Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Who talks to whom in African agricultural research information networks? The Malawi case
The sector-wide approach currently dominates as the strategy for developing the agricultural sector of many African countries. Although it is recognized that agricultural research plays a vital role in ensuring success of sectorwide agricultural development strategies, there has been little or no effort to explicitly link the research strategies of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in African countries to the research agenda that is articulated in sectorwide agricultural development strategies. This study fills that gap by analyzing the readiness of Malawis NARS to respond to the research needs of the national agricultural sector development strategy, namely the Agriculture ...
The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africas Urban Water Supply
Identifying policies which can improve water sector management is critically important given the global burden of water-related disease. Each year, 1 in 10 child deathsroughly 800,000 in totalis the direct result of diarrhea. Can private-sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? The author uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 19862010 to show that introducing PSP decreases diarrhea among urban dwelling children under five years of age by 5.6 percentage points, or 35 percent of its mean prevalence. PSP also leads to greater reliance on piped water. To attribute causality, the author exploits time variation in the private water market share controlled by African countries former colonizers. A placebo analysis reveals that PSP does not affect symptoms of respiratory illness in the same children, nor does it affect a rural control group unaffected by PSP.
Exchange Rate Policy and Devaluation in Malawi
The Malawian economy has in recent months been plagued by a severe foreign exchange crisis, fueled in part by a steadily rising import bill, sharp successive declines in tobacco export prices, the suspension of direct government budget support from several development partners in 2011, and an all-time low in international investor confidence. Up until the regime change in April 2012, the government resisted calls for a devaluation, which at the time resulted in a thriving parallel foreign exchange market. At its peak, the Malawi kwacha was trading at a premium of up to 100 percent in this secondary market. Economic theory shows that such a situation has adverse implications for an economy in...
An Ex Ante Analysis of the Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Biofortified High-Provitamin A and High-Iron Banana in Uganda
Uganda has made notable progress in reducing micronutrient deficiencies in recent years, but the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and anemia among children under 5 remain unacceptably high. According to World Health Organization criteria, VAD remains a public health problem in Uganda, and anemia is a severe problem. In this paper we explore the potential contribution to reducing both of these deficiencies using a genetically modified, highprovitamin A and high-iron banana (HPVAHIB) that is currently being developed. We present an ex ante analysis of the costs and nutritional benefits of HPVAHIB. Using the Ugandan National Household Survey of 2005/06, we analyzed the production and ...
The impact of agricultural extension services in the context of a heavily subsidized input system
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
Targeting Technology to Reduce Poverty and Conserve Resources
Demand heterogeneity often makes it profitable for firms to price and promote goods and services differently in different market segments. When private consumption brings public benefits, this same heterogeneity can be used to target public subsidies. We explore the design of publicprivate targeting and segmentation strategies in the case of a resource-conserving agricultural technology in India. To understand farmers heterogeneous demand for laser land leveling (LLL), we conducted an experimental auction for LLL services with an integrated randomized controlled trial to estimate the private benefits of the technology. We use graphical and econometric approaches to characterize farmer de...
Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis
The Nigerian Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) provides an in-depth assessment of the food security situation within Nigeria. This is very important as it equips policymakers with timely and relevant information that will aid the targeting of interventions. Some of the most pertinent findings of the study are listed below: Food insecurity and poverty are intricately linked. Some 29 percent of households in the poorest wealth quintiles have unacceptable diets (9 percent poor and 20 percent borderline) compared with 15 percent in the wealthiest (2 percent poor and 13 percent borderline). The poorest livelihoods are found in agriculture. Seventy-seven percent ...
Local Warming and Violent Conflict in North and South Sudan
Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan at different geographical and time scales between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict. In the future the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 21 to 30 percent under a median scenario, taking into account uncertainties in both the climate projection and the estimate of the response of violence to temperature variations. Extreme temperature shocks are found to strongly affect the likelihood of violence as well, but the predictive power is hindered by substantial uncertainty. Our paper also sheds light on the vulnerability of areas with particular biophysical characteristics or with vulnerable populations.
Agriculture, food security, and nutrition in Malawi: Leveraging the links
Although the Malawian food supply is shaped largely by trends in smallholder food crop production, Malawi’s decades-long focus on improving smallholder productivity has only moderately improved food security and nutrition outcomes. Country statistics indicate an estimated 36.7 percent of rural Malawian households failed to access sufficient calories between 2010 and 2011. During the same period, 47 percent of children under the age of five years were estimated to be stunted in their growth. These indicators imply that some Malawian diets are lacking in terms of quantity (total calories consumed), and most are lacking in terms of quality (sufficient calories derived from nutrient-dense foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, fruits, and vegetables). Good nutrition requires both enough total calories (quantity) and enough vitamins and minerals per calorie (quality). How can Malawi better leverage its smallholder agriculture sector to improve nutrition? This report provides a series of primary and secondary data analyses that examine different aspects of this question.
Determinants of chemical fertilizer use in Nepal
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 Stat...
