Download or read book Farm household typologies and mechanization patterns in Nepal Terai written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Nepal formulated an agricultural mechanization promotion policy in 2014, there is still much to learn about tailoring mechanization policies to different types of farm households. The Terai belt in Nepal has seen steady growth in tractor use in the past 20 years, but heterogeneity exists among farm households. In this study, we use Nepal Living Standards Survey data to analyze such heterogeneity from a farm typology perspective. We characterize farm households based on use of external agricultural inputs, including tractors. Growth of tractor use in the Terai is associated with input use intensification per cultivated area, rather than significant expansion of cultivated area. Tractor use in the Terai appears to have grown as part of such land-saving intensification, although larger farm owners do hire in more tractors. We find that differences in household income portfolios are not straightforward between tractor renters and nonrenters, without clear differences in specialization of economic activities as well as farming systems. Tractor renters consist of various types, including the power-intensive mechanizer, intensive labor hirer, and fertilizer-based intensifier. Such heterogeneity recommends the use of tailored mechanization policy options.

Download or read book Mechanization growth and declining farm size in South Asia Exploring the role of biological technologies in Nepal Terai written by Hiroyuki Takeshima and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-08-31 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The agricultural sector in developing countries including those in South Asia, like Nepal, faces dual challenges of the persistent dominance of smallholder-based farming, and at the same time, rising labor costs due partly to growing non-farm sectors. The underlying factors that lead to the co-existence of these seemingly conflicting patterns are not yet clear. However, an important consequence is that inclusive agricultural transformation requires increased agricultural capital use like machines among these smallholders that remain in the agricultural sector. Studying the experiences in lowland Nepal (Terai zone) which has seen significant growth in tractor use since the mid-90s, despite the continuous decrease in average farm size, offers useful insights into what induce the adoptions of mechanization among smallholders who naturally lack the scope for exploiting the scale economies due to complementarity between machine and land. We test the hypotheses that high-yielding technologies, which potentially raise returns to more intensive farm power use, are important drivers of adoptions of agricultural mechanization among smallholders. We do so by using two-rounds of Agricultural Census data in Nepal, as well as Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS), and indicators of agroclimatic similarity with plant-breeding locations within Nepal.

Download or read book Overview of the evolution of agricultural mechanization in Nepal A focus on tractors and combine harvesters written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study was conducted to understand the evolution of agricultural mechanization in Nepal, specifically its determinants on both the demand and supply sides, as well as impacts on agricultural production and associations with broader economic transformation processes, in order to draw lessons that can be conveyed to other less mechanized countries. Mechanization levels in Nepal, a largely agricultural country, were relatively low until a few decades ago. However, significant mechanization growth, including the adoption of tractors, has occurred since the 1990s, against a backdrop of rising rural wages, particularly for plowing, combined with growing emigration and growth in key staple crop yields and overall broad agricultural production growth, as well as improved market access and participation. This growth in mechanization has taken place despite the general absence of direct government support or promotion. The growth of tractor use in the plains of the Terai zone has transformed agricultural production rather than inducing labor movement out of agriculture, raising overall returns to scale in intensification and enabling the cultivation of greater areas by medium smallholders than by resource-poor smallholders. Tractors have also facilitated the intensification of crop production per unit of land among very small farmers, enabling mechanization growth despite the continued decline in farm size, although these farmers may not have benefited as much as medium smallholders. Potential future research areas with policy relevance include mitigating accessibility constraints to tractor custom hiring services, identifying appropriate regulatory policies for mechanization, and providing complementary support to some smallholders who may not fully benefit from tractor adoption alone.

