Download or read book Agriculture and National Welfare Around the World written by Claudio Bravo-Ortega and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Calculations of marginal welfare effects suggest that agricultural development has had important positive effects on national welfare, especially in developing countries. Latin American and Caribbean countries have also benefited from agricultural growth, but nonagricultural production has had marginal welfare effects that are greater in magnitude than those provided by agricultural activities. In contrast, the industrialized, high-income countries experienced marginal welfare gains from nonagricultural activities that are much greater than those derived from agriculture, whose impact is actually negative. These calculations of marginal welfare effects across regions depend on econometric estimates of elasticities linking agricultural and nonagricultural economic activities to four elements in a national welfare function: national GDP per capita, average income of the poorest households within countries, environmental outcomes concerning air and water pollution and deforestation, and macroeconomic volatility. The econometric analyses are motivated by theoretical treatments of key issues. The empirical models are estimated with various econometric techniques that deal with issues of causality and international heterogeneity. This paper--a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region--is part of a larger effort in the region to study the rural contribution to development"--World Bank web site.

Download or read book Agriculture and National Welfare Around the World written by Claudio Bravo-Ortega and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Calculations of marginal welfare effects suggest that agricultural development has had important positive effects on national welfare, especially in developing countries. Latin American and Caribbean countries have also benefited from agricultural growth, but nonagricultural production has had marginal welfare effects that are greater in magnitude than those provided by agricultural activities. In contrast, the industrialized, high-income countries experienced marginal welfare gains from nonagricultural activities that are much greater than those derived from agriculture, whose impact is actually negative. These calculations of marginal welfare effects across regions depend on econometric estimates of elasticities linking agricultural and nonagricultural economic activities to four elements in a national welfare function: National GDP per capita, average income of the poorest households within countries, environmental outcomes concerning air and water pollution and deforestation, and macroeconomic volatility. The econometric analyses are motivated by theoretical treatments of key issues. The empirical models are estimated with various econometric techniques that deal with issues of causality and international heterogeneity. This paper - a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to study the rural contribution to development.

Download or read book Distortions to Agricultural Incentives written by Kym Anderson and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the 'Distortions to Agricultural Incentives' series focus on distortions to agricultural incentives from a global perspective.

Download or read book Policy Research Working Papers written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Agriculture and Development written by Gudrun Kochendörfer-Lucius and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book highlights proceedings from the Berlin 2008: Agriculture and Development conference held in preparation for the World Development Report 2008.

Download or read book Welfare and Poverty Effects of Global Agricultural and Trade Policies Using the Linkage Model written by Kym Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the economic effects of agricultural price and merchandise trade policies around the world as of 2004 on global markets, net farm incomes, and national and regional economic welfare and poverty, using the global economy wide Linkage model, new estimates of agricultural price distortions for developing countries, and poverty elasticity's approach. It addresses two questions: to what extent are policies as of 2004 still reducing rewards from farming in developing countries and thereby adding to inequality across countries in farm household incomes? Are they depressing value added more in primary agriculture than in the rest of the economy of developing countries, and earnings of unskilled workers more than of owners of other factors of production, thereby potentially contributing to inequality and poverty within developing countries (given that farm incomes are well below non-farm incomes in most developing countries and that agriculture there is intensive in the use of unskilled labor)? Results are presented for the key countries and regions of the world and for the world as a whole. They reveal that, by moving to free markets, income inequality between countries will be reduced at least slightly, all but one-sixth of the gains to developing countries will come from agricultural policy reform, unskilled workers in developing countries the majority of whom work on farms will benefit most from reform, net farm incomes in developing countries will rise by 6 percent compared with 2 percent for non-agricultural value added, and the number of people surviving on less than USD 1 a day will drop 3 percent globally.

Download or read book Impacts of agricultural investments on growth and poverty A review of literature written by Martin, Will and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural development is crucial in developing countries, and particularly in the poorest countries where it accounts for large shares of employment and income and whose poverty is due simply to having a large share of the workforce in low-productivity agriculture. Raising productivity in agriculture is critically important for development, as is smoothly moving workers out of agriculture into more productive employment in other sectors. Raising agricultural productivity helps both to raise incomes and to reduce poverty-both by raising the incomes of poor people working in agriculture and by lowering the prices of foods that make up a disproportionately large share of the expenditures of poor people. In small and open economies, the in-crease in profitability of agriculture following improvements in productivity might tend to retain or even attract workers into agriculture. By contrast, at a global level, or at national level when policy focusses on self-sufficiency, improvements in agricultural productivity will free up labor for employment in other sectors. Incomes are generally much higher in non-agricultural work in developing countries-more than double those in agriculture after careful adjustment for key differences. This raises the possibility of a double dividend from structural transformation as workers move into higher-productivity activities. A key question for development policy is whether it is enough to simply evaluate the gains from higher productivity within agriculture, or whether potential benefits from structural change be included as well. This paper examines the arguments on this question. It concludes that these dividends may be substantial-but whether they are or not depends on the source of the initial differences in productivity and on the direction of movement when agricultural productivity rises. If it results from policy barriers such as restrictions on the transfer of farmland or requirements for residence permits in urban areas, there are likely to be substantial welfare gains when labor moves out of agriculture. They may also be substantial if urban wages are artificially high and attract substantial numbers of job-waiters into unemployment. However, these gains may be illusory if the income gaps arise primarily from differences in skills or from reluctance to move created by asset fixity.

