Policy brief No. 1. In recent years, food consumers have become in- creasingly aware of and concerned about the sa- fety of food products. As a response, public and private actors have introduced different standards to ensure that food safety reaches the degree de- manded by consumers. Developing countries often lack the institutional capacities and financial and non-financial resources to comply with standards.
El objetivo del presente documento es analizar el comportamiento del gasto público del Gobierno Central dirigido a la juventud rural, con especial énfasis en los esfuerzos de inclusión económica (financiera, productiva y laboral), en Colombia, Ecuador, México y Perú.
Este libro recoge los principales aportes y contribuciones a las innovaciones rurales. Los trabajos proceden de una decena de países diferentes, y presentan diversos acercamientos teóricos y prácticos. La multiplicidad de casos analizados es una muestra de la creciente riqueza conceptual y analítica sobre el desarrollo rural en nuestro continente, a la vez que ponen en cuestión muchos de los paradigmas imperantes. El objetivo es aportar a una discusión que actualmente está abierta y que debe permitir el avance en el diseño de estrategias de desarrollo más sólidas y consistentes
El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo proponer un modelo para el desarrollo de la producción agrícola en el marco de un trabajo integrado sobre el territorio. Para esto se ha analizado los cambios referentes a los procesos de desarrollo rural y como éstos han impactado directamente en la forma en la que se concibe la extensión.
Mobile phone based money services have spread rapidly in many developing countries. We analyze micro level impacts using panel data from smallholder farmers in Kenya. Mobile money use has a large positive net impact on household income. One important pathway is through remittances, which contribute to income directly but also help to reduce risk and liquidity constraints, thus promoting agricultural commercialization. Mobile money users apply more purchased inputs, market a larger proportion of their output, and have higher farm profits.
Enhancing the diversity of agricultural production systems is increasingly recognized as a potential
means to sustainably provide diversified food for rural communities in developing countries, hence
ensuring their nutritional security. However, empirical evidences connecting farm production
diversity and farm-households’ dietary diversity are scarce. Using comprehensive datasets of
market-oriented smallholder farm households from Indonesia and Kenya, and subsistence farmers
Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a recent survey of smallholder maize farmers in two zones of Tanzania. Hybrid adoption rates are 48% and 13% in the North and East, respectively. Average net yield gains of hybrids are 50-60%, and there are also significant profit effects.
Supermarkets and high-value exports are currently gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on farming efficiency have hardly been studied. Using a survey of Kenyan vegetable growers and a stochastic frontier approach, we show that participation in supermarket channels increases mean technical efficiency by 19%. This gain is bigger at lower levels of efficiency, suggesting the potential for positive income distribution effects.
In the existing literature, the effects of contract farming on household welfare were examined with mixed results. Most studies looked at single contract types. This paper contributes to the literature by comparing two types of contracts – simple marketing contracts and resource- providing contracts – in the Ghanaian oil palm sector. We investigate the effects of both contracts on farm income, as well as spillovers on other household income sources. We use survey data collected with an innovative sampling design and a control function approach to address possible issues of endogeneity.
In Sub-Sahara Africa, adoption rates of improved crop varieties remain relatively low, which is partly due to farmers’ limited access to information. In smallholder settings, information often spreads through informal networks. Better understanding of such networks could potentially help to spur innovation and farmers’ exposure to new technologies. This study uses survey data from Tanzania to analyze social networks and their role for the spread of information about improved varieties of maize and sorghum.