce7-724826e79e55/retrieve","description":"Malnutrition is a problem associated with poverty. Although all poor people are at risk of having an inadequate food intake, it is usually the maternal and preschooler population that are the most nutritionally vulnerable. As a result, a number of interventions targeted directly on pregnant women and children have been implemented. Examples of approaches aimed at specific individuals include supplementary feeding programs, formulated foods or weaning-food projects, and nutrition education programs.","id":"808976757"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"ed62f72e-db83-4c14-bb97-5bba841e07eb","pagecount":"12","content":"of IFPRI are currently working with colleagues in Bangladesh on an evaluation of food-for-work projects, which will provide this type of information.Malnutrition is a problem associated with poverty. Although all poor people are at risk of having an inadequate food intake, it is usually the maternal and preschooler population that are the most nutritionally vulnerable. As a result, a number of interventions targeted directly on pregnant women and children have been implemented. Examples of approaches aimed at specific individuals include supplementary feeding programs, formulated foods or weaning-food projects, and nutrition education programs.However, several recent reviews have indicated that the effectiveness of programs focused on mothers and preschoolers has often been less than expected (Kennedy and Pinstrup-Andersen, 1982;Beaton and Ghassemi, 1982). Even where these interventions have had a significant effect, the observed benefit is often achieved at a relatively high cost (Beaton and Ghassemi, 1982).A more cost-effective alternative to these direct interventions may be a family-oriented program such as a consumer price subsidy. Berg (1981) concludes that, even if policymakers are interested only in reaching the preschooler, it could be more cost effective to reach them through programs affecting malnourished households as a whole. Beaton and Ghassemi (1982), in their review of supplementary feeding programs, come to a similar conclusion. In many countries, malnourished children cannot be reached effectively in any way that does not include the family. It is artificial to look at the individual household member in isolation from the family. By augmenting the food intake of the family, consumption by the child may in turn be increased.Therefore, although the main purpose of this chapter is to look at alternatives to food subsidies, a useful starting point would be to establish the range of expected effects that subsidies can have on family and pre-schooler caloric consumption and child growth. In order to do this, costeffectiveness analyses will be used to compare different types of subsidies and other potential intervention strategies.A comparative approach is difficult because data are limited and studies have been conducted with varying degrees of methodological rigor. Three basic criteria were used to select studies for this comparative analysis. First, the research design had to include some type of comparison or control group. Second, cost data and a description of the intervention had to be included. Lastly, given the specific interest in preschoolers and pregnant and lactating women, information on these target individuals within the family had to be provided.Because studies were selected on these three criteria, some potentially effective interventions were eliminated. For example, no food-for-work study that is currently available had information below the household level. 1 In fact, it was difficult to identify a food-for-work evaluation where any nutritional parameters were included in the study.Previous chapters report that subsidy schemes can be effective in transferring income to the poor and can improve consumption. The evidence also suggests that, because broad-based subsidy schemes are expensive and entail large leakages to households where no calorie deficit exists, some form of targeting should be used in subsidy programs. Therefore, only targeted subsidy programs are considered here.Two subsidy schemes-one in Mexico City and a pilot project in the Philippines-were chosen for this comparison. Both attempt to target benefits to low-income families with preschoolers or pregnant and lactating women. (For a more detailed description of the interventions, see Overholt et al., 1981;Garcia and Pinstrup-Andersen, 1987;chapter 14). Both projects attempt to target geographically. In Mexico, the program is targeted based on income and the presence of children under twelve years old or pregnant women in the household. Distribution centers for subsidized milk are located in the lowest income areas of the city.The Philippine project targets rice and oil subsidies to villages where malnutrition among preschoolers is prevalent. The Philippine subsidy is an experiment and as such was deliberately targeted to the most nutritionally needy areas of the country. Selection of the sample villages was based on strict screening criteria: only those villages where 25 percent of preschoolers have moderate or severe malnutrition, based on weight for age, were included. Thus whereas the national average for moderate and severe preschooler malnutrition is 17.0 percent, the prevalence rates for the sample villages is 31.6 percent.The data in table 9.1 indicate that study families in the two programs are similar in household size and number of preschoolers. Not surprisingly, however, the Philippine households are at higher nutritional risk; more of the households are calorically deficient, and there is a higher prevalence of preschooler malnutrition compared to Mexico City.Although both subsidy programs are targeted to high-risk families, the household targeting was done with the particular intent of reaching the child. Therefore, a major interest in examining these two programs is to determine the potential of these types of schemes for improving nutritional status in children. Table 9.2 compares the cost-effectiveness of the two programs. 2 The cost per recipient is substantially lower in the Philippine project. However, given that in these programs the preschooler can be reached only through the family, the more appropriate measure is the cost per recipient family. In subsidy programs, it is only by delivering services to the family that the programs will reach the preschooler.The annual cost per recipient family is higher in the Mexican program. In addition, the effectiveness of the programs in improving preschooler nutritional status is very different. There was no significant decrease in the prevalence of moderate and severe malnutrition in participating children in Mexico. However, based on preliminary findings from the pilot project, preschoolers from the subsidy families in the Philippines showed an 8.47 percent decrease in malnutrition compared to children in a control group who did not receive the subsidy (Garcia and Pinstrup- Andersen, 1987).These disparate results are not surprising and are primarily due to two factors. First, the children in Mexico City are on average only mildly malnourished. One would not expect to see an average growth response based on weight for age in mildly malnourished children. The growth response of children to supplemental calories will be greatest in those who are the most malnourished; additional calories provided to the mildly malnourished are most likely being utilized for functions other than growth, such as increased activity (Beaton and Ghassemi, 1982). This theory is consistent with earlier work on the Mexican subsidy (Kennedy, 1983), which showed that, although there were increments in the family's caloric intake, a portion of which was captured by the child, this increment did not translate into a significant increase in growth.Second, the methodological approaches of the two studies differ. The Philippine project was able to collect baseline data on nutritional status for both the program participants and comparison children prior to the implementation of the pilot subsidy. Because the Mexican subsidy was an established program, information on participants was available only after they had already received program benefits. The inability to show that the milk subsidy program is improving preschoolers' growth in Mexico may be because the group of children who received the subsidy is not comparable to the group who did not. The preschoolers from subsidy households may have been at greater nutritional risk. The Philippine project was effective in decreasing the prevalence of malnutrition in preschoolers. These data suggest that a subsidy that is properly targeted to nutritionally needy families can be effective in improving preschoolers' nutritional status. The next step is to determine if alternative intervention strategies are more effective in achieving the same end.Supplementary feeding programs for young children and pregnant or lactating women are common and popular in many developing countries. Supplementation programs typically provide rations of 200 to 400 calories through noncommercial channels to pregnant and lactating women and to preschoolers. Cost data from supplementation schemes in five countries were used to assess the potential of these programs as alternatives to targeted subsidies. Table 9.3 compares the five programs. In all five areas, energy intake was low, ranging from 59 to 75 percent of caloric requirements. The requirement used for preschoolers is 1,360 calories per day. The calories provided in the supplement vary widely from 298 to 737 calories, which if totally consumed would fill from 67.0 to 88.2 percent of the estimated calorie gap.Table 9.4 presents data on the annual cost per child in each of the five programs. The variation in the costs per recipient are in large part a reflection of the size of the food package and the types of food distributed. Costa Rica, with the largest caloric supplement and most expensive foods, has the highest cost per child. The more important indicators are shown in column 2. The cost of delivering services to each malnourished child is very high in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica. This is because the prevalence of malnourished children is low in the study population. 3 In countries with a high number of malnourished children, like India and Pakistan, cost per malnourished child is not much different from the annual cost per recipient.In order to compare these data to the subsidy results shown in table 9.2, an attempt was made to determine how much it costs to remove a child from moderate or severe malnutrition. However, the five programs as they now operate do not represent a viable way of making this evaluation, because the programs fail to decrease the prevalence of moderate and severe malnutrition.Two reasons account for this disappointing result. First, the magnitude of the nutrition problem is low in three of the five countries. Thus the results are similar to those in Mexico City. If the population served is not very malnourished, it is unlikely that a significant growth effect or change in caloric intake will be detected. Indicators of the effects of the program other than growth may be more appropriate. Only in India and Pakistan are major growth deficits apparent. Even in the countries where growth retardation is prevalent, the supplement compensates for only part of  , 1981;Beaton and Ghassemi, 1982. \"To determine the percent of the calorie gap filled by the supplement, calorie intake was divided by the calorie gap and multiplied by the percentage of months when food supplement was available and by the percentage of participants who ate. the energy gap-6.6 percent in Pakistan and 28.2 percent in India. This was due largely to infrequent participation by children in the feeding programs.Supplementary feeding programs have the potential to improve consumption and nutritional status, but the actual results have been discouraging. The most effective supplementation schemes appear to be ones with a strong tie to health care. Integrated health and nutrition (IHN) interventions are projects that provide a mix of health care, nutrition, family planning, and water and sanitation. Although the nutrition component varies, it most typically includes a combination of food, nutrition education, and The Narangwal and Tamil Nadu projects in India are two examples of programs that provide nutrition services as part of a larger intervention. Although supplemental food is available, not all children participate. Very strict growth velocity criteria are used to identify children under thirty-six months of age needing food. In Tamil Nadu, about one in three of the children weighed actually received food. Similarly, in Narangwal, although food was available for all children, malnourished preschoolers were particularly encouraged to attend the feeding centers. For pregnant participants in Narangwal, only those women who were underweight at time of conception were eligible for the food supplement.The relevant costs for Tamil Nadu and Narangwal are shown in table 9.5. The costs per recipient in Tamil Nadu are lower than the per-child costs of supplemental feeding. The IHN costs per family are lower than in the subsidy schemes. In addition, the cost of removing a child from malnutrition is substantially less in Tamil Nadu than in the Philippines. This may seem surprising given that one would expect that, as the intensity of services provided increases (as in an IHN project), the cost per recipient would also increase. However, in the Tamil Nadu project, there is a selective distribution of food. Because food is the most expensive component, this decreases dramatically the cost per recipient. The annual cost per child decreased in Tamil Nadu from twelve to eight dollars (U.S.), while the cost per child fed increased from twenty-one to thirty-eight dollars, as fewer children required rehabilitative feeding (World Bank, 1984a).It would appear that selective use of supplemental feeding in an individually targeted program can be cost effective. However, the relative payoffs of various service components may differ depending on the age of the recipient. Table 9.6 shows data on the cost effectiveness of health and nu- trition components in decreasing mortality. 4 Prenatal supplementation, either alone or in combination with medical care, was the most cost-effective means of decreasing perinatal mortality. Medical care was most effective in reducing infant mortality, and nutrition or health care were equally effective in decreasing mortality in children one to three years old. In all cases, mortality was higher in the control villages.4. Perinatal mortality is defined in this study as stillbirths and deaths during the first 7 days. Neonatal mortality is death during the first 28 days. Postneonatal mortality is death from 29 to 364 days. Infant mortality is a combination of neonatal and postneonatal mortality.These Tamil Nadu and Narangwal programs have several features in common. First, there is a strong emphasis on targeting to nutritionally vulnerable individuals. The programs are aimed at pregnant and lactating women and children under three. In Tamil Nadu, India, children under three years old are screened further to identify the malnourished, and only these children receive the food supplement (World Bank, 1984a). Once the children's nutritional status has improved to a certain level, the supplementation is stopped. Critics of this approach have argued that by using the attainment of adequate growth as the exit criterion, mothers will deliberately keep the child undernourished in order to stay in the program. There is no evidence to suggest this has happened in the Tamil Nadu project.The rationale behind the prudent use of the caloric supplements is that not everyone needs the additional foods. An inadequate energy intake may or may not be the basis of the nutrition problem. Given that the major cost in most interventions is the food, the selective use of supplementation will minimize the cost per recipient without jeopardizing the nutritional effectiveness. The results of both the Tamil Nadu and Narangwal projects demonstrate that this can be done successfully.The \"food-as-medicine\" approach works best when there is a need for immediate remediation of moderate and severe malnutrition. Preschoolers with severe weight deficits have a mortality risk approximately seventeen times higher than normal-weight children (Kielmann, Taylor, and Parker, 1978). 5 The distinction sometimes made between short-run versus longrun strategies is a moot point for these children, for whom there is often no long term. In order to alleviate severe preschool malnutrition, the IHN approach usually makes more sense than a subsidy transfer to the household. In addition, IHN projects also can be effective in preventing nutrition-related problems (Kennedy and Pinstrup-Andersen, 1982).However, what happens to a young child when he or she is terminated from one of these highly targeted interventions? If the precipitating cause of the child's weight deficit was inadequate food within the home, the preschooler's malnutrition is likely to recur. In this situation, subsidy schemes targeted to food-deficit households will complement the IHN program. The therapeutic focus of the IHN program will be balanced by the preventive emphasis of family-targeted subsidies.However, malnourished children are sometimes found in households where food supplies are adequate. In these cases, subsidies are not the answer. A combined growth-monitoring and nutrition education program may be effective. Growth monitoring in Indonesian children was shown to significantly improve child growth even when food was not distributed (Rohde, Ismail, and Sutrisno, 1975).A variety of ways exist to improve consumption and nutritional status. The particular policy instrument chosen should be dictated in large part by the nature of the malnutrition problem. In this section three types of interventions-subsidies, supplementary feeding, and integrated health nutrition programs-are looked at as a means of alleviating preschooler malnutrition. Although the issues that emerged from the comparative analyses should not be taken as hard and fast guidelines, they can be used to draw conclusions about factors that influence program effectiveness.Geographic targeting as a means to reach malnourished households can work if a program is able to identify an area with a high proportion of calorically deficient households. The two subsidy schemes that have been used as case studies in this chapter are geographically targeted to households. The results, however, differ. Geographical targeting worked well in the Philippines because the treatment villages had a high prevalence of food-deficit families and malnutrition among preschoolers. The targeting to low-income areas in Mexico City was less effective in achieving the same result, mainly because the overall prevalence of growth retardation was low. In the Philippines, one in three children was less than 75 percent of normal weight for age, whereas in Mexico City it was only one in twenty. In order to reach the most nutritionally needy preschoolers in Mexico City, a more extensive selection procedure would be needed. By adopting a more sophisticated certification system, the costs per recipient would increase, but because there would be fewer participants, the total program costs could decrease. The data from Tamil Nadu point this out (World Bank, 1984a). As preschooler malnutrition decreased in the project area, the projected cost per child fed increased from U.S. $20.76 to U.S. $37.82, but total program costs decreased, because significantly fewer children needed food.In Mexico City in 1977, there were approximately 250,000 subsidy recipients. If 5 percent of these participants are the intended target audience for the program (table 9.1), approximately 12,500 people need to be served. Even if the costs per recipient double because of the additional screening procedures, total costs of the program would still decrease by a factor of ten. Alternatively, the program could serve a greater number of the most nutritionally vulnerable at the same level of expenditure.One point is worth repeating. In the analyses, growth is used as an indicator of a program's effectiveness, but a growth response is unlikely in mildly malnourished children; this is probably true regardless of what type of intervention is used. For example, preschool feeding centers in which only 15 percent of the new entrants were malnourished were found to have no effect on growth (Anderson et al., 1981). Other indicators of a program's effectiveness may be more appropriate. As preschoolers approach normal growth, they use a higher proportion of incremental calories to increase activity rather than to increase growth (Beaton, 1982). Activity patterns may be a better yardstick for evaluating program effectiveness for mildly malnourished children.Targeting also improves the cost effectiveness of direct nutrition interventions. The five supplementation programs examined here were not effective in significantly improving, growth because, first, they were not targeted to areas with high rates of malnutrition and, second, the benefits provided may have been too small. The selective use of supplemental feeding as part of a package of services in the Narangwal and Tamil Nadu programs enhanced the cost effectiveness of the projects. In Tamil Nadu, only about one in every three children was given food. Because food accounts for the major portion of the cost of the intervention, this is one way to minimize overall programs costs without decreasing effectiveness.The dichotomy between subsidies as a family-oriented intervention and the IHN programs as a child-oriented strategy is an artificial division. Both the Tamil Nadu and Narangwal projects did involve the family. The growth monitoring and surveillance that was a large part of the effort in Narangwal created an awareness within the family of the health and nutritional status of the child. The project was very labor intensive. In the villages with supplementation, preschoolers had a total of fifty-five service contacts in a year (Kielmann, Taylor, and Parker, 1978). Similarly, in Tamil Nadu there was regular contact with the child and the family at the village centers. The requirement that families bring the child to the village center did not appear to affect participation (World Bank, 1984a). However, this might not be true if this type of intervention were replicated in parts of rural Africa where the target population may not be close to a village. The ease with which any type of intervention can be duplicated depends on the existing infrastructure. Modifications will always be necessary to accommodate local constraints (chapter 8).It is unlikely that the selective distribution of food and the whole concept of food as medicine for the child would work without an intensive campaign within the project area. It is much more difficult to incorporate targeting of specific children into ongoing programs than into new ones.The Philippine subsidy scheme and the two IHN projects were effective in improving child growth. However, the cost per child removed from moderate or severe malnutrition was lower in Tamil Nadu than in the Philippines. In the Philippines, the program subsidized all family members in","tokenCount":"3484","images":["808976757_1_1.png","808976757_2_1.png","808976757_3_1.png","808976757_4_1.png","808976757_5_1.png","808976757_6_1.png","808976757_7_1.png","808976757_8_1.png","808976757_9_1.png","808976757_10_1.png","808976757_11_1.png","808976757_12_1.png"],"tables":["808976757_1_1.json","808976757_2_1.json","808976757_3_1.json","808976757_4_1.json","808976757_5_1.json","808976757_6_1.json","808976757_7_1.json","808976757_8_1.json","808976757_9_1.json","808976757_10_1.json","808976757_11_1.json","808976757_12_1.json"]}