Download or read book Reducing Distortions to Agricultural Incentives written by Kym Anderson and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the world's poorest people depend on farming for their livelihood. Earnings from farming in low-income countries are depressed partly due to a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, and partly because richer countries (including some developing countries) favor their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic growth and add to inequality and poverty in developing countries. Acknowledgement of that since the 1980s has given rise to greater pressures for reform, both internal and external. Over the past two decades numerous developing country governments have reduced their sectoral and trade policy distortions, while many high-income countries continue with protectionist policies that harm developing country exports of farm products. Recent research suggests that the agricultural protectionist policies of high-income countries reduce welfare in many developing countries. Most of those studies also suggest that full global liberalization of merchandise trade would raise value added in agriculture in developing country regions, and that much of the benefit from global reform would come not just from reform in high-income countries but also from liberalization among developing countries, including in many cases own-country reform. These findings raise three key questions that are addressed in this paper: To what extent have the reforms of the past two decades succeeded in reducing distortions to agricultural incentives? Do current policy distortions still discriminate against farmers in low-income countries? And what are the prospects for further reform in the next decade or so?

Download or read book Agricultural Price Distortions Inequality and Poverty written by Kym Anderson and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prices of farm products are crucial determinants of the extent of poverty and inequality in the world.The vast majority of the world's poorest households depend to a considerable extent on farming for their incomes, while food represents a large component of the consumption of all poor households. For generations, food prices have been heavily distorted by government policies in high-income and developing countries. Many countries began to reform their agricultural price and trade policies in the 1980s, but government policy intervention is still considerable and still favors farmers in high-income countries at the expense of many farmers in developing countries.What would be the poverty and inequality consequences of the removal of the remaining distortions to agricultural incentives? This question is of great relevance to governments in evaluating ways to engage in multilateral and regional trade negotiations or to improve their own policies unilaterally. 'Agricultural Price Distortions, Inequality, and Poverty' analyzes the effects of agricultural and trade policies around the world on national and regional economic welfare, on income inequality among and within countries, and on the level and incidence of poverty in developing countries. The studies include economy-wide analyses of the inequality and poverty effects of own-country policies compared with rest-of-the-world policies for 10 individual developing countries in three continents. This book also includes three chapters that each use a separate global economic model to examine the effects of policies on aggregate poverty and the distribution of poverty across many identified developing countries.This study is motivated by two policy issues: first, the World Trade Organization's struggle to conclude the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, in which agricultural policy reform is, again, one of the most contentious topics in the talks and, second, the struggle of the developing countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals by 2015—notably the alleviation of hunger and poverty—which depends crucially on policies that affect agricultural incentives.

Download or read book The Role Of Markets In The World Food Economy written by D. Gale Johnson and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book extends the discussion of world food problems by giving explicit recognition to the potential role of markets. The authors highlight the contribution of prices to the solution of food problems in low-income countries, for example, by providing adequate incentives to farmers to expand production, assuring that food supplies can be obtained through trade when needed and giving appropriate signals to consumers. They also document the negative effects on food supply and national welfare of the actual price policies of many Third World governments. While recognizing the problems involved in defining and measuring hunger, as well as in improving the food supply, the authors consider the outlook for future food availability as favorable in terms of continued modest improvement in per capita food supplies at prices, adjusted for inflation, that are likely to continue the slow decline of recent decades. One focus of their comments is the positive roles that governments can and should play in the world food economy, especially in support of research, creation of human capital, and provision of appropriate rural infrastructure.

Download or read book Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-07-25 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

Download or read book Sustainable Agriculture written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A World Without Agriculture written by C. Peter Timmer and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph, A World without Agriculture, was the 2007 Henry Wendt Lecture, delivered at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. on October 30, 2007. The Wendt Lecture is delivered annually by a scholar who has made major contributions to our understanding of the modern phenomenon of globalization and its consequences for social welfare, government policy, and the expansion of liberal political institutions.

Download or read book A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.

Download or read book Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century written by Committee on Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture and published by . This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

Download or read book Sustainable Intensification written by Jules N. Pretty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

Download or read book Broadband Strategies Handbook written by Tim Kelly and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-03-16 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide identifies issues and challenges in broadband development, analyzing potential solutions to consider, and providing practical examples from countries that have addressed broadband-related matters.