Agricultural and Rural Development Notes

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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.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 29
  • Publication
    Pull Mechanisms for Overcoming Market Failures in the Agriculture Sector: Initial Lessons Learned with Case Illustrations from AgResults’ Kenya On-Farm Storage Pilot
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08) Mainville, Denise; Narayan, Tulika
    After the food crises of 2007-2008 and the growing realization that donor resources were not sufficient to meet global agricultural development challenges, the AgResults initiative was launched at the June 2012 G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico as an innovation to boost private sector engagement in meeting these challenges. AgResults initiative comprised of seven pilot projects that incentivize the private sector to develop and deliver innovative products to smallholder farmers in settings where markets for these products are otherwise underdeveloped. Each pilot provides financial incentives to the private sector actors to encourage them to enter the market, but the incentives are paid only after they achieve predefined results. This Knowledge Note reflects the initial findings from the external evaluator’s ongoing research to evaluate the pilots. The authors conclude by identifying the critical steps involved in design of a pull mechanism. Throughout, the authors draw on examples from the AgResults On-Farm Storage pilot in Kenya to illustrate their guidance.
  • Publication
    Improving Nutrition through Multisectoral Approaches
    (Washington, DC, 2013-01) World Bank
    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
    Agricultural Innovation Funds
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011-05) Rajalahti, Riikka; Larson, Gunnar
    In order for agricultural development to fulfill its potential role as a source of growth and reducer of poverty, it must be constantly renewed through knowledge and innovation. Getting resources into the hands of innovators and providing incentives for producers, agricultural service providers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate in developing and applying new methods and technologies is a priority among institutions concerned with agricultural knowledge. While grants have long been used to finance agricultural innovation, in many countries there has been a shift away from block grant funding and towards the use of innovation funds. These are used to provide incentives and resources for investment and collaboration between innovators, producer groups, private entrepreneurs, and public institutions. Innovation funds allocate grants to targeted applicants based on a system for evaluating the eligibility, relevance, and quality of applicants' proposals.
  • Publication
    Gender and Governance in Agricultural Extension Services : Insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010-03) Madhvani, Sonia; Pehu, Eija
    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
    Rethinking Collaborative Arrangements with Local Partners
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010-01) Rosenbaum, Kenneth; Chandrasekharan Behr, Diji; Larson, Gunnar
    More forest area is being designated for use by local communities and indigenous peoples. In a growing number of countries legislation is being introduced to ensure that local partners share in the benefits of forest operations and participate as active stakeholders in the sustainable use of forest resources. Private sector investment in the forest sector is increasing as well. For businesses in an expanding range of investment settings, establishing and maintaining positive working relationships with local communities is an essential part of gaining access to natural resources, local skills and labor. Afforestation and reforestation activities and programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), including sustainable forest management (SFM) and forest restoration, seek to increase forest carbon sequestration, and their success or failure will rely in many respects on the effective cooperation of forest dependent people. These developments are giving partnerships and benefit-sharing arrangements between local and outside partners greater prominence than they have generally had in the past. The significance of these collaborative arrangements is increasing whether the local partner is a community, a user or producer association, or a group of individual landholders, and whether the outside partner is a private firm, a government agency, or a nongovernmental or civil society organization. The arrangements vary widely in purpose as well for the respective partners. Local partners may be interested in employment and income generating opportunities, in the security of their access to forest land, in the protection of resources that have traditional or other values, or in capitalizing on small business opportunities. Outside partners may be interested in gaining and securing access to forest products, in obtaining the cooperation of local communities in how forest resources are used, in alleviating rural poverty, or in managing risks and ensuring the provision of environmental services.
  • Publication
    Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant : Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-06) Morris, Michael
    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) McNamara, Kerry
    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
    Tracking Results in Agriculture and Rural Development in Less-Than-Ideal Conditions : A Sourcebook of Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluation
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-03) Larson, Gunnar
    The demand for verifiable evidence of results and impacts of development agricultural programs and projects is growing. However, most of the indicators that development practitioners have traditionally used in tracking progress toward achieving projects' objectives focus on the workings of the development operation itself. These performance indicators relate mainly to lower-level inputs and outputs and are used to populate management information systems. Higher-level indicators are used to measure progress in achieving the ultimate objectives of projects, and in bringing about larger outcomes and impacts. The ability to measure and demonstrate outcomes and impacts relies on the use of indicators that are based on reliable data and on the capacity to systematically collect and analyze that information. The conditions in which monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are carried out vary widely, depending on the demand for information, the extent to which it is used to inform decision-making, and the reliability of the systems that are in place to capture and convey that information. Throughout much of the developing world these conditions are "less-than-ideal," and information is irregular and often lacking altogether. In these conditions there is a lack of effective demand for information on the part of policy makers. The conditions are often especially pronounced for data related to rural areas, where the costs of data collection are high and the quality of existing data is particularly low. Building data systems and developing and supporting capacity for M&E in these conditions is, therefore, a pressing imperative for interventions in the agriculture and rural development sector. Strengthening capacity for M&E begins at the national and sub-national levels, where addressing the weaknesses of national statistical systems is a common priority. The data collected and reported within countries must not only be of sufficient quality to inform planning and policy formulation but must also be consistent between countries.
  • Publication
    Foreign Investment in Agricultural Production : Opportunities and Challenges
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01) Songwe, Vera; Deininger, Klaus
    The recent surge in food and fuel prices has prompted countries with high dependence on food imports to try and lock in future food supplies through direct investment in agricultural production in other countries. The price surges also led to a wave of proposals to invest in biofuels investments in agricultural land. While such investment can provide large benefits, it also carries considerable risks both to investors and citizens in the locality of the investment. To ensure that investments provide broad benefits and effectively contribute to larger development outcomes, enforceable property rights and contractual agreements in many developing countries need to be strengthened. This note considers how development partners can help countries create the pre-conditions for investment and proposes a governance framework to establish minimum standards for it.
  • Publication
    Land Reform in Mozambique
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12) Van den Brink, Rogier J. E.
    This brief includes the following headings: rationale, objectives, and basic features of the 1997 land law; acquiring land-use rights; obstacles to transferring urban land-use rights; promote the productive use of Direito de Uso e Aproveitamento dos Terras, or DUATs; and enforce the land tax.