data/part_2/7325709081.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8ba0a9bcf29bc0a99ea7b895ca917af0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/06d49bd7-112d-44f8-b07d-26bbf6c22329/retrieve","description":"Over the past ten years, there have been several initiatives in Malawi to strengthen the processes through which the design and content of policies, strategies, and programs in the agriculture sector that affect the nation’s food security are established. In this report we present results of a study to assess the quality of these policy processes and the institutional framework through which they are conducted and how perceptions of the quality of those processes and institutions is changing over time. The study is based on a two-round survey of national stakeholders in Malawi on issues centered on agriculture or food security that was conducted in 2015 and 2017/18.","id":"93007133"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d2b8550d-06df-4b65-a4fe-99cc9d897bdc","pagecount":"44","content":"Together, the MSU-IFPRI-UP consortium works with governments, researchers and private sector stakeholders in Feed the Future focus countries in Africa and Asia to increase agricultural productivity, improve dietary diversity and build greater resilience to challenges like climate change that affect livelihoods.The papers are aimed at researchers, policy makers, donor agencies, educators, and international development practitioners. Selected papers will be translated into French, Portuguese, or other languages.Over the past ten years, there have been several initiatives in Malawi to strengthen the processes through which the design and content of policies, strategies, and programs in the agriculture sector that affect the nation's food security are established. In this report we present results of a study to assess the quality of these policy processes and the institutional framework through which they are conducted and how perceptions of the quality of those processes and institutions is changing over time. The study is based on a two-round survey of national stakeholders in Malawi on issues centered on agriculture or food security that was conducted in 2015 and 2017/18.Broadly linked to the operationalization in Malawi of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union, about ten years ago the government of Malawi led a multi-stakeholder effort to develop the Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp). This served as the CAADP agricultural sector investment plan for the country for the period 2011 to 2015.In late-2016, the National Agriculture Policy was adopted by government following a two-year process of development involving significant stakeholder consultation. To replace the earlier ASWAp, in 2017 the National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP) was developed, drawing its priorities from those of the National Agriculture Policy. 1 The NAIP was launched in January 2018, as the endline survey for this research was being fielded.The technical implementation of the earlier ASWAp was guided by multi-stakeholder Technical Working Groups (TWG), of which there were seven. 2 The TWGs report to a higher-level Agricultural Sector Working Group (ASWG), whose membership is drawn from across the full range of stakeholders in Malawi's agriculture sector. The ASWG has onward links to the political leadership of Malawi. This hierarchy constitutes the basic institutional framework at national level for agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi. A key component of the implementation of the ASWAp and now the NAIP is a mutual accountability framework for monitoring and evaluating progress made. The regular meetings of the TWGs and the ASWG are components of this, while an annual agricultural Joint Sector Review report provides a formal accounting of progress achieved and challenges that remain.Because of these developments in the overall governance of the sector, there has been a broadening in who participates in agriculture and food security policy processes. In addition to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Water Development (MoAIWD), which continues to coordinate these processes, a broader and more diverse range of civil society and non-governmental organizations, firms or representatives of sub-sectoral umbrella organizations from the private sector, other agencies from within the public sector, and agriculture and food policy researchers from various institutions all now engage in these processes more regularly. Development partners remain engaged, primarily through the Donor Committee on Agriculture and Food Security (DCAFS), which provides a consensus perspective of donors on the issues at hand.The New Alliance Policy Acceleration Support-Malawi (NAPAS:Malawi) project has been funded by the Malawi mission of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since 2014 to work particularly with MoAIWD on an agenda of policy reforms in the agriculture sector. The reforms are those which the government of Malawi committed to in late-2013 under the Country Cooperation Framework for the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Malawi. The processes through which these policies are developed or reformed necessarily involve the participation of a broader range of stakeholders in the sector than just government. In consequence, one of the objectives of the NAPAS:Malawi project is to support efforts to improve the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes in terms of the institutional architecture within which these processes take place, the value of the discussions on various policy, strategy, and program options being considered, and the degree to which objective evidence is used to guide decision making.Two of the NAPAS:Malawi project monitoring indicators are indices, first, of the quality of the agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi and, secondly, of the quality of the institutional architecture within which those processes proceed. These indices are to be computed based on the results of baseline and project endline surveys of national level stakeholders in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi.A baseline survey was done by NAPAS:Malawi in mid-2015. The results of the analysis of this first survey were published in the Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Food Security Policy (FSP) Working Paper 13 in January 2016 and summarized in a related brief. 3 The survey was administered between June and August 2015 to a purposively selected survey sample made up of about 100 stakeholders in these policy processes. These individuals were asked to complete an on-line questionnaire that captured their opinions on a range of questions related to the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes at national level in Malawi. At the end of the baseline survey administration period, responses had been obtained from 86 individuals.For the endline survey, the 86 individuals who made up the analytical sample for the baseline survey were contacted again and asked to complete an on-line questionnaire that replicated three of the five modules from the baseline survey. Completed endline survey questionnaires were submitted by respondents between mid-November 2017 and mid-February 2018. In total, 55 respondents completed the endline questionnaire. Of these, 43 were the same respondents, while the other 12 endline survey respondents were replacements for baseline survey respondents who no longer participate in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi. These replacements generally are the current holders of the institutional positions held by the earlier baseline survey respondents.This report examines results from the endline survey and compares them to those of the baseline survey. It replicates in many ways the initial report on the baseline survey. However, while we remain interested in different perceptions of specific stakeholder groups-government, civil society, the private sector, donor agencies, and researchers-of the quality of those processes, here we also are interested in whether there are significant changes in perceptions of the quality of policy processes around agriculture and food security in Malawi between 2015 and late-2017.The quality of policy processes around agriculture and food security are dependent in part on how active those processes are. During the period since 2014, several such policy reform processes have been operating with differing levels of dynamism and progress. These efforts reflected in part the dedicated technical support that MoAIWD received from the NAPAS:Malawi project to enable it to fulfill its policy reform commitments under the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The policy reform processes around agriculture and food security included:• National Agriculture Policy -The development of this overarching sectoral policy started in 2009. A first full draft of the new policy was disseminated in early-2011, but was not endorsed due to what was viewed as insufficient stakeholder consultations and an inadequate evidence base. The process to develop the Policy was restarted in 2014 with a totally revised draft policy. This draft incorporated the results of substantial sectoral and sub-sectoral analyses and was the subject of extensive consultations across the country. 4 The policy was endorsed by Cabinet and formally launched in late-2016 by the President of Malawi. • National Agriculture Investment Plan (NAIP) -As the development of the National Agriculture Policy progressed and the ASWAp document expired in 2015, the NAIP was developed under the leadership of MoAIWD with technical assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through a consultative and participatory process involving all major stakeholder groups. The NAIP is the implementation plan for the National Agriculture Policy and is consistent with CAADP guidelines for national agricultural investment plans. It was formally launched in January 2018. Much of the current institutional architecture for multi-stakeholder policy processes around agriculture and food security and accountability mechanisms within the public agriculture sector in Malawi has been developed over the past 10 years or so through initiatives that are linked to the continental CAADP process and the formulation of sector-wide approaches to development, including in agriculture-in the case of Malawi, the development of the ASWAp plan. Africa-wide, Malawi has been one of the star countries in terms of meeting CAADP commitments-a 2018 biennial review, for example, rated Malawi as among the top ten countries on course for achieving continental agricultural policy reform and budget allocation targets. However, the review also stated that Malawi was unlikely to achieve the targets for agricultural growth and improved food security and nutrition that these policy reforms and budget allocations are to foster. 5 This implies increasing skepticism about whether these initiatives are sufficiently innovative and effective for stimulating increased growth and development of the sector and the economy in general.Possibly in consequence of moving now well beyond the launch of these continental agricultural development initiatives and with increasing recognition of the size of the hurdles that must be surmounted to achieve their targets, our analysis here shows a growing sense of discouragement. This broader context for policy processes around agriculture in Africa and how it has evolved is an important contextual element to understanding recent trends in perceptions of the quality of policy processes around agriculture and food security in Malawi.Moreover, at a practical level, the ASWAp, which was at the center of many of the institutional reforms, is now being replaced by the NAIP. Under the ASWAp both government and development partner resources were provided to the policy processes and the institutions involved to facilitate broad discussions and mutual accountability among the broad set of stakeholders involved in agriculture and food security issues in Malawi. With the winding up of the ASWAp, several respondents to the endline survey reported that the funding that enabled the regular holding of Agricultural Sector Working Group and Technical Working Group meetings is no longer in place, rendering these policy processes less effective.The questionnaire for the endline survey closely replicated that which was used for the baseline survey (Table 1). As was the case with the baseline survey, the questionnaire for the endline survey was designed to capture from each respondent their assessment of the quality of national-level policy processes on agriculture and food security in Malawi. However, two modules from the baseline survey were dropped for the endline survey-one exploring factors that affect agenda-setting within policy processes on agriculture and food security and the other on the recent participation by the respondent in agriculture and food security policy process events. The survey was implemented on-line using the Ona data platform (http://ona.io) and was made up of three modules with a total of about 50 questions. (The complete questionnaire is presented in Appendix 1.)All the questions in modules B and C were four-level Likert scale questions in which respondents specified their level of agreement or disagreement with a statement relating to aspects of policy processes on agriculture and food security in Malawi. No 'neutral' or \"neither agree nor disagree\" option was offered, forcing the respondent to make a judgment on the statement in question. Each of the questions had an option for respondents to provide an explanation of their response in a following comment box.Definitions were provided in the questionnaire for two terms: 'stakeholder' and 'policy'.• 'Stakeholder' is used to collectively include representatives from the public sector, private sector, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, research organizations, the donor community, producer organizations, citizen's groups, etc. that are active in Malawi on agriculture and food security policy issues. • 'Policy' as used in the questionnaire includes the content of master development frameworks for Malawi, sector strategies, sub-sector strategies, public investment plans, legislation and regulations (both enacted and proposed), and the design of public programs.These were provided to assist the respondent to more precisely identify the context to which the questions referred.A purposive sample was chosen for the initial baseline survey in 2015. The aim was to develop a reasonably representative sample of involved individuals from the institutions that constitute the institutional architecture of agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi. (EAT) projects of USAID published a report in which they mapped out the institutional architecture of these policy processes and how mutual accountability is achieved within them. 6 The network of institutions described in the report was used to define the sampling frame and thus the broad outline of the population of stakeholders in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi from which the survey sample and its sub-samples were chosen.The specific individuals included in the original sample were drawn primarily from lists of participants in two large national level events in which agricultural policy was the focus-the July 2014 symposium on the Farm Input Subsidy Program and the March 2015 national consultation on the content of the draft National Agriculture Policy. Representation in the sample was sought from five different categories of stakeholders-government, civil society, the private sector, donor agencies, and researchers (Table 2). Although there are some significant differences in opinions on some questions between sub-categories under the 'Government' and 'Civil society' institutional categories, we do not report these differences in this report. 7 Except in Table 7 and Table 8 on the two NAPAS:Malawi performance monitoring indices, only the aggregate results for the five main stakeholder institutional categories are given in the other tables in this report.For the baseline survey, 99 potential informants were contacted to seek their participation in the survey. Six individuals were not available during the survey period, while two informed us that they did not wish to participate in the survey. Despite following up individually with potential informants, we never received responses from five other individuals contacted. Our final analytical sample size for the 2015 baseline survey was 86 respondents (Table 2).For the endline survey in late-2017 and early-2018, our prospective sample was restricted to the 86 respondents who had completed the baseline survey in 2015. However, at the outset it was determined that several of the respondents to the baseline survey were not available or no longer engaged in agriculture or food security policy processes due to being transferred to new unrelated positions, having left the country (particularly staff of international agencies), retirement, or death. Replacements were identified by contacting the individuals who now hold the same institutional positions as the baseline survey respondents who were no longer available. If these individuals could not be identified, replacements were chosen by seeking other individuals with similar roles within the analytical institutional category (government, civil society private sector, donor, researcher) of the baseline survey respondent no longer available. In the end, 12 respondents to the endline survey had not been a part of the baseline survey (see Table 2, 4th and 5th columns).Significant attrition in our samples occurred between the 2015 baseline and the 2017/18 endlineresponses were obtained from 55 respondents for the endline as against 86 in the baseline. By institutional category, the highest rates of attrition were seen in government and research. Among respondents from government, the highest attrition rates were seen among legislators and staff of statutory corporations-notably, none of the four legislators who were respondents for the baseline survey participated in the endline (Table 2). Female respondents for the baseline were also more likely to not have been enumerated in the endline survey.This report is based on the responses that the 55 members of the endline sample provided.Comparisons are made between these responses and the responses to the same questions in the baseline survey for the 43 members of the endline survey sample who were enumerated in the baseline.For the other 12 members of the endline sample, their responses are compared to the baseline survey responses of the individuals that they were judged to have replaced, as described earlier. Although the earlier report on the baseline survey was based on analysis of the information obtained from all 86 respondents in that sample, we ignore in this report the information obtained from the 31 baseline survey respondents who did not participate in the endline survey or were not replaced by a comparable respondent in the endline survey.An important analytical consideration is whether significant bias was introduced into our sample through the significant attrition between the baseline and endline samples. Perspectives on dimensions related to the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes may differ between those who participated in both rounds of the survey and those who only participated in the baseline survey. That is, the results presented in the report on the baseline survey using the information from the 86 respondents may not be consistent with the baseline survey results derived from the 55 respondents who completed the endline survey. To determine how this loss from the baseline sample affects the representativeness of the results presented in the earlier report, means comparisons were done on the responses in the baseline survey to all questions in module B on the quality of the agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi-and module C on the quality of the institutional architecture for those policy processes.Two separate means comparisons were done, the results of which are presented in Appendix 2. The first compared the mean responses from the baseline survey for the 43-member baseline survey subsample who participated in both surveys to the mean responses of the 43 baseline survey respondents who did not participate in the endline survey. No statistically significant differences are seen between the two baseline survey sub-samples in their mean responses to any of the questions in Module B. The only statistically significant differences in mean responses are seen in three questions in Module C-C8 and C9 on Technical Working Groups and C18 on donor coordination. The sub-sample of respondents that participated in the endline survey has a slightly more positive assessment on all three questions that does the sub-sample of respondents who did not participate in the endline survey.The second means comparison is done between those of the full 86 respondent baseline sample and the 55-member baseline sub-sample that is defined by the endline survey analysis, i.e., the 43 respondents who participated in both surveys, plus the 12 baseline survey respondents who were replaced for the endline survey. In essence, this comparison provides guidance on whether the results presented in the report on the baseline survey that was developed from the 86-member baseline survey sample would have been generally the same if the analyses had been based on the 55-member sub-sample. As presented in Appendix 2, the comparison of assessment scores between the full baseline sample and the sub-sample shows no statistically significant differences on any of the questions in either module. We conclude that the baseline survey report reasonably represents the results that would have been obtained if we had used only information provided by