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Since the publication of the World Development Report 2008, two related strands of research have emerged-one on the validity of smallholder-led development strategy and the other on agricultural intensification under population pressure. The former casts doubt about the role of agriculture in economic development in smallholders dominated countries and the later provides evidence that are contrary to earlier findings on induced innovation theory. Using a unique panel dataset, we examine whether these arguments are valid for Bangladesh--a densely populated country that has experienced significant growth in recent decades. The results suggest that (1) agriculture as a source of income declined significantly over the past two decades; (2) the operated farm size stopped declining in the late 1980s; and (3) that population density relates positively with a host of agricultural intensifications indicators with no evidence of threshold.
Increasingly, womens property rights are seen as important for both equity and efficiency reasons. While there has been debate in the literature about women are better off with individual rights in contrast to rights jointly with their husband, little empirical work has analyzed this question. In this paper, the relationship of womens individual and joint property ownership and the level of womens input into household decisionmaking is explored with data from India, Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania. In the three African countries, women with individual landownership have greater input into household decisionmaking than women whose landownership is joint; both have more input than women who are not landowners. The relationship with other household decisions is more mixed, as is the relationship between housing and input into household decisionmaking. No similar relationship is found in Orissa, India.
Use of mechanization in African agriculture has returned strongly to the development agenda, particularly following the recent high food prices crisis. Many developing country governmentsincluding Ghana, the case study of this paperhave resumed support for agricultural mechanization, typically in the form of providing subsidies for tractor purchase and establishment of private-sector-run agricultural mechanization service centers (AMSECs). The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of Ghanas AMSEC program on various outcomes, using data from household surveys that were conducted with 270 farmers, some of them located in areas with the AMSEC program (treatment) and others located in areas without the program (control).
This paper estimates the potential effects of achieving the agricultural goals set out in Iraqs National Development Plan (NDP) 20132017 using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that raising agricultural productivity in accordance with the NDP may more than double average agricultural growth rates and add an average of 0.7 percent each year to economywide gross domestic product during the duration of the plan. As a consequence, the economy not only diversifies into agriculture, but agricultural growth also lifts growth in the food processing and service sectors. Achieving the yield targets for cereals (especially wheat) and for fruits and vegetables will...
This study was undertaken to assess farmers preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for various climate-smart interventions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The research outputs will be helpful in integrating farmers choices with government programs in the selected regions. The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) was selected because it is highly vulnerable to climate change, which may adversely affect the sustainability of the rice-wheat production system and the food security of the region. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can mitigate the negative impacts of climate change and improve the efficiency of the rice-wheat-based production system. CSA requires a complete package of practices to achieve th...
Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the most ambitious goal set by the 2030 Agenda. This Goal includes eradicating extreme poverty in the next 12 years, which will require more focused actions in addition to broad-based interventions. The question is: How can we achieve target 1.1 and overcome the many challenges that lie ahead? By gaining a deeper understanding of poverty, and the characteristics of the extreme rural poor in particular, the right policies can be put in place to reach those most in need. This report presents the contribution that agriculture, food systems and the sustainable use of natural resources can make to securing the livelihoods of the millions of poor people who struggle in our world.
Data science is a multi-disciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured (labeled) and unstructured (unlabeled) data. It is the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a necessity of the future to make things easier and more productive. In simple terms, data science is the discovery of data or uncovering hidden patterns (such as complex behaviors, trends, and inferences) from data. Moreover, Big Data analytics/data analytics are the analysis mechanisms used in data science by data scientists. Several tools, such as Hadoop, R, etc., are used to analyze this large amount of data to predict valuable informat...
An in-depth quantitative analysis is undertaken in this paper to assist the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat, member countries, and development partners in setting future regional investment priorities for agricultural research and development in the SADC region. A primary goal of this work was to identify a range of agricultural research priorities for achieving sector productivity and overall economic growth in southern Africa, at both the country and regional levels. This is accomplished by adopting an integrated modeling framework that combines a disaggregated spatial analytical model with an economywide multimarket model developed specifically for the region.
Almost two decades have passed since China first enacted legislation to protect farmland from conversion to nonagricultural use. Yet hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land are still developed to urban area each year, raising the question of whether the legislation is effective in preserving farmland from development. This paper examines the effectiveness of the Basic Farmland Protection Regulation in protecting high-quality farmland from urban development in China in the first decade after it came into effect (1995?2005). The theoretical basis for this study is a spatial urban development model with a splitting equation. The empirical evaluation is conducted with georeference...