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Improving agricultural productivity in Papua New Guinea: Strategic and policy considerations
If smallholder farming households in Papua New Guinea achieve higher crop productivity levels, progress will be made along several dimensions of the development vision for PNG – increasing GDP for the agricultural sector and the overall economy; driving growth, diversification, and transformation of local rural economies; improving food consumption; and reducing poverty. In this paper, we examine recent data on yields for the most important crops grown in PNG, assess what yields might be achieved based on productivity data from areas of Indonesia with similar growing conditions, and sketch where policy reforms could provide incentives and access to technologies to achieve higher crop yields by all farmers across PNG.
The economics of teff: Exploring Ethiopia’s biggest cash crop
Considerable poverty and food insecurity in Ethiopia, combined with the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, make agricultural transformation a crucial development goal for the country. One promising improvement is to increase production of teff, the calorie- and nutrient-rich but low-yielding staple. The Economics of Teff: Exploring Ethiopia’s Biggest Cash Crop examines key aspects of teff production, marketing, and consumption, with a focus on opportunities for and challenges to further growth. The authors identify ways to realize teff’s potential, including improving productivity and resilience, selecting and scaling up new technologies, establishing distribution systems adapted to different areas’ needs, managing labor demand and postharvest operations, and increasing access to larger and more diverse markets. The book’s analysis and policy conclusions should be useful to policy makers, researchers, and others concerned with Ethiopia’s economic development.
Maize production, farm size, and tied credit in Southern Shan State, Myanmar
This report presents results from by far the most comprehensive survey of maize cultivators ever conducted in Myanmar. This research was designed to test characterizations of hybrid maize farming from the literature on Myanmar empirically, and identify implications for development policy and programming. Our survey represented the population of all maize growing village tracts in the nine major maize growing townships of southern Shan where the security situation at the time of the survey permitted access. A total 884 maize growing and 678 non-maize growing rural households were interviewed. We summarize key survey results and their implications below. Numbers of maize growers in southern Sh...
2019 Global food policy report
IFPRI’s flagship report reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2018, and considers challenges and opportunities for 2019. This year’s Global Food Policy Report highlights the urgency of rural revitalization to address a growing crisis in rural areas. Rural people around the world continue to struggle with food insecurity, persistent poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation. Policies, institutions, and investments that take advantage of new opportunities and technologies, increase access to basic services, create more and better rural jobs, foster gender equality, and restore the environment can make rural areas vibrant and healthy places to live and work. Drawing on recent findings, IFPRI researchers and other distinguished food policy experts consider critical aspects of rural revitalization.
Tax compliance and representation in Zambia’s informal economy
What drives tax compliance among informal workers and does it affect demands for political representation? While these questions have been posed previously in political economy scholarship, there are few studies that examine these dynamics among informal workers, who constitute the majority of the population in developing countries. Contrary to assumptions that informal workers fall outside the tax net, they often encounter a variety of taxes collected by national and local authorities. Based on an original survey with 823 informal workers across 11 markets in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, and interviews with relevant policymakers, this paper finds that compliance tends to be higher among thos...
A Spatial Analysis of Youth Livelihoods and Rural Transformation in Ghana
Ghana’s population is becoming younger and increasingly urbanized – by 2010, over half the population lived in urban settlements of more than 5,000 people – raising concerns among policy makers regarding the location and types of jobs required to employ the youth. The slow creation of for-mal urban jobs has particularly strong implications for young people entering the labor force: they are more educated than the older generation, with greater aspirations for non-farm em-ployment and urban lifestyles (Anyidoho, Leavy, and Asenso-Okyere 2012). Without rapid industrialization to create more formal manufacturing and other non-agricultural jobs, youth in Ghana who leave the agricultural sector are increasingly likely to resort to informal services in both rural and urban areas. While much youth-related research has focused on changes in youth employment and livelihoods through rural-urban migration, a re-cent IFPRI Discussion Paper focuses on youth in the rural non-farm economy (Diao et al. 2017).
Limitations of contract farming as a pro-poor strategy: The case of maize outgrower schemes in upper West Ghana
The focus in this paper is on two relatively large maize-based contract farming (CF) schemes with fixed input packages (Masara and Akate) and a number of smaller and more flexible CF schemes in a remote region in Ghana (Upper West). Results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases. In addition, a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to CF participation had high gross margins. However, on average, yields were not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and cost of capital. On average, households harvest 29–30 bags (100 kg each), or 2.9–3.0 metric tons, of maize per hectare, and the required repayment for fertilizer...
Landownership and the gender gap in agriculture: Disappointing insights from Northern Ghana
Land provides the basis for food production and is an indispensable input for economic livelihoods in rural areas. Landownership is strongly associated with social and economic power, not only across communities and households, but also within households. The link between landownership and women’s empowerment has been relatively well documented in general, but not specifically in relation to agriculture. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing how ownership of land is associated with agency and achievements in agriculture among female and male farmers in northern Ghana, a region transitioning from customary land tenure without individual ownership rights towards a more individualized...
Characterization of fish farming practices and performance: Baseline study and implications for accelerating aquaculture development in Ghana
Over the past decade, the aquaculture sector in Ghana has experienced tremendous growth—driven mainly by large-scale cage farms—but it has been unclear how the rural poor have shared in this growth. A research project has been initiated to help diagnose, design, and test interventions for better inclusion of the rural poor, women, and youth in the tilapia value chain. This report describes the baseline data on 603 small-scale tilapia farmers in Ghana. The data collected during two-hour face-to-face interviews during May–July 2019 are disaggregated by socioeconomic indicators, gender, and age group. Baseline data show that 9 percent of farm managers and owners were women, and an additio...
Gender research in the CGIAR research program on policies, institutions, and markets in 2018 and 2019
This report analyses PIM’s 391 peer-reviewed 2018 and 20191 publications. We highlight key gender findings and discuss the challenges faced by researchers in doing gender analysis, with a view to documenting lessons learned and improving practices. It is hoped that the gaps and strengths identified in this report will be useful inputs for future research under PIM and One CGIAR.