the 55-member sub-sample.In brief, we see very few differences between the baseline survey sub-samples examined in their mean responses to the 40 questions in Modules B and C. Mean responses for the sub-samples differ at most for any question by three decimal points on a scale of 0 to 3 and for all except three questions, the mean differences are not statistically significant. This suggests that very limited, if any, bias was introduced by constraining the analysis in this report on the two surveys to the information provided by the restricted sample of 55 respondents, excluding from the analysis any information obtained from those baseline survey respondents who did not participate in the endline survey and were not among the 12 respondents replaced.Our analytical sample of 55 endline survey respondents shows that policy processes in Malawi remain strongly male-dominated-only 13 percent of the respondents are female, with technical officers in government, civil society organizations, and donor agencies having slightly higher female membership in their sub-samples (Table 3). The attrition in female participation between the survey samples is seen in that 20 percent of the baseline survey sample was female (Table 2). The analytical sample generally is quite experienced in policy processes on agriculture and food security in Malawi, with the average length of participation of respondents in such policy processes being 13.5 years at the time of the endline survey. At the time of the endline survey, there were seven Technical Working Groups (TWG) on agriculture and food security issues in Malawi. Although led by government, these have broad stakeholder membership. Highest levels of participation in these TWGs were seen in respondents who are in civil society organizations or in donor agencies (Table 3). Generally, non-governmental respondents are involved in more TWGs than are those in government.Table 4 provides a summary of the answers to the multiple-choice question asking respondents to assess the level of influence of their own institution on recent agriculture and food security policy change processes. In general, members of the analytical sample view their own institution as having moderate to high influence on the direction that the policy processes take. There is no statistically significant difference between different institutional categories of respondents in this regard, although respondents from senior or technical posts in government and from civil society organizations are somewhat more likely than respondents from other categories and sub-categories to have reported that their institution has a high degree of influence.By examining the mean scores by category across the baseline and endline surveys, some changes can be seen between 2015 and 2017/18 in the level of influence the respondents feel their institution has in these processes. Both private sector and donor respondents feel that their influence has improved over the period between the two surveys. Respondents from the non-governmental organization and senior government sub-categories also feel that their influence has increased. Only a handful of respondents reported a lower sense of their influence in 2017/18 than in 2013-while 31 percent of respondents reported an improvement in the level of influence of their institutions, only 7 percent reported a decline, with the balance reporting no change. The mean score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'No influence', 1 to 'Limited influence', 2 to 'Moderate influence', and 3 to 'High influence'.Modules B and C of both the 2015 baseline and 2017/18 endline surveys for the study on the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes at national level in Malawi consisted of 19 and 21 questions, respectively. The questions in Module B probed the respondent's opinion on the general quality of the policy processes, while those in Module C examined the institutional architecture through which these processes were conducted. 8 The four-level Likert scale questions were framed as generally positive statements on various dimensions of the policy processes or the associated institutional architecture. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with the statement: 'Completely disagree'; 'Somewhat disagree', 'Somewhat agree', and 'Completely agree'. No 'neutral' or \"neither agree nor disagree\" option was offered.Each of the questions had space for the respondent to provide an explanation of their response if he or she so desired. For module B, an average of 20 percent of respondents in the baseline survey and 29 percent in the endline provided comments on each question to supplement their multiple-choice response, while for module C an average of 15 percent of respondents in the baseline survey and 19 percent in the endline provided additional detail on each question. In both survey rounds, most respondents who added an explanation to their response disagreed to some degree with the statement posted or sought to qualify their answer in some way.To analyze the results from the Likert scale multiple-choice responses to the questions in the two modules of the endline survey, the four possible responses were assigned integer values: 0 for a 'Completely disagree' response; 1 for 'Somewhat disagree', 2 for 'Somewhat agree', and 3 for 'Completely agree'. Mean responses to the questions were then computed overall and by the five categories of respondents. In addition, the responses made in the baseline survey in 2015 for the 55 respondents were retrieved to enable comparison with the 2017/18 endline survey responses. All of these results are presented for Module B in Figure 1 and Table 5 and for Module C in Figure 2 and Table 6.To test statistically whether the aggregate responses to a question for each of the five sub-sample categories differed significantly between any of the groups or whether the mean response to a question in the baseline survey differed significantly from the mean response in the endline survey, a Kruskal-Wallis rank test was used with each set of responses to each question. The implication of a significant result to the test between categories of respondents is that at least one of the five categories of respondents had pointedly different assessments from other categories of respondents on the quality of the dimension of agriculture and food security policy processes being explored in that particular question in the endline survey. Similarly, a significant result for the test between the survey rounds for a particular question is that opinions expressed by the respondents in the endline survey differed significantly from their responses to the same question in the baseline survey.The rightmost column of Table 5 and Table 6 for the pair of rows for each question presents the p-values for the Kruskal-Wallis rank tests for the responses to that question. The results for the test comparing responses by category of respondent is presented in the first row, while the results for the test comparing responses across the two survey rounds is presented in the second row of the pair.Considering the results for the Kruskal-Wallis rank test comparing responses by category of respondent, in the endline survey statistically significant Kruskal-Wallis rank test results were obtained for 5 of the 19 questions in Module B and 8 of the 21 questions in Module C-32.5 percent of the 40 questions. In the baseline survey of 2015, the number of questions with significantly different responses across categories was 10 in Module B and 7 in Module C-42.5 percent of all questions. That the number of questions with significant test results declined between the baseline and the endline survey suggests some convergence of opinion across categories of respondent stakeholders over this period. However, the patterns of which specific questions had significantly different responses across categories were not consistent across the two survey rounds. This implies that the dimensions of the policy processes or aspects of the institutions involved on which there was disagreement between respondents changed between 2015 and 2017/18.Examining the results of the Kruskal-Wallis rank test comparing responses by survey round, for most of the 40 questions in the two modules there is a significant decline in the mean score. For module B, a statistically significant decline in the mean Likert score is seen for 17 of the 19 questions, suggesting significant erosion across all respondents in their perceptions of the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes over the period between the two survey rounds. For module C, statistically significant declines in the mean Likert score is seen in 13 of the 21 questions. While this pattern is consistent with the pattern in Module B, that fewer questions showed a significant decline implies that many respondents still view elements of the institutional architecture for these policies processes-the focus the questions in Module C-to be relatively effective. For none of the questions in either module was an improvement seen in the mean Likert scores between the baseline and endline. Significantly greater cynicism about the quality of agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi is seen in 2017/18 relative to 2015.Module B primarily focuses on the quality of the content and inclusiveness of the discussions and debate in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi. An underlying assumption to the questions is that government is the principal convener and organizer of these processes, a role it has long played. Starting from this assumption, the questions investigate the degree to which the perspectives of other stakeholder groups are brought into these government-led processes, how well structured the processes are, and the degree to which evidence has been or could be used to inform the dialogues and debates inherent to them.The questions in Module B are made up of generally positive statements on various dimensions of the policy processes. The overall question response patterns seen in Figure 1 shows that the average response to the statements posed in the endline survey fall around the 'Somewhat disagree' response, with an average assessment score for all questions in Module B for all respondents of 1.25. This pattern contrasts to the pattern of responses in the baseline survey of 2015 where the respondents were generally appreciative of the quality of the processes, while recognizing that there is still considerable room for improvement-the average assessment score for the baseline survey was 1.93, close to the value of 2.0 assigned to 'Somewhat agree' responses.9 Figure 1 depicts this negative trend clearly-the mean rating by respondents in the 2015 baseline survey, depicted by the '○' symbol in the figure, for all questions is consistently to the right of the mean rating by respondents in the 2017/18 endline survey, depicted by the symbol '□' in the figure. Table 5 shows that these differences between the two survey rounds are statistically significant for all except two of the 19 Module B questions. B14 -A clear and understood legal process for developing and approving policies, strategies, legislation, and regulations is in place B15 -A formal policy-making process is always followed B16 -A system to make data and information readily available provides evidence to inform discussions and decisions in these policy processes B17 -Evidence is frequently used in making policy decisions in the sector B18 -Capacity for analysis and outreach exists within stakeholder groups to effectively engage with government on these issues B19 -Capacity exists within Malawi to conduct independent policy analyses on these issues (B19)Source: Analysis of survey module B. Note: The mean assessment score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely disagree', 1 to 'Somewhat disagree', 2 to 'Somewhat agree', and 3 to 'Completely agree'. An equal distribution of assessment levels will have a mean score of 1.5. Note: The rightmost column presents the p-values for the Kruskal-Wallis rank test of statistically significant differences between responses. The first of each pair for each question in this column assesses the significance of differences in mean responses for 2017/18 between the five main institutional categories of respondents. The second of each pair assesses the significance of differences in mean responses for all respondents between the baseline in 2015 and the endline in 2017/18. The mean assessment score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely disagree', 1 to 'Somewhat disagree', 2 to 'Somewhat agree', and 3 to 'Completely agree'. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001.As was the case with the baseline survey, in the 2017/18 endline respondents from government generally provide the most positive assessments across the respondent categories, with an average score for all 19 questions in Module B of 1.42. However, this is significantly lower than the mean score in the baseline survey of 2.11. The average assessment score for all non-government respondents for the questions in Module B is 1.16, 0.26 points below the average score for government respondents. The mean score in the baseline survey for all non-government respondents was 1.81. Among nongovernment categories of respondent, encouragingly, the private sector respondents had the highest assessment of the quality of policy processes and showed the smallest decline in their mean assessment between the baseline and endline survey. Researchers, in contrast, showed both the lowest mean quality assessment score and the greatest drop in their mean score. Although, government respondents remained in 2017/18 generally more optimistic than the non-government respondents in their assessment of the quality of the content and inclusiveness of the discussions and debate in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi, the sharp decline in mean assessment scores is seen in both government and non-government respondents. This pattern is also seen in Module C.The first five questions of Module B concern whether dialogue with government on agriculture and food security policy issues in Malawi is sustained and whether a range of perspectives are brought into this dialogue. Respondents were asked to consider these questions both in general and specific to their own institution. While in the baseline survey in 2015 most respondents felt that their institution is in reasonably good dialogue with government (Question B2), there was a sharp decline in this assessment in the endline survey-only civil society organization feel that they have reasonably continuous dialogue with government. Researchers surveyed in 2017/18 feel generally excluded from dialogue with government.However, somewhat more encouraging responses are seen on this question when the focus was on non-government stakeholders as a whole (B1), rather than to the respondent's institution alone. Most respondents either somewhat agreed or somewhat disagreed that the dialogue between stakeholders in general and government is continuous. The assessment in 2015 of the continuity of this dialogue between government and all stakeholders was considerably more positive in this regard than in 2017/18. While government respondents think such dialogue is continuous and broad, other categories of respondents were more critical, possibly reflecting a view that there are many stakeholders who could be, but are not participating in these policy processes. Moreover, some skepticism was expressed on the authenticity of the consultative processes. For example, it was noted that the level of consultation is issue-dependent, with some issues not open for multi-stakeholder consultation, as seen in this comment on BI-\"The interaction is selective based on policy issues government is championing. But there are other issues government doesn't even consult.\"With regards to the perspectives that are brought into these processes, fewer respondents in 2017/18 than in 2015 feel that their perspectives are considered in policy processes in general and particularly by government. Researchers are most skeptical of the consideration given to their ideas by other stakeholders, particularly by government, but they are not alone in this view. There has been a general drop in respondents' assessments of how well a broad set of perspectives are considered in these policy processes. Comparing the responses to B4 and B5, generally respondents feel that non-governmental stakeholders in policy processes consider more closely the perspectives of the respondent than do government participants in those processes. Moreover, it was noted that government dominates in how these processes roll out, which can diminish the contributions made by other stakeholders-one respondent noted that \"[policy] finalization is dominated by government, [which] undermines the input and dialogue process.\"Questions B6 to B9 ask about the degree to which the participation of particular stakeholder groups is effective in these policy processes-farmers, the private sector, civil society organizations, and donors. The pattern seen in the baseline survey on the relative effective participation of these groups was maintained, but with some decline in perceptions as to how effective the groups are in policy dialogues. Farmers and the private sector were judged to be less effective than the other two stakeholder groups. Several respondents were concerned that institutions representing farmers in policy processes dilute the perspectives of farmers. Moreover, consultations with farmers were characterized as often being \"window dressing\" or that the consultations take place \"but their inputs are not taken seriously.\" With regards to the participation of the private sector, several respondents noted that their engagement was problematic-government does not communicate effectively with the private sector to maintain their engagement, nor are the processes conducted in a timely and efficient manner to maintain the commitment of business firms. One researcher observed that \"Participation by private sector players in meetings is rare. The opportunity cost of their time is high and (like me) they get fatigued with long rambling consultations.\" Respondents from donor agencies and civil society organizations were the most critical among the respondent groups of their own institution's effectiveness in participating in these processes. For the donors, all other respondent groups but the donors viewed donor participation as generally effective in the endline survey, although less convincingly so than in the baseline survey. In the baseline survey, most respondents across the board completely agreed that donors were effective participants. In the endline survey, most respondents now 'somewhat agreed\" with that donors were effective.Questions B10 to B15 pertain to how well-structured the policy processes are. As was the case in 2015 in the baseline survey, the overall assessment of the timeliness and focus of these processes (B10) is the most negative of all assessments made in module B, and even lower opinions in this regard are seen in the endline. Researchers are most dismissive of the timeliness and focus of these processes. Government respondents were second only to researchers in the decline since the baseline survey in their assessment of the timeliness and focus of these processes. This reflects the challenges that those responsible for managing these policy processes face in implementing them efficiently. Donors on average have the highest opinion, though still quite low. Respondents from all the other categories of stakeholders have generally critical views of the policy processes in this regard-drawn-out and unfocused policy formulation processes on agriculture and food security issues are more common in Malawi than anyone would wish. \"We seem to be talking the same issues and problems, yet the solution has already been identified, but action is what is lacking.\" As to whether the dialogues are generally well-informed, as in the baseline survey, in 2017/18 respondents from donor agencies and research organization remained the most critical (B11). All categories of respondents, especially those outside of government, recognize that there is considerable room for improving the degree to which conceptual understanding of the issues and evidence on them informs discussions in these policy processes.Regarding whether the performance of the agricultural sector is assessed regularly in a transparent and timely manner (B12), most respondents disagree that the assessments meet expectations and this sense of dissatisfaction has increased between the baseline and endline surveys. However, there are differences of opinion between stakeholder groups-donors are most satisfied with the assessment processes, while respondents from civil society organizations are least satisfied. Government respondents fall between the two extremes. With regards to how broadly participatory such assessments of agricultural sector performance are (B13), whereas in 2015 there were relatively strong differences in opinion, responses in 2017/18 were more similar across groups with most respondents somewhat disagreeing with the statement that these assessments are reasonably participatory. However, the average opinion on the level of participation in agricultural sector performance assessment processes in the endline survey was more negative-\"somewhat disagree\"-than the positive average opinion-\"somewhat agree\"-seen in the baseline.Respondents were asked whether a clear and broadly understood legal process was in place for developing and approving policies and related documents (B14). As was the case with the responses to the question in 2015, for the endline survey in 2017/18, mean assessment scores by category for this question show no significant differences between them. But we see within the categories of respondents there is considerable variation in responses to this question. This may reflect a lack of a good understanding across all respondents of exactly what that legal process is that should be followed. Overall, few respondents seem to have gained additional clarity in 2017/18 on the proper procedures that should be followed in formulating policies around agriculture and food security in Malawi to what they possessed in 2015. However, respondents from both the private sector and donor agencies showed an improvement in their assessment of the degree to which a clear and broadly understood legal framework operates to guide these processes. Nonetheless, a respondent from government, commenting on whether the legal process is clearly understood, stated \"At government level, yes; outside government, ?????