Download or read book Effects of agricultural mechanization on smallholders and their self selection into farming written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-12-16 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research was undertaken to better assess the role of mechanization in the future of smallholder farmers in Nepal. It addresses the knowledge gap about whether promoting mechanization that is often complementary to land can effectively support smallholders, particularly in the face of a growing nonfarm sector. Rising rural wages in Nepal have increasingly put pressures on smallholder farmers, who tend to operate labor-intensive farming. Agricultural mechanization through custom hiring of tractor services has recently been considered as an option to mitigate the impact of rising labor costs for smallholders. However, the benefit of agricultural mechanization may still be better captured by exploiting the economies of scale of medium to large farmers rather than smallholders. In the meantime, the Nepal agricultural sector still employs a disproportionate share of workers given its share in the economy, potentially depressing agricultural labor productivity. It is therefore an important policy question whether to (1) continue supporting smallholders through custom-hired tractor services or (2) encourage smallholders to rent their farms out to medium-size or larger farmers, while helping smallholders specialize in the nonfarm sector, where their labor productivity may be higher. Using samples from the Terai zone—one of the agroecological belts in Nepal, largely consisting of lowland plains— from the Nepal Living Standards Survey, we assess whether the benefits of hiring in tractor services are greater among medium to large farmers than among smallholders, and how these benefits may depend on smallholders’ decision to remain in or leave farming. This study also contributes to the impact evaluation literature by showing that jointly assessing the effects of two treatments (whether to adopt custom-hired tractor services and continue farming, or to search for better options and specialize in off-farm activities) can lead to different implications than assessing them separately. Our analyses suggest that the government should continue to promote custom-hired tractor services not only for medium to large farmers but also for smallholders. If, over time, barriers to specializing in nonfarm activities are lowered and more smallholders start leaving farming, mechanization may no longer benefit the remaining smallholders. Support for mechanization can then be focused more on medium to large farmers, while types of support other than mechanization can be devised for the remaining smallholders.

Download or read book Is access to tractor service a binding constraint for Nepali Terai farmers written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using results from the three rounds of Nepal Living Standard Surveys (conducted in 1995, 2003, and 2010), this study empirically assesses whether access to rented tractors or custom hiring services is a binding constraint on the income growth of farm households in Nepal. Because four-wheel tractors of medium horsepower are still the primary suppliers of these tractor services, access to these services can be restricted. First, we investigated the determinants of the adoption of hired tractors as well as the intensity of their use (measured by real annual expenditures on renting tractors). Results suggest that the adoption and the intensity patterns are generally consistent with the conventional theory of the demand for agricultural mechanization, indicating that the supply of these services may be relatively efficient in meeting the demand. However, adoption is still affected by the presence of tractor owners within the same village district committee, indicating that the proximity to tractor service providers may still partly determine accessibility. This second point was more formally tested using matching estimators within the Terai region of Nepal. It was found that, on average, the supply of tractor services might have evolved to a relatively efficient level in the Terai so that those who benefited from renting in tractors generally had access to such services. However, for at least certain segments of farm households in the Terai, insufficient access to tractor services was still a binding constraint on the growth of farm household incomes. The policy implications of these findings are briefly discussed in the last section.

Download or read book Measuring women s disempowerment in agriculture in Pakistan written by Ahmad, Nuzhat and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pakistan performs poorly withrespect to gender equality, women’s empowerment, and other gender-related indicators. Few studies in Pakistan measure the multiple dimensions of empowerment along which women are marginalized or disenfranchised, particularly in the country’s rural areas. Even fewer studies address the gender gaps in empowerment levels of men and women. This paper calculates a Women’s Disempowerment Index to examine women’s control over production, resources, income, household decisions, and time burden. The index is based on a slightly modified methodology than that used for WEAI calculation by Alkire et al. (2012). The analysis is based on a sample of 2,090 households in the rural areas of Pakistan. Data used for the study werecollected in three rounds of the Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey from 2012–2014 by International Food Policy Research Institute/ Innovative Development Strategies for its Pakistan Strategy Support Program. The results show low empowerment levels of only 17 percent for women in the rural areas of Pakistan. The results also show very low empowerment of women in all indicators and domains except the time burden/workload indicator. We then analyze women’s disempowerment by subsamples based on individual and household characteristics. We also calculate disempowerment levels among men and compare it to disempowerment levels among women. Comparison within the household reveals large disparities in empowerment levels among men and women. In a comparative analysis, men are found to be more empowered in domains of production, income,and autonomy. Both men and women were found to be most disempowered in access to and control over resources. The paper provides a baseline for tracking women’s empowerment over time and identifies areas that need to be strengthened through policy interventions

