Agricultural and Rural Development Notes
60 items available
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This series on commodity risk management aims to disseminate the results of World Bank research that describes the feasibility of developing countries’ ability to utilize market-based tools to mitigate risks associated with commodity price volatility and weather.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Improving Nutrition through Multisectoral Approaches
(Washington, DC, 2013-01)Nutrition sensitive agriculture aims to maximize the impact of nutrition outcomes for the poor, while minimizing the unintended negative nutritional consequences of agricultural interventions and policies on the poor, especially women and young children. It is agriculture with a nutrition lens, and should not detract from the sector's own goals. The agriculture sector is best placed to influence food production and the consumption of nutritious foods necessary for healthy and active lives. Agricultural productivity, focused primarily on staple grains, does not necessarily reduce under nutrition. Policies that strongly favor staple grains over other crops or foods may skew the balance from nutritious foods. -
Publication
Gender and Governance in Agricultural Extension Services : Insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010-03)The gender and governance in rural services insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia report aims to generate policy-relevant knowledge on strategies for improving agricultural service delivery, with a focus on providing more equitable access to these services, especially for women. The project has been implemented in India, Ghana, and Ethiopia. These countries were chosen to capture variation in important macro-factors, especially the level of economic development; various aspects of governance, such as political system and party system; the role of women in society; and strategies adopted to promote gender equity. The project focused on agricultural extension as an example of a critical agricultural service. In India, the main problem is the lack of overall capacity resulting from a past policy of not hiring agricultural extension providers. The study indicates that access to agricultural extension is low in Ghana, despite the fact that an extension agent-to-farmer ratio is comparatively high. Agricultural extension is a high for the Ethiopia government priority, but coverage of extension services across regions varies widely, and extension agents have limited discretion to adapt technology packages to the context of individual communities. The gender gap in access to extension can also be improved. -
Publication
Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant : Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-06)Stimulating agricultural growth is critical to reducing poverty in Africa. Commercial agriculture, potentially a powerful driver of agricultural growth, can develop along a number of pathways. Yet many developing regions have failed to progress very far along any of these pathways. Particularly in Africa, agriculture continues to lag. During the past 30 years the competitiveness of many African export crops has declined, and Africa's dependence on imported food crops has increased. While the poor performance of African agriculture can be attributed partly to adverse agroecological conditions, experience from elsewhere in the developing world suggests that significant progress is possible. The Guinea Savannah covers some 600 million hectares in Africa, of which about 400 million can be used for agriculture. Less than ten percent of this area is currently cropped, making it one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world. -
Publication
Improving Agricultural Productivity and Markets : The Role of Information and Communication Technologies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)Raising the productivity of smallholders is a necessary condition for increasing incomes and improving livelihoods among the rural poor in most developing countries. This increased productivity is essential to both household food security and to agriculture-based growth and poverty reduction in the larger economy. Smallholder productivity is limited by a variety of constraints including poor soils, unpredictable rainfall, and imperfect markets, as well as lack of access to productive resources, financial services, or infrastructure. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are also vitally important to commercial and large-scale agriculture, and to agriculture-related services and infrastructure such as weather monitoring and irrigation. This note focuses on the sometimes less-obvious importance of ICT in improving the information, communication, transaction, and networking elements of smallholder agriculture in developing countries. -
Publication
Grants for Income Generation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-11)Communities supported by World Bank rural development projects often cite support for the development of income-generating activities (IGAs) as a critical need. This note identifies some of the core problems encountered by Bank task teams that attempt to respond to this need, outlines the issues involved, and offers suggestions on some of the points that should be kept in mind when designing grant programs for this purpose. Specifically, this note looks at how grants can develop economic and social infrastructure, how grants can be used to acquire privately owned productive assets, and suggestions on designing such types of grants. The paper concludes with ideas on the role for grants for income generation, and how such grant programs must be carefully designed and monitored. -
Publication
Functional Foods : Opportunities and Challenges for Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-09)Functional foods have been the topic of considerable interest in the food and nutrition industry for years, but the term currently lacks a common definition. A practical definition adopted here includes products, in food or drink form, that influence specific functions in the body and thereby offer benefits for health, well-being, or performance beyond their regular nutritional value. This paper first discusses the economic opportunities from functional foods, and then discusses challenges and success factors in the sector. The paper concludes that developing countries can enjoy the benefits of the functional food sector to expand options for producers and to promote growth in the sector through partnerships between research centers, private entrepreneurs, and indigenous communities. -
Publication
Expanding Post-Harvest Finance Through Warehouse Receipts and Related Instruments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-03)Warehouse receipt financing and similar types of collateralized lending provide an alternative to traditional lending requirements of banks and other financiers and could provide opportunities to expand this lending in emerging economies for agricultural trade. The main contents include: what is warehouse receipt financing; what is the value of warehouse receipt financing; other collateral lending mechanisms; tradable receipt financing -- the example of cedula de produto rural in Brazil; and the use of reverse factoring -- the example of nafin in Mexico. The paper concludes that through innovative approaches in different emerging markets both warehouse receipts and innovative collateralized lending mechanisms could provide opportunities to expand the levels of post-harvest financing being provided to producers, traders, processors, and other agribusinesses. -
Publication
Intellectual Property Rights for Agriculture in International Trade and Investment Agreements : A Plant Breeding Perspective
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-01)The agricultural sector, and in particular plant breeding, is one area where this flexibility of intellectual property rights (IPR) is quite broad. This note argues that policymakers need to pay close attention to the role that IPRs can play in agricultural development by providing incentives for both domestic and foreign investments. The note explains the special nature of plant breeding that has given rise to unique forms of IPRs and reviews how this special nature is reflected in article 27(3) b of the TRIPS Agreement. The note also reviews how developing countries are choosing to meet their obligations. It highlights the concern that both bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations may exert pressure on countries to adopt IPR regimes that are more rigid than those required to support national agricultural development.