\".On the question of whether a formal policy-making process is always followed in the sector, there appears to be consensus that this sometimes is done, but not always (B15). The responses to this question in the endline survey were statistically no different from those provided in the baseline survey two years before. Civil society respondents are most skeptical of whether a formal process is adhered to. A member of a civil society organization stated that there is \"a lot of room for improvement (consistency and due diligence/compliance).\"The last four questions of the module, B16 to B19, examine the use of evidence generated through objective policy analysis in guiding decisions in agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi.What is most noteworthy in the pattern of responses to these questions in the endline survey is the significant drop since the baseline survey in 2015 in the respondents' confidence that evidence can be effectively generated and then be effectively used in these policy processes. Respondents from the researcher group have the most pessimistic perspective among the groups, but all groups generally have a dim view of how well evidence informs the policy decisions made. The most negative responses are seen on the first two question on whether systems are in place to provide this evidence (B16) and whether evidence is frequently used (B17). A civil servant was of the opinion that \"information is hard to get, staff has low capacity in analytical skills, [and] it [is] always difficult to access evidence for decision making.\" However, somewhat more positive responses were obtained on the questions on whether capacity exists in the institutions involved to analyze the issues being considered and bring that analysis into the policy processes (B18) and whether such capacity is in place within Malawi (B19), while still recognizing problems. A respondent from a research institution noted that \"National capacity to conduct independent policy analysis is still very weak. Zomba] and others that, if fully utilized, could form a think tank for government instead of relying on external institutions.\" It appears that the problem with the use of evidence in policy making is neglect of the evidence that is or can be made readily available to guide policy decisions. The perception is that the capacity available for policy analysis is reasonably good, but that capacity is not put to effective use.Module C primarily focuses on the institutions and the policy implementation monitoring frameworks established to facilitate agriculture and food security policy reform processes in Malawi. The questions investigate the degree to which technical and coordination institutions are effective, policy frameworks are respected, and insights are gained through monitoring of the implementation of policy reforms.As in Module B, the questions in Module C are made up of generally positive statements on these dimensions of the policy processes and the institutional architecture through which the processes are conducted. The overall question response patterns seen in Figure 2 for the first 20 questions (question C21 is considered separately below) shows that the average response to the statements posed in the endline survey in 2017/18 are somewhat more negative, often significantly so, than the responses made by the respondent for the baseline survey in 2015. Whereas for the baseline survey, responses for module C fell somewhat below the 'Somewhat agree' response with an average assessment score of 1.80 for the first 20 questions, the average assessment score for Module C for the endline is 1.09 with most respondents selecting a 'Somewhat disagree' response. Based on this overall trend in the assessment scores, it appears that most respondents have become somewhat disillusioned over the period between the two surveys with how well the institutions and the policy and implementation monitoring frameworks that have been put in place around agriculture and food security issues are performing. Across respondent categories, those from civil society organizations show the sharpest drop since 2015 and the lowest average scores in their assessment in 2017/18 of the quality of the institutional architecture. Private sector and government respondents provide the most positive assessments to the questions in Module C across the categories, although it is important to note that the average assessment score for government respondents dropped substantially between the two surveys. Table 6 shows that these differences between the two survey rounds are statistically significant for 14 of the 20 Module C questions.The first five questions of Module C concern the operations of the Agriculture Sector Working Group (ASWG). The ASWG originally was established under the ASWAp as the highest-level multistakeholder group responsible for monitoring and directing the implementation of the sector-wide investment plan so that the objectives of the plan were achieved. Chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, its membership is made up of the leaders of a range of agricultural sector stakeholder institutions. The pattern of responses to the five questions indicate that the ASWG is no longer viewed as being effective in fulfilling its terms of reference vis-à-vis the sector itself-there was a sharp, significant drop in mean assessment scores for C1 and C2 between the baseline and endline surveys. Moreover, the ASWG continues to be broadly viewed as being unable to reliably make clear and firm decisions (C3) and still does not effectively communicate any decisions made by the group to the political leadership of the country in order to obtain their buy-in and support (C4). However, a respondent from government defended the role of the ASWG in policy making processes, observing that the ASWG \"communicates its decisions to the political leadership, [but] whether the political leadership takes the decisions seriously or not is a different thing.\" Similarly, a respondent from the private sector observed, \"It depends on the political agenda-if the political interest is development, then it gets the ear of the political leadership. But if not, it gets blocked.\"Most stakeholders interviewed, particularly those in donor agencies or researchers, assert that action is not taken on ASWG decisions in a timely manner (C5). This likely reflects some ineffectiveness on the part of the ASWG in engaging outside of the sector, being unable to mobilize broader political support and, in consequence, public resources to implement its decisions. A respondent from research viewed the problem more systemically \"Actions that are taken quickly are those dealing with disasters. However, it becomes difficult to mobilize resources (human, financial or otherwise) to implement [other] actions.\" Given the ambivalent to negative assessment of the work of the ASWG by most respondents to the endline survey, the effort of building it into an effective agency for guiding public actions and investments for agricultural development in Malawi seems to have experienced some setbacks in recent years.Questions C6 to C10 focus on the Technical Working Groups (TWG) in the agricultural sector in Malawi. TWGs work under the ASWG at a more technical level with policy issues and program design and implementation. 10 Led by MoAIWD, the membership of TWGs includes civil servants from other relevant ministries, relevant civil society organizations and NGOs, researchers and other technical experts, and representatives from donor agencies and private sector firms and organizations.10 Under the ASWAp, there were seven Technical Working Groups in the agriculture sector in Malawi:• Food Security and Risk Management;   The rightmost column presents the p-values for the Kruskal-Wallis rank test of statistically significant differences between responses. The first of each pair for each question in this column assesses the significance of differences in mean responses for 2017/18 between the five main institutional categories of respondents. The second of each pair assesses the significance of differences in mean responses for all respondents between the baseline in 2015 and the endline in 2017/18. The mean assessment score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely disagree', 1 to 'Somewhat disagree', 2 to 'Somewhat agree', and 3 to 'Completely agree'. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001.Although all respondents generally feel that significant improvements to TWG operations could be made, donor representatives particularly see the TWGs as not operating effectively or efficiently (C6). One donor respondent observed, \"I don't see the outcome of the TWGs-people just meet to fulfil the agenda.\" Civil society organization, researchers, and donors believe the meetings of the TWGs could be better informed and clearer decisions could be made at them to guide policy reforms and program design. In contrast, government respondents consistently view the TWGs to be performing significantly better than do respondents from outside of government. Nonetheless, a civil servant observed that in the TWGs \"there is good discussion, but most times action points from previous meetings are carried over. People meet just to fulfill the requirement for meeting.\" Another donor respondent echoed this perspective, proposing that \"We need to seriously think about why we should be meeting and see if at all we are contributing to the performance of the agriculture sector.\" Opinions on the performance of the TWGs have not changed greatly between the baseline in 2015 and the endline in 2017/18. While opinions on the TWGs were somewhat more negative overall in the 2017/18 endline than in the 2015 baseline survey, the most significant decline is seen in the general opinion on how well-informed are TWG discussions (C8).11 Questions C11 to C13 concern whether a well-defined overarching policy framework on agriculture and food security is in place in Malawi, whether any such framework was developed in a consultative manner, and whether sub-sectoral policies are consistent with the broader framework. On all these issues, the respondents are somewhat in agreement that such a framework has been established in a reasonably consultative manner-highlighting the National Agriculture Policy that was developed over the past several years. Of all the questions in module C, these three garnered the most positive responses in the endline survey and showed the least difference from the responses to the same questions in the baseline survey in 2015. The only question in which there are strong differences of opinion is C13, which asks about how harmonized sub-sectoral strategies are with the overarching sectoral policies. On this point civil society organization respondents have a much more negative assessment than do other respondents. This reflects a recognition by civil society organization respondents that the recently adopted National Agriculture Policy will require a reworking of some subsectoral strategies so that they are more harmonized with the new sectoral policy. In contrast, donor and private sector respondents generally find that sub-sectoral policy documents now are more harmonized with the overarching sectoral policy than was the case in 2015 when the baseline survey was done.The next three questions concern monitoring of programs in the agricultural sector. Most respondents feel that there is room for improvement and no progress has been achieved in this regard since 2015. The assessments on these three questions were among the lowest in Module C. In particular, government respondents showed the largest drop in their opinion in the endline survey of the adequacy of monitoring systems in the agriculture sector relative to what they reported in the baseline survey. However, several respondents observed that monitoring systems in the sector should be re-energized in the medium-term as both the new NAP and the new NAIP have detailed monitoring components that will need to be operationalized.Question C17 concerns whether appropriate resources are committed and made available to allow for implementation of a clear policy decision by sector leaders. The aggregate mean assessment score on this question of 0.5 is the most negative of all the questions asked in Module C. This was also the case for the baseline survey in 2015, but opinions fell even further in the endline survey of 2017/18. Moreover, there are not very wide differences of opinion-respondents from government are equally pessimistic to other categories of respondents on this point. This question highlights a general feeling that, despite the institutional architecture that has been put in place and however internally effective policy processes within the sector might be, the absence of attention to the broad needs of the sector from the political leadership of the country or from those agencies and ministries responsible for managing public resources results in poor implementation of any agriculture and food security policy decisions taken by MoAIWD and its multi-stakeholder partners. A respondent from civil society observed, \"Priority setting is still cloudy at times with politically correct priorities crowding out real priority financing.\" Despite reforms in recent years to the policy processes on agriculture and food security issues and the institutions involved in those processes in Malawi, those reforms may result in very little if they do not result in strong commitments of resources by the political leadership of the country to implement the broader strategies of agricultural development decided upon through these processes.The last three questions considered here, C18 to C20, concern donor coordination, commitments, and dialogue in the agricultural sector in Malawi. These questions received among the most positive assessments of the questions in Module C, although significantly more negative responses were seen in period. This low frequency of meetings certainly contributed to the more negative assessment of the role of the TWGs in agriculture and food security policy processes in the period before the endline survey.the endline survey than in the earlier baseline. Of note, in the baseline survey respondents from the donor agencies were somewhat more positive in their responses to these questions than were respondents from other categories. However, in the endline survey of 2017/18, the donors' assessments have fallen to a level similar to those of the other respondents. The exception to this is C19 on whether donor commitments are realistic and genuine-the donor respondents feel those commitments are relatively sound, while respondents from other stakeholder categories are more mixed in their assessments of how far they might take the commitments made by donors.It was noted in the introduction to this report that two of the NAPAS:Malawi project monitoring indicators are indices of, first, the quality of the agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi and, secondly, of the quality of the institutional architecture within which those processes proceed. In this final section of the report, these two aggregate indices will be discussed.The first index on the quality of these policy processes is derived directly from question C21:C21: How satisfied are you today with the overall quality of dialogue, coordination, cooperation, and partnership between stakeholders in the sector and government for advancing policy reforms on agriculture and food security issues in Malawi?The aggregate mean assessment score for this index in the endline survey of 2017/18 is 1.0, a decidedly negative response and significantly lower than the mean score of 1.8 in the baseline survey of 2015 (Table 7). The positive developments and strengths in the policy processes around agriculture and food security seen by respondents in 2015 seem to have been obscured by growing discouragement about how to bring positive change in the development challenges Malawi is facing on these issues. Note: Survey question C21. The mean score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely dissatisfied', 1 to 'Somewhat dissatisfied', 2 to 'Somewhat satisfied', and 3 to 'Completely satisfied'. ns=not significant, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, ns = not significant.Table 7 provides a breakdown of the responses to C21 by categories and sub-categories of respondents.Figure 3 provides a graphical summary of both this and the second index across the different respondent categories and overall between the 2015 baseline and 2017/18 endline surveys. The spread in responses between categories for the first index is not so great-the most optimistic respondents are in government, with an aggregate score of 1.3, while the most pessimistic are donors and in the private sector, with aggregate scores of 0.8. Index score on level of satisfaction with overall quality of policy reform processes on agriculture and food security issues Index score on level of satisfaction with overall quality of the institutional architecture for agriculture and food security policy processes Source: Analysis of survey questions C21 (first index) and mean of C1, C6, C11, and C14 (second index) . Note: The mean assessment score is the average of four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely disagree', 1 to 'Somewhat disagree', 2 to 'Somewhat agree', and 3 to 'Completely agree'.Just over a quarter of respondents to C21 provided additional comments on the question. The following reflect their general tone.There are candid discussions. Based on them we make progress in the sector. (civil servant)The structure is there; the willingness is there. But there are external factors, like politics, which hamper effective coordination and cooperation among stakeholders. (civil servant)The Ministry has gone out to interact and consult stakeholders in the sector. The question is whether such dialogue will continue. (private sector)Frank discussions and dialogue are being made, although it needs to be sincere with mutual accountability on both sides. (civil society)The main problem is commitment and sometimes decisions by government have been forced by circumstance rather that implementing policies based on evidence. (researcher)The question is not about policy design, but how implementation is done, which has remained questionable. We need to insist on the need to effectively implement our good written policies. (donor) Policy dialogue takes place, but implementation is not there. Also, at resource allocation there is no dialogue. As long as MoAIWD does not have resources to implement policies then we have a problem. So, it's not effective dialogue if there is no action after the dialogue. (donor) Despite generally negative opinions being expressed in the endline survey of 2018/17, more broadly it appears that there is a general appreciation of progress having been made in developing consultative multi-stakeholder policy processes for addressing agriculture and food security challenges in Malawi over the past ten years or so. 12 However, there seems to be a growing realization that these new ways of conducting these policy discussions are not enough. Considerable improvements are still needed, particularly with regards to how any policy initiatives lead to sustained and adequate action. But this would require substantially stronger connections between agriculture and food security stakeholders and the broader political leadership of Malawi who decide which priorities are addressed and how resources are allocated.For the second index for the NAPAS:Malawi project monitoring indicators on the quality of the institutional architecture for agriculture and food security policy processes, no single all-embracing question on the quality of the institutions was asked of the respondents. To generate an aggregate index on institutional quality, we use a mean aggregate score derived from four questions in module C that ask respondents to directly assess the efficiency and effectiveness of several components of the institutional architecture for agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi:C1: An effective and efficient Agricultural Sector Working Group exists. C6: For the Technical Working Groups in the agriculture sector in which I have participated in the past 12 months, I have found them to be effective and efficient. C11: A clearly defined overarching policy framework exists to guide action in the agriculture sector to improve agricultural productivity, increase production, boost food security, and enhance nutrition.C14: An effective system to monitor policy implementation and results in the agriculture sector is in place and functional.While important aspects of the functions of these components of the institutional architecture are well outside the terms of reference and reach of the NAPAS:Malawi project, nonetheless, the project, if effective, should contribute to improvements in some of the functions of these four components. Note that we exclude considerations of donor coordination from our aggregate index (question C18), as NAPAS:Malawi is not expected to engage in strengthening agriculture and food security policy processes in Malawi in this area. Responses only for those who answered all four questions making up the index in both surveys were used in this computation, which reduces the sample size considerably.12 Several respondents gave the NAPAS:Malawi project specific credit for motivating expanded policy consultations and higher quality policy discussions. In commenting on question C21, a private sector respondent stated, \"I think it is because of the NAPAS project that … the Ministry … [has] gone out to interact and consult stakeholders in the sector. The question is whether such dialogue will continue after the NAPAS project phases out.