Download or read book Why some are more equal than others written by Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food (in)security conditions differ across countries, and those differences affect the discussion of potential policy approaches. This paper reviews several approaches to creating country typologies of food (in)security conditions and then updates Díaz-Bonilla et al.’s 2000 IFPRI paper Food Security and Trade Negotiations in the World Trade Organization. The exercise uses five variables: domestic food production per capita (constant dollars per capita); a combination of calories and protein per capita; the ratio of total exports to food imports; the ratio of the nonagricultural population to total population; and a variable based on the mortality rate for children under 5. The raw values are all transformed into z-scores. The paper explains how the variables relate to the traditional dimensions of availability, access, and utilization in the definition of food security. Data for the variables correspond to the period 2009–2011 (or the latest available) and cover 155 developed and developing countries. Two clustering methods are applied: hierarchical and k-means. The hierarchical approach is used first, to determine potential outliers and to explore what would be a reasonable number of clusters. That analysis suggests that the maximum number of relevant clusters for the analysis is 10 and identifies three countries as outliers. We then use the k-means method to classify all other countries in one of the 10 different clusters or groups. The paper analyzes the average profile of each one of those groups and divides them into three categories of food insecure, intermediate, and food secure. We highlight the different profiles of each of the food-insecure clusters (such as whether they were rural or urban, trade stressed or not, and so on). Limitations related to land and water availability (measured as arable land, hectares per person, and renewable internal freshwater resources in cubic meters per capita) are incorporated into the analysis as an additional dimension to be considered. The paper closes with some policy considerations for the different types of clusters of food-insecure countries.

Download or read book Determinants of chemical fertilizer use in Nepal written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although overall chemical fertilizer use has grown steadily in Nepal in the past two decades, much of that growth has occurred in the Terai agroecological belt while use has stagnated in the Hills and the Mountains regions. Differences in chemical fertilizer use intensity between the Terai and the latter regions are typically pronounced among medium-to-large-size farmers. Using three rounds of the Nepal Living Standards Survey as well as secondary data, we examine the determinants of inorganic fertilizer (urea and DAP) use, as well as the marginal income returns from fertilizer use at the farm-household level. Similarities in soil and climate between farm locale and Agriculture Research Station locale seem to increase demand for fertilizer—even after controlling for distance to those stations. Most important, demand for chemical fertilizer is affected by the real fertilizer price (particularly since the 2003 NLSS survey), but the price response is relatively weaker in the Hills and Mountains, suggesting that returns to fertilizer may be generally low in those regions, and that reducing fertilizer price through subsidies on fertilizer or transportation may not substantially increase fertilizer use. This is confirmed by assessment of the returns to chemical fertilizer use estimated through generalized propensity score matching and ordinary propensity score matching. The findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of fertilizer subsidies as an instrument for stimulating chemical fertilizer use in Nepal, particularly among medium-to-large-scale farmers in the Hills, and point toward alternative measures like increased research and development into technologies that raise overall returns to chemical fertilizer.