\" Note: Index based on mean assessment scores for a combination of survey questions C1, C6, C11, and C14. The mean score is the average of the four assessment levels used for these questions, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely dissatisfied', 1 to 'Somewhat dissatisfied', 2 to 'Somewhat satisfied', and 3 to 'Completely satisfied'. Only cases in which the respondent provided an assessment for all four questions making up the index in both survey rounds were used to compute the statistics in this table. ns=not significant, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, ns = not significant.The aggregate mean assessment score for this composite index on the quality of the institutional architecture from the 2017/18 endline survey is 1.3, somewhat more positive than the first index from the endline survey focusing on the quality of the policy processes, but showing a significant decline since the baseline survey in 2015. Table 8 provides a breakdown of the results for the index by categories and sub-categories of respondents. (See Figure 3 for a graphical presentation.) While there was a significant difference between stakeholder categories for this index in the baseline survey, in the endline survey opinions have converged somewhat so that the differences between them are no longer statistically significant. As with the first index, the most optimistic respondents are in government, with an aggregate score of 1.6, while the most pessimistic are from civil society and donor agencies (1.0).The immediate motivation for conducting the 2015 and 2017/18 Malawi agriculture and food security policy processes surveys was to provide a baseline and then a continuing understanding of the quality of those policy processes for the NAPAS:Malawi project. Moreover, two of the monitoring indicators for the project are indices developed from the survey responses-the first on the quality of dialogue, coordination, cooperation, and partnership between stakeholders in the sector and government within those processes, and the second on the quality of the institutional architecture within which those processes proceed. The baseline indices in 2015 were both 1.8, indicating that, while some positive developments had been achieved and elements of the policy processes were quite strong, improvements were still needed. However, the indices in 2017/18 showed an increase in pessimism among respondents as to the quality of the processes and the institutions involved in them. The index on the quality of the processes had fallen to 1.0, while that on the quality of the institutions had dropped to 1.3.Explanations for this significant drop in the two indices are not obvious. Policy developments and the context around agriculture and food security in Malawi between 2015 and 2017/18 provides a mixed, but not a wholly negative, assessment. On the positive side, the National Agriculture Policy was adopted in late-2016 following extensive stakeholder consultations. More recently, a broad set of stakeholders were involved in developing the National Agricultural Investment Plan that will guide action to realize the objectives of the National Agriculture Policy. These policy processes certainly were successful. On the negative side, Malawi has experienced recurrent widespread food insecurity crises in recent years due to floods, drought, and pest infestations. These required significant humanitarian responses that involved considerable reliance on international assistance-the largest, the 2016/17 Food Insecurity Response Programme, targeted over six million vulnerable people in southern and central Malawi. As was repeatedly noted by respondents in their comments on specific questions in the endline survey, there is a significant disconnect between the reasonably high quality of the policy documents that are developed through the policy processes around agriculture and food security issues and the results obtained-the quality of policy implementation does not meet the aspirations of those policies and strategies. This is nowhere made more evident than when millions of Malawians persistently, almost routinely, are at risk of hunger. It is difficult to be self-congratulatory on the quality of the agriculture and food security policy processes with which one is involved in developing in such an enduring situation.This disconnect between policy and strategy formulation and implementation also points to a deficiency in a premise of the survey. We assumed that the quality of policy processes and the effectiveness of the institutions involved in the formulation of policies and strategies on agriculture and food security could be assessed independently of the implementation of the policies and strategies. However, the analysis here shows that it is very difficult to separate the two in any assessment. Possibly with closer attention to distinguishing the elements of policy and strategy design from those of implementation in drafting the questions in the survey questionnaire or in the instructions to respondents, a more disaggregated assessment could be achieved that separates the design of policies and strategies from their implementation. However, we would question whether any assessment of the quality of policy processes is of much value if it does not also consider the quality of implementation. Any future research on this topic must ensure that both dimensions are examined.While that is the larger context that might explain the generally negative assessments made in the 2017/18 survey, an additional factor is that the dominant framework under which much of the policy process related activities around agriculture and food security over the past ten years took place, the Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp) framework that served as the agricultural sector plan for the country for the period 2011 to 2015, is being replaced with the National Agricultural Investment Plan, which is aligned with the National Agriculture Policy. The resources and institutional support made available to motivate policy processes within the ASWAp framework are not as forthcoming as there were even as recently as 2015. Consequently, at an institutional level, between 2015 and 2017/18 the intensity of engagement under the Agricultural Sector Working Group (ASWG) and the Technical Working Groups (TWG) declined. As the questionnaire used for both survey rounds refers to the ASWG and TWGs in assessing institutional quality, the more negative assessment of the quality of the institutions involved in the policy process may simply reflect that these institutions were more central in the past in motivating these processes, but are no longer. It is as yet unclear if the ASWG and TWGs will be reanimated through the provision of sufficient resources to operate as the NAIP implementation proceeds in coming years.The 2017/18 endline survey is likely the last such survey that will be done under the NAPAS:Malawi project, as the project will be closing by end-2018. However, the ASWG (or its replacement body) should consider replicating this survey regularly thereafter in order to better inform decisions on what sort of investments and institutional reconfigurations may be needed to ensure effective and efficient policy processes on agriculture and food security issues in the country. Better quality policy processes make an important, although not sufficient, contribution to achieving better outcomes in the agricultural sector and to ensuring that the sector's contribution to the development of the economy of Malawi and the food security of its citizens is optimal.The term 'stakeholder' is used here to collectively include representatives from the private sector, CSOs, NGOs, research organizations, the donor community, producer organizations, citizen's groups, etc. that are active in Malawi on agriculture and food security policy issues. The term 'policy' as used here includes the content of master development frameworks for Malawi, sector strategies, subsector strategies, public investment plans, proposed legislation and regulations, and the design of public programs.B1. There is continuous dialogue related to policy on agriculture and food security issues between government sector representatives and other stakeholders. B2. There is continuous dialogue on agriculture and food security issues between government sector representatives and your institution. B3. Stakeholder perspectives in these policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues are listened to and considered closely by government. B4. The perspectives of your institution in these policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues are listened to and considered closely by government. B5. The perspectives of your institution in these policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues are listened to and considered closely by stakeholders other than government. B6. Farmers (agricultural producers) or their representatives effectively participate and are consulted in policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues. B7. The private sector effectively participates and is consulted in policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues. B8. Civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) effectively participate and are consulted in policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues. B9. Donors supporting the agriculture sector in the country effectively participate and are consulted in policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues. B10. Policy processes on agriculture and food security issues can be characterized as timely and focused in addressing pressing and important issues related to the agriculture sector. B11. Policy dialogues on agriculture and food security issues can be characterized as well-informed with a clear understanding of the feasibility, strengths, and weaknesses of the policy options being considered. B12. The performance of the agriculture sector is regularly assessed in an open, transparent, and timely manner by government. B13. The assessment of the performance of the agriculture sector actively involves representatives from producers, donors, the private sector in agriculture, CSOs, and NGOs. B14. A clearly articulated and broadly understood legal process for developing and approving policy exists. B15. A formal policy-making process is always followed in the development of policies, strategies, legislation, and regulations on agriculture and food security issues. B16. A publicly transparent data and information sharing system makes evidence-based assessments available to inform discussions and decisions in policy processes. B17. Available evidence in the form of data and results of rigorous analysis is frequently used in policy processes on agriculture and food security issues. B18. Capacity exists within the stakeholder groups to effectively engage with government in agriculture and food security policy analysis and outreach. B19. Capacity exists in the country to effectively conduct independent policy analysis on agriculture and food security policy issues.C. Quality of institutional architecture for agriculture and food security policy processes in the country Please rate each of the following statement against a four-level scale, where either you completely disagree/dissatisfied; you somewhat disagree/dissatisfied; you somewhat agree/satisfied; or you completely agree/satisfied. (If the question is not applicable or you do not know, mark 'NA/DK'.)C1. An effective and efficient Agricultural Sector Working Group exists. C2. Discussions in the Agricultural Sector Working Group are well-informed, with sufficient information on current conditions in the agriculture sector of Malawi; on the various policy options that could be exercised to respond to a pressing issue in the sector; and on the feasibility, strengths, and weaknesses of the various policy options proposed. C3. The Agricultural Sector Working Group makes clear decisions on policy and program design. C4. The Agricultural Sector Working Group clearly communicates to the political leadership of Malawi the decisions on policy and program design it makes, and these are taken seriously by that leadership. C5. Action is quickly taken by members and other stakeholders on the decisions on policy and program design made by the Agricultural Sector Working Group. C6. For the Technical Working Groups in the agriculture sector in which I have participated in the past 12 months, I have found them to be effective and efficient. C7. Technical Working Groups in the agriculture sector meet sufficiently frequently to maintain momentum on the key policy reforms for which each is responsible. C8. Discussions in Technical Working Groups are well-informed, having sufficient information to make good decisions on issues in the sector for which each TWG is responsible. C9. Clear decisions on policy and program design are made by the Technical Working Groups. C10. Decisions on policy and program design made by the Technical Working Groups are communicated clearly to the Agricultural Sector Working Group and taken seriously by it. C11. A clearly defined overarching policy framework exists to guide action in the agriculture sector to improve agricultural productivity, increase production, boost food security, and enhance nutrition. C12. The content of the overarching policy framework for the agriculture sector represents the results of informed, transparent, and broad discussions among stakeholders in the sector. C13. The content of sub-sector policies and strategies and the design of programs in the agriculture sector are governed by and consistent with the overarching policy framework for the sector. C14. An effective system to monitor policy implementation and results in the agriculture sector is in place and functional. C15. An effective and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system to monitor progress towards the agricultural development goals of the country is in place and functional. C16. Relevant and high-quality sector performance data (i.e., evidence) are made publicly available in a timely manner. C17. After a policy decision on an agriculture or food security issue is made, appropriate resources are committed and made available for effective policy implementation. C18. An effective donor coordination forum exists for the agriculture sector in Malawi so that donors together work in a consistent manner and in a way that minimizes any disruptions to the flow of resources that they commit to agricultural development. C19. In general, donors supporting the agriculture sector in Malawi make commitments that are clear, realistic, and genuine. C20. The government and donors supporting the agriculture sector have embraced transparency and debate in policy processes and decision making. C21. How satisfied are you today with the overall QUALITY of dialogue, coordination, cooperation, and partnership between stakeholders in the sector and government for advancing policy reforms on agriculture and food security issues in Malawi?Overall, we conclude that there is very little difference in the general pattern of responses between the various sub-samples of the baseline survey sample. The mean responses across the samples differ at most for any question by three decimal points on a scale of 0 to 3. There is no evidence in these results to suggest that significant bias has been introduced into our analysis through the significant attrition in the sample between the baseline and endline surveys.Moreover, the comparison of the mean assessment scores for the full sample to those of the 55 respondent sub-sample suggests that overall the findings from the analysis of the baseline survey data for the full sample of 86 respondents can be expected to be quite representative of what would have been obtained if the analysis had been restricted to the sub-sample of 55 respondents defined by the endline survey analysis. The findings presented in the earlier report on the baseline survey analysis should remain valid in informing the endline analysis presented here. Source: Analysis of 2015 baseline survey module C. Note: The fourth and sixth columns presents the p-values for the Kruskal-Wallis rank test of statistically significant differences between responses for the two sub-samples of baseline survey respondents and the entire sample. The mean assessment score is the average of the four assessment levels, assigning a score of 0 to 'Completely disagree', 1 to 'Somewhat disagree', 2 to 'Somewhat agree', and 3 to 'Completely agree'. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001.","tokenCount":"12484","images":["93007133_1_1.png","93007133_1_2.png","93007133_1_3.png","93007133_1_4.png","93007133_1_5.png","93007133_20_1.png","93007133_20_2.png","93007133_27_1.png","93007133_27_2.png","93007133_32_1.png","93007133_32_2.png"],"tables":["93007133_1_1.json","93007133_2_1.json","93007133_3_1.json","93007133_4_1.json","93007133_5_1.json","93007133_6_1.json","93007133_7_1.json","93007133_8_1.json","93007133_9_1.json","93007133_10_1.json","93007133_11_1.json","93007133_12_1.json","93007133_13_1.json","93007133_14_1.json","93007133_15_1.json","93007133_16_1.json","93007133_17_1.json","93007133_18_1.json","93007133_19_1.json","93007133_20_1.json","93007133_21_1.json","93007133_22_1.json","93007133_23_1.json","93007133_24_1.json","93007133_25_1.json","93007133_26_1.json","93007133_27_1.json","93007133_28_1.json","93007133_29_1.json","93007133_30_1.json","93007133_31_1.json","93007133_32_1.json","93007133_33_1.json","93007133_34_1.json","93007133_35_1.json","93007133_36_1.json","93007133_37_1.json","93007133_38_1.json","93007133_39_1.json","93007133_40_1.json","93007133_41_1.json","93007133_42_1.json","93007133_43_1.json","93007133_44_1.json"]}

data/part_2/7685553704.json

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+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"e1f5266a4fababd20cb9a25e1cf7ece1","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/c62e80c5-b37d-4853-9c47-632e17904f61/retrieve","description":"In trying to limit the spread of COVID-19, policymakers are confronting the difficult task of balancing the positive health effects of lockdowns against their economic costs — particularly the burdens imposed on low-income and food-insecure households. South African lockdown policies are relatively stringent, and the economic impacts are large. Figure 1 presents impacts on the income components of gross domestic product (GDP), based on an analysis using a social accounting matrix (SAM) model, a tool well-suited to assessing the impacts of shortterm shocks. The work is a collaboration between IFPRI, the National Treasury of South Africa, the South African Reserve Bank, and UNU-WIDER.","id":"142225470"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"78f60366-3ce1-455e-ba2d-9893873391f3","pagecount":"2","content":"In trying to limit the spread of COVID-19, policymakers are confronting the difficult task of balancing the positive health effects of lockdowns against their economic costs -particularly the burdens imposed on low-income and food-insecure households.South African lockdown policies are relatively stringent, and the economic impacts are large. Figure 1 presents impacts on the income components of gross domestic product (GDP), based on an analysis using a social accounting matrix (SAM) model, a tool well-suited to assessing the impacts of shortterm shocks.GDP can be viewed as a flow of goods and services. The lockdown has direct effects that restrict this flow. Prominently, there is a forced reduction in production, and final demand for goods and services falls as businesses and households are locked down. Indirect effects follow. For example, because many business operations, including some in manufacturing, are reduced to operating at low levels or not at all, demand for electricity declines, which in turn reduces demand for coal. Across productive sectors and households, these indirect effects propagate throughout the economy. The highly disaggregated SAM model assesses direct and indirect effects across these multiple sectors.Once all indirect effects of the lockdown are considered, the total flow of goods and services is reduced by about a third (see righthand bar in Figure 1), with indirect effects accounting for most of the reduction. Figure 1 also shows how this reduction is distributed across wage earners (divided into categories by educational attainment) and returns to capital. These declines in earnings should be interpreted as being due to reductions in hours worked and in the rate of utilization of factories, machines, and other elements of installed capital. Note that the negative impacts on wage earnings are larger for less-educated workers.In South Africa, then, COVID-19 public health responses have very large implications for economic activity and income, with especially strong implications for households with low education levels who depend on wage earnings.On their own, these negative economic shocks are sufficiently large to push many households into food insecurity. To borrow a term from Amartya Sen, the lockdown could be characterized as a policyinduced reduction in household \"capabilities.\" Increased food insecurity results principally from the severe shock to household incomes rather than a shock to food availability such as occurs in a drought.Because the source of food insecurity is a collapse in earnings, income transfers via social protection are highly effective in countering the economic effects of lockdowns. In South Africa, government transfers are helping to substantially support total income of households in the lower half of the income distribution, blunting (but far from offsetting) the impacts of the crisis.Using an income distribution and food security lens, the remarkably rapid and severe shocks imposed because of COVID-19 illustrate the value of having channels in place to transfer income to vulnerable households. This provides policymakers with the ability to soften the impacts of such \"black swan\" shocks on vulnerable populations. Looking ahead, preparing for future shocks also requires that, in good times, countries build their fiscal resources so that they can respond adequately at times of crisis.Attention should now turn to developing a longer-run strategy for navigating the pandemic. Loosening movement restrictions too quickly risks a rapid increase in infections that could overwhelm the health system and cause more economic shocks as many workers become ill. South Africa's large number of people with HIV has resulted in a wealth of experience in infectious disease on which it can draw. HIV is also a potential risk factor for COVID-19 complications, presenting additional public health challenges. Overall, decisions on public finances will need to carefully consider how to address multiple spending demands with lower tax revenues. Devising suitable responses will require that economists and epidemiologists work together to understand the mechanisms at work and balance the health dimensions of policies to contain the pandemic and their economic fallout -especially for vulnerable groups. ","tokenCount":"642","images":[],"tables":["142225470_1_1.json","142225470_2_1.json"]}

data/part_2/7923386927.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"002b2ebdfda412083f9780260a126749","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/942d13db-bdc5-4389-9a29-74b903a7459a/retrieve","description":"Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier analysis has been employed to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on various macroeconomic variables including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, and poverty in Pakistan. SAM multiplier models are well-suited to estimate the direct and indirect effects of unanticipated demand-side shocks and short-term fluctuations on various sectors and agents in the economy, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that Pakistan’s GDP declined by 26.4 percent from mid-March to the end of June 2020 (14 weeks) compared to a non-COVID scenario. Services were hit the hardest, registering losses of 17.6 percent, followed by industry with losses of 6.7 percent. Agriculture turned out to be resilient and remained relatively unhurt, falling by 2.1 percent. All households witnessed a reduction in incomes, but higher-income quartiles appeared to have lost more than lower-income ones. Our approach for economic impact with mitigation measures is to assess the effectiveness of Emergency Response Packages (ERP) by altering the remittances to levels that reflect the magnitude of the support from the government. The total government expenditures were directed towards different kinds of households of PKR 318.6 billion (USD 2.12 billion). This led to a reduction of about USD 3.1 billion in GDP losses, which, compared to the amount spent implied a multiplier of 1.4 in GDP per PKR spent. The national poverty rate soared to 43 percent and 38.7 percent in April and May respectively. The Government’s cash transfers program proved highly effective and led to 11 percent reduction in poverty rate during the pandemic. The recovery scenarios indicate a cumulative GDP loss of USD 11.8 billion and 11.1 USD billion under slow and fast recovery scenarios, respectively, by December 2020. Our estimates show that Pakistan’s annual GDP (at market prices) will register a decline of 4.6 percent in the year 2020 due to negative effects of the pandemic and sluggish economic recovery. Poverty is expected to stabilize at 27.6 percent and 27.4 percent for the two recovery scenarios by December 2020.","id":"622654751"},"keywords":["COVID-19","SAM Multiplier Analysis","GDP","Household Income","Poverty"],"sieverID":"43411c19-7907-4dfa-b0c9-337c78f861e2","pagecount":"42","content":"in 1975, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. IFPRI's strategic research aims to foster a climate-resilient and sustainable food supply; promote healthy diets and nutrition for all; build inclusive and efficient markets, trade systems, and food industries; transform agricultural and rural economies; and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is integrated in all the Institute's work. Partnerships, communications, capacity strengthening, and data and knowledge management are essential components to translate IFPRI's research from action to impact. The Institute's regional and country programs play a critical role in responding to demand for food policy research and in delivering holistic support for country-led development. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world.On February 26, 2020, the first case of Coronavirus was reported in the megacity of Karachi, the commercial and business hub of Pakistan. Soon, it started spreading to other cities and peaked on June 13, 2020, when the highest number of new cases, 6,825, were reported and followed by the highest number of deaths, 153, came on June 20, 2020. The COVID-19 affected mainly the largest two provinces in terms of population, Punjab, and Sindh.Anticipating the gravity of the situation and frail public health infrastructure and facilities, the Government of Pakistan set up a National Coordination Committee (NCC) headed by the Prime Minister for policy decision-making. Concurrently, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), a joint civilian-military body, was established as an operational arm of the NCC to coordinate the national COVID response efforts. The NCC also approved a National Action Plan (NAP). Pursuant to decisions of the NCC, the Government announced the closure of all educational institutions, formal and informal markets, shopping malls, hotels and restaurants, industrial units, international and domestic flights, and passenger and cargo transport. All public gatherings, as well as religious congregations, were restricted and international borders with Afghanistan and Iran were shut down. The only exception was grocery shops and pharmacies, but they also faced strict social distancing requirements. The Army was called in to support the provincial governments to enforce these measures. Concomitantly, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was assigned the task of setting-up quarantine facilities, arranging necessary equipment including Personal Protection Equipment, testing kits, etc., and strengthening public health facilities across the country in collaboration with the provinces and Pakistan Army.On March 30, 2020, the federal government announced a financial stimulus package of PKR 1.2 trillion (USD 7 billion) to deal with the adverse impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy. It included: (i) launch of Pakistan launched Ehsas Emergency Cash Program for families whose livelihood has been severely impacted by COVID-19 providing each eligible family PKR 12,000 (USD 75); (ii) a relief package for industrial workers rendered unemployed; (iii) deferring payment of gas and electricity bills for 3 months; (iii) payment of electricity bills for up to three months for those consuming 5 kilowatts (commercial customers) or 70 kilowatts (industrial consumers) of electricity; (iv) providing daily household consumption items for the poorest of the poor at a subsidized rate through the Utility Stores; (v) an incentive package for the construction sector; (vi) waiving of import duties on food items to ensure food security in the country; (vii) enhancing the wheat procurement price to PKR1400 per 40 kgs to provide additional income to farmers, and (viii) allocating funds for procurement of necessary medical equipment and strengthening logistics. As of September 14, 2020, 14.8 million families, accounting for 88 million people, have received PKR178.5 (USD 1.1) billion through a transparent delivery of the above programs after biometric authentication with the database of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) which maintains the digital identity of 122 million citizens.At the same time, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) implemented various monetary measures to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 including (i) reducing the policy rate from 13.25 percent to 7 percent; (ii) deferring repayment of consumer, agricultural, and other loans by one year; (iii) adding incentives for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); (iv) extending financing facilities to private hospitals to import COVID-related equipment; and (v) financing facility to industries for payment of wages to workers which do not lay off their employees. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, it provided a deferral of PKR566 billion of loans until June 2020 mainly extended to agriculture, SMEs, industry, exporters, and consumers. Amidst a major public health challenge, human sufferings, shaky financial markets, and recessionary expectations rendering millions of daily wagers jobless, Pakistan faced a \"Lockdown Paradox\". It triggered a debate amongst public health experts, economists, and policymakers in the country to contain Coronavirus fast by 'complete lockdown' or save the economy and address increasing unemployment by opting to 'smart Lockdown' and 'microsmart lockdown'. Finally, the federal government decided to enforce a \"smart lockdown\" through a system of \"tracking and contact tracing\" to identify the 'hot-spots' for the necessary response. It allowed the government to focus its efforts and resources on 'coronavirus affected localities' rather than locking down the entire province or cities.Figure 1 reflects the pace of Coronavirus cases as well as the Government's policy responses. With strong political will and a well-coordinated effort in collaboration with the provincial governments and the law enforcement agencies, the strategy of 'smart lockdown' has yielded dividends. The impact of the virus has slowed down in Pakistan as the number of new cases has declined substantially and the economy is slowly getting back to normal. The recovery rate has improved to 96 percent, while the fatality rate stayed at 2.1 percent. In view of this, the government started relaxing the restrictions in a phased manner by end-April allowing the export industry, cargo trains, and transport, as well as take-aways or home delivery and construction sector to operate with full compliance to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Moreover, all economic and social sectors have been allowed to function at the pre-COVID-19 level since August 10, 2020 while all educational institutions will start functioning from September 15, 2020 in a phased manner starting from higher educational institutions first. The layout of the paper is as follows: Section 2 provides the main features of the methodology used to assess the impact of the COVID-19, i.e., the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier model. Section 3 explains the policy and economics shock related to COVID-19 and Section 4 elaborates the model results for changes in GDP, employment and household incomes. Section 5 concludes by providing the economic impact of government mitigation measures on economic output, employment, and household income. Section 6 provides economic impact on poverty and 'Ehsaas' cash program effect on poverty. The economic impacts under fast & slow easing of restrictions & recovery scenarios are discussed in section 7. The conclusion is provided in the final section.To assess the impacts of COVID-19 on Pakistan's economy, a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier analysis has been employed. SAM multiplier models are ideal to estimate the direct and indirect effects of unanticipated demand-side shocks and short-term fluctuations on various sectors and agents in the economy, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The SAM serves as the foundation of the multiplier model and provides a detailed picture of the structure in an economy, capturing the interactions between different agents engaged in various productive and consumptive economic activities. These models build on the circular flow in the economy: producers purchase factors of production and intermediate inputs from factor and commodity markets to produce and sell goods and services to different consumers, including households, government, and international markets (Breisinger et. al. 2010).The approach uses the relationships between actors to estimate both direct and indirect impacts of domestic shocks via backward and forward production linkages (Breisinger et. al. 2010). Along with these production linkages, a SAM also considers consumption linkages that are tied to households' income and consumption baskets. The analysis typically begins with exogenous demand-side shocks to commodities through foreign trade, remittances, or external government expenditures, and then traces out effects on the national economy, household incomes, domestic production, employment, and poverty levels. However, in our analysis, households are exogenous and the other accounts endogenous, and we have included production shocks in terms of their estimated effect on demand.Various studies used multiplier analysis to determine the primary and secondary effects, i.e. the direct and induced effects (Round, 2003, Shantong et al. 2004, Breisinger et al. 2009, Simler, 2010, Campoy-Muñoz et al. 2017and Viccaro et al. 2018). Jones (2010) used the SAM multiplier approach to evaluate the economic contribution of tourism in Mozambique. A similar approach was used to deduce that the impacts of supply-side shocks in Botswana, which were concentrated in a few production sectors, such as agriculture, energy, and non-diamond mining (Tlhalefang and Galebotswe, 2013). Saayman et al. (2018) used multiplier analysis to estimate the annual contribution of trophy hunting on the South African economy and its impact on employment opportunities. Also, Malahayati (2018) also employed the multiplier approach to evaluate the impact of deforestation on the Indonesian economy and quantified the multiplier effect of forest-related sector on the economy. Hence, SAM analyses have been used recently to examine a wide variety of economic issues.A SAM can illustrate overall macro or regional economic accounts in an economy, capturing income flows and transactions among various economic entities (Round, 2003). Being based on a comprehensive database, a SAM can be conveniently used to describe the economic structure of a country (Cicowiez and Sánchez 2012). Breisinger et al. (2010) explain the structure of SAM in detail and provide the steps of its development. Importantly, a SAM inherently maintains various standard macroeconomic identities.The SAM is a square matrix that has balanced rows and columns, with their respective totals being equal, and it captures the circular flow in the economy (Breisinger et. al., 2010). Expenditures by one economic agent (represented by columns) translate into income for itself and other economic agents (represented by rows). So, for a crop such as wheat, the column total for the production activity is the gross output of wheat, and its elements provide the amounts that wheat producers spend on intermediate demand (input costs of intermediate goods, etc.) and valueadded payments to factors of production (labor, capital, and land). The total value in the row of wheat would then show the value of the product sold to each type of buyer. Thus, the row and column totals for wheat must balance.There are endogenous and exogenous accounts in the SAM. The endogenous accounts generally include production activities, commodity markets, factors and households. In contrast, the exogenous accounts usually include those variables which are difficult to control such as the government, the rest of the world etc. Table 1 demonstrates the sketch of a macro SAM, which is disaggregated into more detailed classifications based on data availability in the Pakistan SAM.  : Breisinger et. al., 2010 Let \uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40 be a matrix of endogenous accounts that are used to derive a multiplier matrix. The elements in the M-matrix represent that cell's share of the column total, so each cell is simply each element in \uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40 divided by the column total (normalization). Thus, M is our coefficient matrix portraying the expenditure and distribution coefficients. We use \uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40 to describe the endogenous account coefficient matrix (average expenditure propensities).\uD835\uDC4B\uD835\uDC4B accounts for gross output of each activity, whereas \uD835\uDC4D\uD835\uDC4D is the total demand for products (account totals) and \uD835\uDC49\uD835\uDC49 represents total factor income, i.e. is equal to household income. \uD835\uDC4C\uD835\uDC4C is the total household income (equal to total factor income) and \uD835\uDC38\uD835\uDC38 is exogenous components of demand (i.e., government, investment and exports).Since row totals balance out with the corresponding column totals in the SAM, the system can be shown to imply the following relationships:Thus, the standard presentation of the multiplier analysis can be seen in the following equation.We define \uD835\uDC38\uD835\uDC38 as \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B × \uD835\uDC5A\uD835\uDC5A matrix of exogenous shocks (i.e. decrease in sectoral production due to lockdown in our analysis). \uD835\uDC3C\uD835\uDC3C is an \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B × \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B identity matrix and (\uD835\uDC3C\uD835\uDC3C -\uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40) -1 is an \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B × \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B multiplier matrix, obtained by subtracting \uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40 from \uD835\uDC3C\uD835\uDC3C and inverting the resultant matrix. Finally, \uD835\uDC4D\uD835\uDC4D is an \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B × \uD835\uDC5A\uD835\uDC5A vector of effects from a set of \uD835\uDC5A\uD835\uDC5A exogenous shock scenarios to all \uD835\uDC5B\uD835\uDC5B sectors in the SAM. The coefficient matrix is assumed to be fixed. Therefore \uD835\uDC40\uD835\uDC40 \uD835\uDC34\uD835\uDC34 is fixed as well and equation (3) determines the change in \uD835\uDC4D\uD835\uDC4D consistent with any exogenous shock vector, \uD835\uDC38\uD835\uDC38.Endogenous Vs. Exogenous accounts. This model has been designed specifically for the purpose of an impact assessment of COVID-19 on the economy and poverty of Pakistan. Instead of the typical construction of exogenous sectors in a SAM, such as in Table-1, we are treating households as exogenous and, therefore, government, institutions and the rest of the world are endogenous. Table 1 shows that the endogenous accounts include activities, commodities, factors, and institutions (which is found within the submatrix identified). Activities include all production activities, commodities include intermediate demand and imports, factors include land, labor, and capital, and finally, institutions include enterprises, government, investment, and the rest of the world. Only households are exogenous in our model, and the other accounts are endogenous.The reversing of exogenous and endogenous accounts is done for several reasons. Firstly, if household accounts are endogenous, they may overestimate the impacts of demand shocks. Setting them as exogenous leaves them out of what might be excessive economic \"ripple\" effects. Secondly, given the critical nature of the pandemic, we expect that government, businesses, and trade agencies would react quickly, even within a short time periods examined here, but households very likely would not. Therefore, while not conventional, it makes sense for these analyses to include them as endogenous.An important perspective related to the choice of exogenous sectors is the fact that each \"injection,\" or shock in the \uD835\uDC38\uD835\uDC38 matrix, is ultimately accounted for by one or more leakages (Pyatt and Round, 1979). These leakages are in effect what cause the multipliers to die out overtime, and they are found as the totals in the rows for household incomes. In a simulation, the injections may be distributed across all household types but in total add up to whatever the total shock value is, and are the leakages. In the base simulation, there are negative income effects on households that come from supply side changes. These are not complete as the household multipliers themselves are not included. Yet, the total negative effects assumed in each simulation will be passed through as the net effect on households. Likewise, when we simulate the government's emergency response program, the total effect on households just becomes the amount transferred, and they do not make any further expenditures as there are no increase in income beyond the amounts transferred.Using the Pakistan SAM to analyze COVID -19. This analysis uses these different economic linkages to analyze the effects of COVID-19 on important macroeconomic variables including GDP, household income, employment, and poverty in Pakistan. While the model simulates the effects of the pandemic on these variables, several assumptions can be limitations in the assessment of certain results. The model has fixed prices, so changes in consumption patterns witnessed during the pandemic, for example, are not accompanied by price changes but only by altered production quantities, assuming increases/decreases in demand can be matched by changes in supply or imports in the same direction (Breisinger et. al., 2010). The model also presupposes a linear relationship among economic agents and constant input-output ratios, i.e. sectoral relationships in SAM remain unaffected by exogenous demand or supply-side shocks. Such behavioral responses are captured in general equilibrium models and other approaches that incorporate price variation and change in input-output relationships production. As the economic lockdown due to the COVID-19 shock is anticipated to be a short-term phenomenon, with the economy returning to \"business-as-usual\" after the crisis is dealt with overtime, the SAM multiplier framework is ideal to evaluate these shocks and provide likely effects. Although Pakistan's SAM has a base of 2013-14, multiplier results are updated to 2019 using national accounts, population data, employment, and poverty figures to permit the assessment of COVID-19 impacts in 2020. Data sources include the 2018-19 Pakistan's Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES), Economic Survey of Pakistan, National Accounts, 2019-20 The State of Pakistan's Economy and various other government documents. We also made an estimated quarterly GDP of Pakistan from government publications to show the seasonality of different productive activities and hence how GDP is affected by shocks at different times during the year (see Appendix I). Instead of using Pakistan's standard fiscal year (July-June), we took the calendar year 2020 (January-December) as the framework for SAM multiplier analysis to be consistent with other countries' analyses. Figure 2 provides a detailed framework of the domestic and global shocks channels that are used to simulate COVID-19 impacts on the national economy. To provide reliable estimates of the sizes of sectoral shocks, a wide variety of secondary sources and expert opinions were consulted, including trade associations, government documents, and other data providing a breakdown of the size and structure of various sectors.The multiplier model separates Pakistan's economy into 64 different sectors, but also aggregates the shocks into 17 impact channels to replicate lockdown and other policy measures to trace the impact of COVID-19. The indirect effects via production linkages are included to simulate effects such as the closure of public transportation that creates interruptions in agricultural produce supply and cargo operations, which then leads to negative shocks in the agriculture and export sectors. The multiplier effects also have been incorporated for closing of non-essential manufacturing, where a sharp decline in intermediate inputs is estimated to adversely impact input suppliers to these manufacturers. To ensure that only COVID-19 related shocks are estimated, seasonality affecting production and consumption patterns is also taken into consideration. We finally simulated an alternative analysis to assess the effectiveness of Emergency Response Packages (ERP). This was done by altering remittances to the level of the support from government programs so that it also automatically translates that support into expenditures on commodities. We used remittances to simulate the transfers from the ERP because they create shocks that are consistent with the way households spend added income on different commodities. Hereafter, we call these 'transfers'.To determine the combined impact of COVID-19 on the Pakistan economy from mid-March to June 2020, we assembled sector-wise shock estimates of the economic impact of COVID-19 that have been developed using a wide variety of secondary publications and inputs from trade groups and other experts. All