Download or read book Agricultural Transformation in Nepal written by Ganesh Thapa and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses some key strategic questions related to agriculture in the context of major contemporary developments and emerging challenges in Nepal such as the changing role of agriculture with economic growth, structural transformation in reducing poverty, improving nutritional outcomes, and addressing the challenges of climate change. The book also suggests policy measures to improve the delivery of critical inputs and services and ensure the participation of marginal and smallholders in high-value chains. Further, it discusses how the new federal system and governance structure will affect the delivery of agricultural technology and services. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses macro-issues in the agriculture sector, while Part II focuses on agricultural productivity growth and its main drivers. The third part explores diversification in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors by farmers and other rural people for livelihood improvement, while the fourth part deals with agricultural trade and marketing issues, highlighting policy implications and recommendations in the areas of immediate focus and further research. Lastly, Part V addresses institutions and governance issues, which are vital for agricultural development. In the final chapter, the editors summarize and synthesize the book’s main findings and develop a policy agenda for addressing the many challenges faced by the agriculture sector in Nepal, so as to make it more productive, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive. The book offers a rich source of analytical information on various aspects of agricultural development in Nepal and will be of immense value to policymakers, development partners, civil society, students, and those interested in the economic and agricultural development of not only Nepal, but also other developing countries.

Download or read book Challenges in implementing a small scale farmers capacity building program written by Ragasa, Catherine and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-01-20 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government launched the Food Production, Processing, and Marketing project—which aimed to raise incomes and improve food security in the target areas by improving agricultural productivity, market efficiency, and the capacity of producers to respond to market signals. In August–October 2013 and February–March 2014, halfway through the project’s implementation, a midline survey was conducted to assess progress with respect to intermediate outcomes. The present paper highlights the results of that assessment survey. We pay close attention to accurate attribution of observed changes to the project and employ a double-difference method that compares the changes in indicators before the project and at the time of the survey (project midline) between the beneficiaries and comparable control groups. Overall, the survey results suggest weak impact on most of the outcome indicators, and they highlight challenges in implementing small-scale farmers’ capacity building within the context of weak institutions and a fragile political context.

Download or read book The impact of agricultural extension services in the context of a heavily subsidized input system written by Ragasa, Catherine and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper aims to test this hypothesis and to contribute to better understanding of strategies to revitalize the agricultural extension system in Malawi. Specifically, it examines the interplay between the fertilizer subsidy and access to extension services, and their impact on farm productivity and food security in Malawi. Results show that the fertilizer subsidy has inconsistent impact on farm productivity and food security; at the same time, access to agricultural advice was consistently insignificant in explaining farm productivity and food security. Further analysis, however, shows that when access to extension services is unpacked to include indicators of usefulness and farmers’ satisfaction, these indicators were statistically significant. Households who reported that they received very useful agricultural advice had greater productivity and greater food security than those who reported receiving advice that they considered not useful. This result implies the need to ensure the provision of relevant and useful agricultural advice to increase the likelihood of achieving agricultural development outcomes

Download or read book Gender roles and food safety in 20 informal livestock and fish value chains written by Grace, Delia and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food-borne disease remains a major public health challenge in Africa and Asia. Most of the foods that carry the highest pathogen risk are produced by smallholder farmers, marketed through the informal sector, and sold in wet markets. Given the significant role of informal markets in African and Asian food systems, attention is invested in understanding (1) how the people that participate in informal markets are exposed to risk, and (2) how they manage risk. We conduct a participatory risk analysis with a gender lens in 20 livestock and fish value chains to study whether gender-based differences influence risk of food-borne disease. We find that socially constructed gender roles are more important determinants of health risk than biological differences between men and women. Variations in risk exposure between men and women are mainly due to gender-based differences in occupational exposure, and secondarily to differences in consumption patterns. Women are important but under-recognized risk managers in the realms of food production, processing, selling, preparation, and consumption. Understanding the influence of gender on risk exposure and management is essential for improving food safety in informal markets.

Download or read book Lost in translation written by Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a heated debate among policy makers, civil society, and analysts about the impact of trade and trade policies on food security. While there have been several empirical reviews on these issues the controversy has not abated. This paper surveys possible reasons why the polemic continues and why it may be difficult to settle it unequivocally. The reasons are related to the different notions of trade, food and nutrition security, the variety of possible indicators for those concepts, the multiplicity of channels through which trade and food and nutrition security notions interact, the diversity of analytical and quantitative approaches utilized, and differences in values and conceptual priors about the operation of the world economy. The paper concludes with some reflections about what can be reasonably said about the potential impacts of trade on food security.