shocks are imposed nationwide, given the scope of the government's lockdown directives, but these shocks have been specified to various quarters depending on when they occurred. (Table 2). These shocks to specific sub-sectors are used in our SAM multiplier scenarios. A summary of the sectoral assessment is given below (but for detail, see Appendix II): Agriculture: Agricultural production was maintained by the government to ensure food security, with no restrictions on farmers, traders, and food markets. The main negative impact came from delayed sowing for Kharif crops in April and May.The industrial sector is diverse, and its sub-sectors were affected differently. Mining includes crude oil, natural gas, and other mining. Reduced demand in transport and industry lowered the production share of this sector resulting in a negative shock. Supply-side bottlenecks and the manufacturing hiatus led to a decline in food processing in April, but the impact tapered off in subsequent months. The textile industry is the backbone of Pakistan's large-scale manufacturing and exports. The domestic and foreign demand of the textile industry went down due to the COVID-19 crisis. Disruptions in domestic and foreign demand reduced its output by almost 10 percent in the initial lockdown months. Similarly, automobiles and chemicals, durable consumer goods, paper, and publishing registered a huge decline in their production shares. Plummeting demand during the lockdown reduced electricity consumption and led to a negative shock of 5 percent through April. In Construction, a negative shock of 10 percent until April and 5 percent in May have been used in our analysis based on transport difficulties and supply bottlenecks. To mediate the negative effects of lockdown, Tax Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 was promulgated on 19 th April entailing the special incentive package for the Construction Industry.The services sector was the primary driver of negative economic shocks due to COVID-19. Trade, wholesale, and retail activities were negatively impacted due to a strict lockdown on hotels and food services, among others, which created an overwhelming decline of 32 percent and 16 percent by April and May respectively. Industry shutdowns, remote office work, and limited movement reduced the demand for road transportation, railways, etc. All international flights were suspended due to the pandemic, and the transport sector was active only for freight-related activity. Unsurprisingly, the lockdown led to increased internet usage due to the huge appetite for online entertainment and increased online learning, e-shopping, and home-office activities. Thus, we considered a positive shock to the ICT sector. The financial services shock has been estimated to be 11 percent in April, with a further 5 percent in May and June. Based on government announcements and expert opinions, we estimated cumulative losses of 16 percent from mid-March to April in the education sector, subsequently decreasing to 11 percent in May. Negative shocks in the health sector were set at 21 percent until April, and 11 and 5 percent in May and June. Social distancing measures severely impacted the employability of domestic workers, leading to a negative shock of 11 percent in April, which then tapered off in later months. Business and other services showed negative shocks due to remote working, closure of gyms, cinemas, parks, and other sports-related activities.Pakistan's exports registered a downward trajectory during the first wave of the COVID-19 lockdown. Most importers either canceled or suspended orders to Pakistani suppliers. The pandemic led to demand and supply shocks across the global economy and its first wave had a severe impact on global business activities. The lockdown policy was adopted worldwide which caused the worst economic crisis. The supply chains were also disrupted due to the closure of business and trade activities. The domestic contraction also adversely affected trading activities where export orders fell significantly in industrial and trade activities and food businesses. Therefore, we considered that most economic sectors are negatively affected from limited export demand. The cumulative shocks to the economic sectors are derived separately for domestic and export led effects. For example, the total negative shock (-20%) to the textile sector is assumed to come 30 percent from domestic reductions and 70 percent from export effects.Economic Impacts During the Lockdown PeriodThe lockdown during COVID-19 imposed heavy economic costs and significantly reduced national output. We estimated that national quarterly GDP (at market prices) has dropped by 26.4 percent during the 14 weeks from mid-March to end-June 2020 compared to a non-COVID scenario (Figure 3). Major losses occur from the drop in services and industry amounting to USD 7.9 billion and USD 3 billion respectively. Agriculture turned out to be resilient and remained relatively unhurt, falling by just USD 1 billion, with damages mainly coming from pandemic induced demand shocks from backward and forward linkages. GDP losses hit rapidly during the lockdown of 8 consecutive weeks, from mid-March to mid-May, and gradually eased during the remaining 6 weeks of the second quarter. Around 70 percent (USD 8 billion) of these cumulative losses were borne within the first 6 weeks of the lockdown (Mid-March to April), while only 30 percent came in May and June, as the restrictions were gradually lifted and the pandemic tapered off in Pakistan. Reduced export demand and closing of manufacturing enterprises accounted for half of the GDP losses. The decline of economic output was dominated by reduced export demand and closed manufacturing enterprises, which together accounted for half of the GDP losses (Figure 4). The partial closing of trade activities, closure of business activities, hotels, and restaurants, reduction of inland, air transport and limiting construction activities created additional GDP losses. Almost all sectors were affected negatively by the partial lockdown.  Compared to other sectors of the economy, the effects of Covid-19 on the agri-food system have been relatively modest. Food supply was exempt from most restrictions, but it is still indirectly affected by falling intermediate demand from other sectors. Almost 80 percent of the loss to GDP is observed outside the agri-food system, while 6.4 percent of that loss came from the agri-food system during the 14 weeks of lockdown (Figure 5). Within the agri-food system, the highest losses came in food trade and transport, while the smallest were in the agro-food processing industries. When analyzing the contribution of lockdown shocks to the loss in agri-food GDP, we find that restrictions on food services have a significant impact. About 36.6 percent of the loss in GDP can be attributed to the reduced export demand. This is followed by 19.9 and 9.5 percent attributed to the closure of non-essential manufacturing and closure of wholesale retail and trade. Together these three sources explain about 65 percent of the loss GDP (Figure 4).Further unpacking the agricultural GDP impact, we find that disruption in food trade is a major source of the loss. For instance, sluggish exports caused an estimated USD 1 billion drops in agricultural GDP during the lockdown period (Figure 6). Additionally, reduced demand for food created negative spillover effects on food processing industries. Food processing sectors like meat, other food, beverages, and tobacco products were relatively more affected due to the reduced demand from hotels, restaurants, and other food-service activities (Figure 7).   Official statistics show that 55.6 percent of workers are vulnerably employed in Pakistan1 . Vulnerability is measured as the proportion of own-account workers and contributing family workers in total employment. The unemployment rate increased to a staggering 20 percent during April; this was followed by 17 percent by end-May and a moderate decline of 7 percent by end-June (Figure 8). Despite almost complete reopening of the economy and government incentives to manufacturing and construction sectors --major contributors to employment generationunemployment rate remained 0.85 percent (i.e. 0.5 million unemployed workers) above the base unemployment of 5.8 percent by end-June. This surge in job losses can be explained by economic sluggishness and reduced demand in the wake of the lockdown.  Initial job losses were temporary due to the strict lockdown, and so employment recovered significantly after reopening. The services and industrial sectors served as the primary drivers of the skyrocketing unemployment owing to supply and demand shocks following COVID-19, while the agricultural sector remained relatively unhurt by unemployment, mainly stemming from a reduction in downstream sectors as well as backward and forward agricultural linkages (Figure 9).The increase in unemployment is intricately linked with plummeting household incomes and rising poverty during the lockdown. It has been observed that the increase in unemployment in Pakistan translated into an almost three times increase in poverty numbers during April and May. Later, the translation effect diluted it to a 1.36-times increase in poverty by the end-June owing to the easing of restrictions and government interventions. (This is examined more completely in Section 6 below.) All households experience income losses, but higher-income households faced larger losses. Our results estimate that there are larger income losses for higher-income households. While all households experienced a decline in income due to a reduction in economic activities, urban households are most affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Also, lost income loss is less for rural households than urban ones (Figure 10).The economic losses in the services and industrial sectors have a significant impact on all households. The losses to households are mainly driven by a reduction in export, manufacturing enterprises, trade, retail, construction, hotel, transport, and other sectors leading to lower labor and capital; payments to households (see Figure 4). However, see the methodology discussion in Section 2 above on the nature of these effects, given that households are exogenous in the simulations. The government took a variety of policy actions to mitigate the effects of the economic slowdown of COVID-19 beginning in late March 2020. Some policy actions were directed at households, others at businesses, and still others directly designed to support laborers. The list of the major ones is shown in Table 3. Most of these programs were directed at households, especially poor ones, and are listed at the top of the Table . The largest one had to do with the Ehsaas program, formerly BISP, which expanded from 4.5 million female-headed households to 12 million households, effective in May. Additionally, support was provided for the many day laborers who lost jobs during COVID-19, which amounted to PKR 75 billion. Finally, the utility stores program worth PKR 50 billion was launched to subsidize lower-income people to buy essential food commodities 2 . The targeting was perhaps less specific in the programs besides Ehsaas, but, still, access to the utility stores was based on having a national identity card and by scoring a certain level on the nationwide poverty scorecard calculations. These programs were easy to simulate, as we started with reasonable assumptions about which households were affected, and then added an equivalent expansion in transfers, which had the effect of increasing income to the various household categories. Most of the remaining programs were either smaller, and it was often hard to decide how much was new and how much was simply repackaging old programs. For example, the wheat procurement program had originally been set up for 4 million metric tons to be purchased by the government at a price slightly above that in the market5 . It would be preferable for these to be modeled from the production side, where changing prices lead to expanding production or exports, and those outcomes, in turn, would raise incomes and employment, and hopefully reduce poverty. These will be done later using alternative models. However, we made initial assumptions about the effects on rural and urban households for the three months when this program had the most impact.Our estimates of the distribution of payments to various household types are presented in Table 4 below. The column totals add to the same values as in Table 3, but additionally, Table 4 shows our sense of how benefits were distributed to different household categories. Most payments occurred in May, even though they were designed and initiated earlier, and had been completed before June ended. The first four household groups are rural and received nearly 70 percent of the benefits. About 50 percent of those rural benefits went to quartile one (Q1), the poorest households.Regarding specific programs, as expected, the Ehsaas payments went predominantly to the lowest urban quartile of households, as did the USC payments. Not too surprisingly, the electricity benefits went to households who used more electricity but some of the benefits would have gone to Q2 households. Similar outcomes occurred in the payments to daily workers, where we expect that many of those payments went to workers in quartile 2, but who may have still come from poor families. The total amount of ERP is PKR 318 billion which is 1 percent of the total GDP of the country, but it is 4 percent of the four-month GDP during which lockdown was imposed for 14weeks period. As in the earlier sections of this article, we present GDP effects and then look briefly at some of the employment and income outcomes. Figure 11 shows that the reduction in GDP from the lockdown and reduced demand, as noted earlier, from mid-March to the end of June was about USD 11.9 billion without any interventions. This amounted to about 26.4 percent of GDP during those months and accounted for most of the reduction that occurred during 2020. The total government expenditures of PKR 318 billion (USD 2.12 billion) directed towards the different households in Table 4 had about 61 percent going to the poorest households and the remainder to wealthier ones, albeit many were just above the poverty line. This led to a reduction of about USD 3.1 billion including direct and indirect effects, which, compared to the amount spent implied a multiplier of 1.4 in GDP per PKR spent.Regarding the major sectors of the economy, the negative effects on agricultural GDP, while small, dropped by 0.9 billion. The proportional reductions in industry and services were much smaller, although the absolute benefits were greater for services, at about USS 1.6 billion or 53 percent of the total benefits of the ERP. The relatively large proportional effect on agriculture is driven by the high percentage of expenditures on food by poor households in both rural and urban areas. ERP effects on employment. Along with the lower losses of GDP from the lockdown and reduced demand, the government's ERP also reduced job losses experienced during the second quarter of 2020. As pointed out earlier, there had been a large increase in unemployment (15.2 million jobs lost) during April and May of 2020, which declined to lower levels by the end of June. Figure 12 shows the magnitude and distribution of the saved jobs related to the ERP. Altogether, 5.2 million jobs were likely saved, mostly in May. The largest portion was in services, with nearly 2.6 million workers kept in work, and about one third that much was in the agriculture, where 1.6 million jobs were retained due to the ERP. In keeping with the moderate impacts on industry, job protection was one million jobs. Households received USD 2.1 billion through the government emergency response packages to offset income losses during the lockdown period. The ERP targeted lower-income and more often rural inhabitants. However, the ultimate effects on household incomes are concentrated in all the quartiles. The ERP protected household incomes at about the same total amount in both rural and urban areas. Overall, the decline in household income was reduced from 3.30 percent to 2.4 percent due to the ERP, which arose from the full effect of the government transfers (Figure 13). Economic Impact on PovertyThe poverty rate 6 in Pakistan reached 43 percent in April and declined to 38.7 percent in May. A rapid decline in the poverty occurred in response to the reopening of the economy and the government's ERP. The poverty rate stood a little higher than the base poverty rate of 27 percent by end-June (Figure 14).In rural Pakistan, poverty increased with much more intensity than in urban localities for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the poverty incidence is significantly greater in rural areas, with 48 million rural poor persons against 9 million urban poor individuals (Figure 15). The rural population is more vulnerable 7 to precarious economic shocks, as is evident in the poverty ballpark figures, 8 where 24.9 million rural inhabitants fall into the poverty ballpark -that is they are close to the poverty line --whereas only 8.7 million urban individuals fall into that category. 6 Poverty line is defined as households with consumption expenditures less than PKR 45,312 7 Poverty ballpark has been created to quantify the extremely vulnerable segment of country (households existing slightly above the poverty line).8 Poverty ballpark includes the population with consumption expenditures between PKR 45,312 to 54,500.- Second, migrant laborers in urban areas lost their livelihoods due to the pandemic and were unable to remit incomes back to their families in rural areas, further resulting in a disproportionate increase in rural poverty. According to the Labor Force Survey (LFS) 2017-18, there are around 8.5 million migrant workers in Pakistan, out of which 45 percent are employed in the informal sector. Moreover, 65 percent of these workers are residing only in 15 districts across Pakistan, predominantly in Karachi, followed by Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad 9 . Manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and construction workers, as well as those informally employed as domestic help and daily laborers, lost their livelihoods, at least temporarily. Job losses were aggravated due to workers' immobility following the public transport shut down, leading to an overwhelming increase in poverty during the first two months of the lockdown. The economic slump during April and May was so profound that a significant proportion of the non-poor population 10 temporarily slid under the poverty line, necessitating a swift and extensive government emergency response package (Figure 14). These households rebounded out of poverty quickly after the reopening of the economy. There were 33.6 million extremely vulnerable people -with basic needs consumption expenditures between PKR 45,312 to 54,500 before the lockdown -who slipped under the poverty line. Our estimates show that 678,000 of them had not been able to escape from extreme poverty by end-June, even after the easing of restrictions 11 . The distribution of poor households is given in Appendix III. 9 https://www.pide.org.pk/pdf/PIDE-COVID-Bulletin-16.pdf (accessed July 10, 2020) 10 Population with consumption expenditures above PKR 54,500 is used the ballpark poverty line for our analysis 11 Estimates based on HIES 2018-19: Population aggregated to around 207.9 million based on HIES. Estimated poverty numbers then scaled up to recent population estimates of 212.8 million through simulations.  The government announced various response packages to mitigate the economic impacts of COVID-19. The 'Ehsaas' cash support program served as the pivotal intervention scheme to cushion the blow to the most vulnerable stratum of society. Under this program, the government announced a cash grant of PKR 12,000 for almost 12 million households amounting to PKR 144 billion.We estimated the effectiveness of 'Ehsaas cash transfer' program by considering it as a transfer to poor and vulnerable households. We used the household expenditures on basic needs (HIES, 2018-19) as starting point, and then adjusted the expenditures to include these transfers on top of the decreased household income estimated by the multiplier analysis from March to June, which is shown in Section 4.3.We analyzed this consumption expenditure effects for the four months (March-June) of lockdown to make it representative of the overall decline in expenditures on basic needs and be able to show the impact of the cash transfers. Afterwards, the four-months of consumption expenditures were adjusted for Ehsaas amount (i.e. PKR 12,000 for each poor and vulnerable household) to map the households which move out of poverty.  The analysis shows that government programs, especially the direct liquidity injection to poor households, turned out to be highly effective in combating poverty during the pandemic. Figure 17 shows changes in poverty rate, with and without the cash transfer program. The national 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 3,000,000 poverty rate decreased by 11.2 percent due to cash transfer program, whereas the rural and urban poverty rates dropped by 14 percent and 7 percent respectively.Pakistan has managed to operate with a gradual easing of restrictions since mid-May, 2020. In our simulations, we considered the economic recovery inclusive of the government emergency response package. Further, we assume two scenarios for economic recovery, i.e. a fast and slow easing of restrictions until December 2020 (Table 5). Under a faster easing, the economy rebounds in quarter 3 and largely returns to normal by December 2020. In contrast, the slow easing scenario leads to a relatively modest rebound in quarter 3, with growth in quarter 4 still below prelockdown levels. Using the Pakistan SAM multiplier results, we estimate the national GDP to the end of the year under the two stylized scenarios (Figure 18), one where shocks eased by 15 percent (Faster Easing) and a second one with a 5 percent reduction, or Slower Easing, until September 2020, the end of quarter 3. As a result, national GDP losses in the third quarter are USD 1.2 billion and USD 1.16 billion for the fast and slow easing scenarios, respectively. Under a faster easing scenario, shocks are further eased by 20 percent, and therefore the expected national GDP for quarter 4 is a loss of USD 1.1 billion. The losses will be USD 1.4 billion for the slow easing scenario in quarter 4, where we assume a 10 percent recovery until December 2020. Overall, the national GDP will remain lower over 2020 as a result of the strong COVID-19 effects during the early part of the year. Compared to Pakistan's base poverty rate of 27 percent, the poverty rate soared to a staggering 43 percent in April and 38.7 percent in May (Figure 19). Poverty effects were extremely severe in April because of the complete lockdown. The manufacturing and services sectors were completely shut down and the transport was on hiatus. The poverty rate declined in May as the economy moved towards a gradual reopening by mid-May and with the government's emergency response programs. Simulations based on the SAM multiplier analysis show that poverty will stabilize by end of 2020, as people return to work, incomes recover & consumer demand resumes. But this hides a sharp spike in mid-year poverty, when many households living close to the poverty line required government or other support to cope with falling incomes. Under the slow recovery scenario, the poverty rate will gradually descend to 28.1 percent and 28.4 percent by end-September and end-December respectively. In contrast, the poverty rate will decline to 28.2 percent by end-September and 27.9 percent by end-December under relatively optimistic fast recovery scenario. The annual poverty rate is expected to be 0.7 percent higher than the base poverty rate by end of year 2020. The paper contributes to understanding of the economic impacts of COVID-19 in a midlevel developing country and of the effectiveness of policy responses. The authors updated the 2013 Social Accounting Matrix for Pakistan to 2019 and estimated the probable industry shocks from COVID-19 using secondary data sources and industry interviews. This data has been used to estimate the impacts of the first wave of COVID-19 on Pakistan's income, production, unemployment, and poverty, and it then simulates the likely impacts of government transfer packages aimed at ameliorating the economic damage from the virus. The results show that the economic impacts of COVID-19 have been substantial and government responses are likely to have been highly effective. Furthermore, as the pandemic continues, the paper will likely be updated to account for the future developments.Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier analysis has been employed to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on various macroeconomic variables including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, and poverty in Pakistan. SAM multiplier models are well-suited to estimate the direct and indirect effects of unanticipated demand-side shocks and short-term fluctuations on various sectors and agents in the economy, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that Pakistan's GDP declined by 26.4 percent from mid-March to the end of June 2020 (14 weeks) compared to a non-COVID scenario. Services were hit the hardest, registering losses of 17.6 percent, followed by industry with losses of 6.7 percent. Agriculture turned out to be resilient and remained relatively unhurt, falling by only 2.1 percent.The decline of economic output was dominated by reduced export demand and closed manufacturing enterprises, which together accounted for 56.3 percent of the GDP losses. Compared to other sectors of the economy, the effects of Covid-19 on the agri-food system have been relatively modest. Food supply was exempt from most restrictions, but it is still indirectly affected by falling intermediate demand from other sectors. Around 6 percent of the GDP losses came from the agri-food systems during the 14 weeks of lockdown. Within the agri-food system, the highest losses came in food trade and transport.The unemployment rate increased to a staggering 20 percent during April, but it later came down to 17 percent by end-May. Despite an almost complete reopening of the economy and government incentives to manufacturing and construction --major contributors to employment generation -the unemployment rate has remained almost 1 percent above the base unemployment of 5.8 percent by end-June. This surge in job losses can be explained by economic sluggishness and reduced demand in the wake of the lockdown.The increase in unemployment is closely linked to the plummeting household incomes and rising poverty during the lockdown. All households witnessed a reduction in incomes, but higherincome quartiles appeared to have lost more than lower-income ones. A unique aspect of this country analysis is that we note that the total income losses by households is equal to total size of the shocks. This occurs because households are exogeneous, and so the effects from a simulation on them are in fact leakages and are equal to the size of the exogeneous shock.The total government expenditures directed to different households were estimated to be PKR 318.6 billion (USD 2.12 billion), mainly coming from 'Ehsaas Cash Transfers (BISP), Industrial labor, and Utility Stores packages. As per our calculations, rural households received nearly 70 percent of the benefits. About 50 percent of those rural benefits went to quartile one (Q1), the poorest households. Thus, The ERP led to a reduction of about USD 3.1 billion in GDP, which, compared to the amount spent implied a multiplier of 1.4 in GDP per PKR spent.The national poverty rate soared to 43 percent in April before declining to 38.7 percent in May. Rural poverty increased with much more intensity than urban poverty during the reference period, despite the fact that the lockdown was primarily enforced in urban centers, which indicated the particular vulnerability of the rural poor in Pakistan. Using the Household Integrated Economic Survey 2018-19, we analyzed that rural localities have a higher concentration of people who hover close to the poverty line, in addition many migrant workers in urban areas who are rural-based. These two factors sufficiently explain the disproportionate increase in rural poverty due to COVID-19. The Government's cash transfers program proved highly effective and led to an 11.2 percent reduction in head-count poverty rate during the month of May.The recovery scenarios indicate a cumulative GDP loss of USD 11.8 billion and 11.1 USD billion under slow and fast recovery scenarios, respectively, by December 2020. Our estimates show that Pakistan's annual GDP (at market prices) will register a decline of 4.6 percent12 in the year 2020 due to negative effects of the pandemic and the sluggish economic recovery. Poverty is expected to stabilize at 27.6 percent and 27.4 percent for the two recovery scenarios by December 2020, as people return to work, incomes recover and consumer demand resumes.Nonetheless, Pakistan is now facing second wave of COVID-19, starting in early December, compelling the Government to resort to Smart Lockdowns and necessary mitigation measures in selected cities of Pakistan. Its impact is not as severe as during the first wave as the economic activities are continuing unabated. It may be appropriate to measure the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 next year using the same model. (wool, silk), cotton weaving (cloth incl. cotton fabrics, terry toweling, weaving on khadi/handloom), knitted, crocheted textile articles, wearing apparel and all other textiles (synthetic fibers, yarns & fabrics; carpets, rugs, ropes & cordage, embroidery, etc.) The domestic and foreign demand of the textile industry went down due to the COVID-19 crisis. Most of the importers either canceled or suspended their orders to Pakistani suppliers. The impact of disruption in export orders has negatively affected the supply chain of the textile industry. Therefore, we assume a 20 percent negative shock for the overall textile industry during a lockdown period from mid-March to April, 10 percent negative shock in May, and 5 percent in June.Automobile industry: The automobile sector was already in crisis since the last financial year.There has been a huge fall in the production of all kinds of vehicles during the COVID-19 crisis due to reduced demand in the country. Therefore, we assume negative 15 percent shock for the automobile industry during the lockdown period from mid-Mar to end-April, 10 percent negative shock value in May and negative 5 percent in June.We assume a significant decline in all major sub-sectors of the manufacturing industry including chemicals, cement, lime, plaster, mixed concrete, baked construction products, iron, steel, and nonferrous metals, metal products, domestic appliances, and office machinery and general and specialized types of machinery. News reported that average production loss for the overall industry is expected to be 35 percent to 40% due to reduced demand and disruption in the supply of intermediate inputs 15 . Therefore, we assume a negative 15 percent shock from mid-March to end-April, 5 percent negative shock in May.Other manufacturing: Other manufacturing includes paper, furniture, and publishing for which we considered a 15 percent negative shock from mid-March to end-April followed by a negative 10 percent and 5 percent in May and June subsequently.Electricity generation and Distribution: Electricity consumption declined due to reduced demand in the industrial sector during the lockdown period. We estimate a negative 5 percent shock for the electricity generation and distribution from mid-March to June.Construction: Construction is a highly labor-intensive sector and 98 percent of the total labor employed in the sector are low-skilled 16 . Like most other sectors, construction activities came to a halt after the imposition of lockdown in March. However, out of concern for the low wage laborers and the relative ease of implementing social-distancing policies, construction was among the first few sectors allowed to resume activities by mid-April. Moreover, to mediate the negative effects of lockdown, Tax Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 was promulgated on 19 th April entailing the special incentive package for the Construction Industry. The package incorporates various ease of doing business facilities as well as comprises of numerous fiscal and monetary concessions for the investors, builders, and developers. Some of these incentives include low-cost mortgages, rationalization of tax rates, tax exemptions, and amnesty scheme. Despite the package and easing of restrictions, recovery was slow during May. Slowing down of activities in Ramzan and the closure of the transport sector till the end of May might have prolonged supply constraints as labor faced difficulties in returning to construction sites. To reflect the impact of lockdown on the construction services, we assume a 10 percent decrease for the first six weeks in March and April and a 5 percent in May.Trade, wholesale, and retail: Due to the COVID-19 crisis, both demand and supply shock reverberated in the country's economy which had a severe impact on social and business activity.To reflect the impact of COVID-19, we assume negative shock for trade, wholesale, and retail sectors during a lockdown period due to limited economic activities in the country. Therefore, a 16 percent negative shock assumed from mid-March to end-April, followed by a negative 11 percent shock in May and 5 percent negative shock in June.Hotels and food services: Hotel and restaurant services are severely impacted sectors as they remain closed for normal operations. Restaurants across the country were restricted to operate with delivery and takeaway options only. To save the tourism industry from collapse, the Government announced its plan for re-opening the industry in early June. However, the surge in COVID cases delayed the government's plan to re-open the industry17 . Therefore, we assume a negative shock of 32, 16, and 5 percent decline in hotel and food services for the lockdown periods from mid-March to June 2020.The transportation sector has dramatically declined and is mainly limited to freight operations. Industry shutdown, home office work, and limited movement have reduced the demand for road transportation, railway, and other modes of transportation. All international flight operations were also suspended due to the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, we considered the overall 11 percent negative shock from mid-March to end-April, followed by 5 percent negative shock in May and June.Information and communication technologies: Due to lockdowns across Pakistan, home office, eshopping, online learning, online entertainment channels have led to an increase in internet usage in the country. Therefore, we assume a 5 percent positive shock for the communication sector from the mid-March to end-April.Financial Services: On March 17, SBP reduced the discount rate by 75 bps to 12.5 percent and on 24 March, SBP further reduced it to 11 percent to ease the monetary sector in the face of lockdown. By May, the discount rate was further cut down to 8 percent. The banking sector kept working during the lockdown with only 8-9 percent of the branches shut down and there had been no bank-runs or considerable financial panic in the country. SBP took various measures to stabilize the monetary sector and enhance the credit to the private sector including a restructuring of loans and loans approved for wages. Banks have been allowed by the regulator not to classify a loan as default due to non-payment of principal for one year, with a total of PKR 566 billion being deferred till June. The capital conversion buffer has been reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 percent on March 26.Banks' dividends have been suspended for the first two quarters of 2020 to shore up capital. We assumed that the main impact on the financial sector came from financing facilities. Borrowers have been facing difficulties to repay on interest payments due to financial stress caused by lockdown and a sharp dip in demand. Almost all small and medium manufacturing enterprises were shut down on government decisions. Provision for non-performing advances (NPAs) declared on scheduled banks consolidated position by SBP has been used as a benchmark of financial sector shock. NPAs place a financial burden on the lender and represent substandard/loss assets. NPAs took a substantial jump in April relative to previous comparable periods. These nonperforming loans reduce lenders' cash flows and decrease earnings. Moreover, loans deferred by the banks were also utilized to evaluate shock to the financial sector. We estimated negative shocks of 11 percent for mid-March to April, 5 percent in May and June.Business Services: Business services include computer-related activities and other business activities categories. It primarily incorporates services that require formal office spaces. Business services somehow adapted to the lockdown through work from home models. We assess the impact of Covid-19 on business services and assumed a negative shock of 11 percent, from mid-March to April and 5 percent in May, and June.We estimate the impact on this category. Repair and maintenance activities had been seriously crippled during the lockdown and the government of Punjab also issued a notification for rent relaxation in April. Gross rentals and repair/maintenance ratio with gross value added of residential housing services have been used to estimate a negative shock of 15 percent in March-April, 4 percent in May.Real Estate: Transactions related to the sale and purchase of property took a hard hit due to the pandemic and ensuing lockdown. The impact came from two sides i.e. reduced demand by the private sector and closing down of the urban development authorities and land revenue departments across the country. We assumed that real estate declined by 11 in March-April, 5 percent in May.Education: COVID-19 pandemic has had a varied impact on the education sector in Pakistan.Using sources such as government announcements, expert opinions from members of Private Schools' Association and current CEO/employees of schools, and other news articles, the impact of the pandemic has been predicted for the relevant sector. While government-run educational institutions have remained largely unaffected as summer vacations, free of tuition-charge, have been declared across the country, private schools, particularly low-cost private schools, have been hit hard due to the outbreak of the virus and closure of the schools. Using the proportions of low and high cost-private schools present in the educational system, the average fee charged by each school category, and the approximate number of students enrolled in each category, annualized profits are calculated and shocked accordingly. For the first 6 weeks, it is estimated that low-cost schools have suffered a 50 percent reduction in their profits, as their clientele is mostly daily wagers, who have been hit the hardest by the pandemic and have possibly defaulted on the school fees, however, the schools' expenditures such as rent, salaries, and other overhead expenses, have largely remained unchanged. High-cost schools have, however, experienced no change in their profits for the first 6 weeks. For May and June, low-cost schools' profits have further decreased to 75 percent due to the potential increase in fee defaults and school dropouts, with some schools permanently going out of business. On the other hand, high-cost schools, due to the government's order for private schools to reduce their fee by 20 percent (not applicable to low-cost schools), have suffered a 20 percent decline in their profits for May, and a 15 percent decline for June, as some proportion of fee reduction has been transferred to the schools' employees in form of salary deductions. Other private educational institutions, including universities and colleges, are unaffected by the pandemic as they have shifted to 'online-classes' to continue their operations as business per usual. On average, keeping in mind the public and private education share in GDP, 67 percent and 33 percent respectively, the education sector has incurred a shock of negative 16 percent for the first six weeks, a negative 11 percent shock for May, and a negative 5 percent shock for June.The global pandemic has had a devastating impact on the health sector in Pakistan, which is categorized into public hospitals, private hospitals, and private social work. Public hospitals, contributing only 15percent to the total sector, have experienced a positive shock due to the increase in government's allocations for the support of the system. The government has set aside PKR 50 billion to support medical staff and to hire more staff, and PKR25 billion to purchase COVID-19 related equipment including ventilators, masks, PPE, and other protective gear. This allocation makes a total share of 11 percent in the public health budget, 2 percent of which is spent in March/April, and 4.5 percent each in May and June, as these months observed a peak in the number of active cases. Private hospitals, on the other hand, have seen a decline in their profits due to the sharp decrease in the number of patients visiting the hospitals. During March/April, some hospitals reported having completely shut down their out-patient services, while others were working at a capacity of 20 to 40 percent. During these months, private hospitals were not catering to COVID patients, thus their in-patients flow was low, at a capacity of 60 percent. From May onwards, private hospitals resumed their out-patient services at a capacity of 70 percent and their in-patients flow increased due to the rise in the number of COVID patients admitted in these hospitals. As public hospitals were operating at their full capacity, private hospitals were allocating around 15-30 percent of their beds for coronavirus-infected patients. This meant that during May, private hospitals' in-patient services were operating at a capacity of 80percent and, 100 percent for June (as this was the peak period). Lastly, private social work, that makes 11 percent of the health sector, witnessed an increase of 20 percent for March/April, and 10 percent each for May and June. Aggregating the monthly shocks for the three categories mentioned above, yielded shocks of -21 percent for March/April, -11 percent for May, and -5 percent for June for the overall health.Public Administration: This sector, in the context of Pakistan's national accounts, includes primarily the salaries and pensions paid to the government employees and military. Since there has been no change in the remuneration packages/ pension in any way, nor any health workers have been paid advance salaries, we assumed that public administration has remained unaffected (0 percent shock) for our analysis during this pandemic.In the wake of the complete initial lockdown, domestic workers' services declined considerably. Transportation problems coupled with social distancing measures led to a huge plunge in domestic worker's jobs. We estimated the yearly GDP (2018-19) value for the domestic workers to be around PKR 82.2 billion. SAM 2013 has been employed to estimate the shock to this sector. Three quarters (3/4) of the domestic worker's income is coming from the upper-income urban quartile while 10 percent are employed by upper rural quartiles. The shock estimate is then adjusted for permanent domestic staff working for the upper-income quartile. We assumed that the initial shock reduced the services of domestic staff by negative 11 percent from mid-March to April, followed by a negative 5 percent later with the easing of lockdown at the national level.Other Services: Renting of machinery, membership organizations, recreation, culture, and sports have been included in this category. The government closed all parks, gyms, markets, and cinemas and banned all cultural events and gatherings. All sports events had been halted including PSL etc.Using journalistic research, we estimated negative shocks of 65 percent and 50 percent to renting of machinery and culture, recreation/sports respectively. We then created the weighted average of these categories with respective shocks to derive Covid-19 final impact on the other services. We assume a decline on other services by 11 percent (mid-March and April) and negative 5 percent for May and June.","tokenCount":"10072","images":["622654751_1_1.png","622654751_1_2.png","622654751_8_1.png","622654751_13_1.png","622654751_19_1.png","622654751_19_2.png"],"tables":["622654751_1_1.json","622654751_2_1.json","622654751_3_1.json","622654751_4_1.json","622654751_5_1.json","622654751_6_1.json","622654751_7_1.json","622654751_8_1.json","622654751_9_1.json","622654751_10_1.json","622654751_11_1.json","622654751_12_1.json","622654751_13_1.json","622654751_14_1.json","622654751_15_1.json","622654751_16_1.json","622654751_17_1.json","622654751_18_1.json","622654751_19_1.json","622654751_20_1.json","622654751_21_1.json","622654751_22_1.json","622654751_23_1.json","622654751_24_1.json","622654751_25_1.json","622654751_26_1.json","622654751_27_1.json","622654751_28_1.json","622654751_29_1.json","622654751_30_1.json","622654751_31_1.json","622654751_32_1.json","622654751_33_1.json","622654751_34_1.json","622654751_35_1.json","622654751_36_1.json","622654751_37_1.json","622654751_38_1.json","622654751_39_1.json","622654751_40_1.json","622654751_41_1.json","622654751_42_1.json"]}