Download or read book Smallholders and land tenure in Ghana written by Lambrecht, Isabel and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, policymakers and development practitioners have debated benefits and threats of property rights formalization and private versus customary tenure systems. This paper provides insights into the challenges in understanding and empirically analyzing the relationship between tenure systems and agricultural investment, and formulates policy advice that can support land tenure interventions. We focus on Ghana, based on extensive qualitative fieldwork and a review of empirical research and policy documents. Comparing research findings is challenging due to the use of different indicators, the varying contexts, and the diversity of investments. The interaction between land rights and investment make establishing causality extremely difficult. Setting policy priorities and strategies requires more and better insights into the diverse responses of different stakeholders and the tenure and cropping systems involved.

Download or read book Optimal tariffs with smuggling written by Johnson, Michael E. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing a spatial multi-market model for rice in Nigeria that explicitly takes into account the potential for smuggling, in this paper we analyze the welfare implications of alternative rice tariff rates given the government’s goals of spurring domestic production and reducing imports. Because smuggling occurs through the diversion of imports from Lagos, the official port of entry in the south, to the north, our modeling framework also captures the spatial effects of higher tariffs on changes in rural and urban prices, production and consumption, the flow of trade in rice, and welfare across different parts of the country. Results show that tariff rates that exceed about 40 percent introduce some smuggling of rice through the north when smuggling becomes more profitable than importing through official channels in the south. It is also at this tipping point that government tariff revenues are maximized. At higher tariff rates with smuggling, the south experiences greater welfare losses, especially in urban areas.

Download or read book Stories of change in nutrition written by Gillespie, Stuart and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-25 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper—which draws on inputs to, and discussions at, a methods development workshop—highlights the various concepts, methods, and tools that SoC researchers are considering to measure nutrition-relevant change in their respective countries. The focus is on nutrition-relevant policy and practice. These tools apply to 11 subthemes, which are to some extent sequential within policy/programming cycles: (1) assessing the nutrition problem, (2) stakeholder and institutional analysis/mapping, (3) understanding enabling environments for nutrition, (4) agenda setting and political commitment for nutrition, (5) policy formulation and policy processes, (6) multisectoral coordination, (7) implementation and vertical coherence, (8) scaling up, (9) assessing capacity, (10) assessing finance, and (11) monitoring, evaluation, and accountability. Examining these various methods and tools together allows for a holistic consideration of the processes that—while challenging to document and measure—play a key role in improving nutrition-relevant policy and practice, which, in turn, drives national achievement in reducing malnutrition.

Download or read book Temporary and permanent migrant selection written by Chen, Joyce J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The migrant selection literature concentrates primarily on spatial patterns. We integrate two workhorses of the labor literature, the Roy and search models, to illustrate the implications of migration duration for patterns of selection. Theory and empirics show that temporary migrants are intermediately selected on education, with weaker selection on cognitive ability. Longer migration episodes lead to stronger positive selection on both education and ability because the associated jobs involve finer employee-employer matching and offer greater returns to experience. Networks are more valuable for permanent migration, where search costs are higher. Labor market frictions explain observed complex network-skill interactions. When considering migrant selection, the economics literature has largely focused on patterns by area of origin. However, the duration of migration episodes–temporary versus permanent–is another important determinant of selection. We integrate two workhorses of the labor literature, the Roy model and a search model, to illustrate the implications of migration duration for patterns of self-selection. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence showing that, because short-term migration episodes have less scope for skill-based matching and greater need for screening, temporary migrants are more likely to display intermediate selection on education, with weaker selection on underlying cognitive ability. Longer term migration episodes, in contrast, allow for finer employee-employer matching and greater returns to experience, leading to stronger positive selection on both education and cognitive ability among permanent migrants. Networks are also found to be more valuable for permanent migration, where search costs tend to be higher. However, we also provide evidence of complex network-skill interactions, driven primarily by labor market frictions.