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.
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Publication
Empowerment and Poverty Reduction through Infrastructure and Service Provision in Rural Pakistan
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010-01)Poverty in Pakistan is overwhelmingly rural. Some two-thirds of Pakistan's population, and over 60 percent of the country's poor, live in rural areas. In 2005, average per capita expenditures in rural areas were 31 percent lower than in urban areas. This inequality between urban and rural areas is re-enforced by inequality within and between rural areas. Owing to uneven access to land and useable water, most of the increased income that results from agricultural production accrues to higher income farmers-who typically spend a disproportionate amount of their income on urban goods and services. This inequality seriously limits the impacts of agricultural growth on rural poverty, and is a major cause of sustained poverty and low productivity among small farmers and rural nonfarm households. It also points to the importance of effectively targeting the poor in contexts in which resources intended for them are likely to be captured by more privileged groups. -
Publication
Managing Drought Risk for Food Security in Africa : An Innovative Solution in Malawi
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01)Malawi periodically experiences drought leading to shortages of grain on the domestic market and a sharp increase in consumer prices. Consumers, including many of the poorest farmers in the country, experience difficulty obtaining enough grain to meet their family requirements. One method to reduce the risks of grain shortfalls is to improve the capacity of farmers to produce enough grain even when drought occurs, for example, through input subsidies and efforts to improve water use efficiency. An additional measure is to finance the establishment and distribution of strategic grain stocks. However, in the occasional year when drought is most extreme, supplementary assistance will still be needed in the form of expensive food imports and, possibly, food aid. -
Publication
Financial Services for Developing Small-Scale Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)Food insecurity and income poverty are rampant in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirty-one percent of children under the age of five are malnourished and some 72 percent of the population lives on less than US$2 day. Forty-one percent lives on less than US$1 day. The impoverished and hungry are concentrated disproportionately in rural areas and rely mainly on the consumption and sale of agricultural produce for their food and income. Africa has experienced increasing dependency on food imports that its countries cannot afford. Yet an estimated 700,000 hectares of arable land in Africa remains uncultivated. It is land that could become productive through small-scale irrigation using basic technology to draw on small-water resources, such as tube wells, and dambos. The technologies can be applied to cultivate smallholder plots of up to five hectares. Employing them will enable up to 4 million low-income households to intensify agricultural production and increase productivity. Small-scale irrigation can increase agricultural productivity and production, thus contributing to economic growth in rural areas and increased well-being among small holder farmers. Its potential to increase and stabilize food supply is especially important in light of the ongoing food crisis, and especially in Africa. Expanding the use of small-scale irrigation requires farmers to have access to financial services. The many constraints and obstacles that rural financial institutions in Africa confront must be purposefully navigated if financial services are to fulfill this role. Effectively tailoring financial services and products to support irrigation in different settings and among different client groups will be essential to success. Carefully targeting grant funding to the very poorest subsistence farmers and clearly separating it from lending will be likewise be critical to the sustainability of these financial services. -
Publication
Armenia : Title Registration Project
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02)This approach resulted in the fragmentation of agricultural holdings, with families owning noncontiguous plots. Land use was inefficient, owing in part to the low rate of use of agricultural machinery. Making land use and farming more efficient will require the establishment of a functioning land market. Granting farmers the right to sell, exchange, and lease their land will enable them to use it as collateral and to consolidate family plots. The overall aim of the Armenia Title Registration Project was to promote private sector development by implementing a transparent, parcel-based, easily accessible, and reliable registration system for land and other immovable property. The system was to provide a chronological record of property owners and their rights and obligations. The availability of this information was expected to reduce the transaction costs of title transfers and mortgage financing and lead to more secure property rights for parcels registered in the system. This in turn was expected to lead to higher land and real estate value, increased productivity, and the consolidation of fragmented rural land ownership. Increased use of property as collateral was expected to bring about general improvement in the efficiency of rural and urban real estate markets. The project was also intended to promote least-cost registration procedures by building on existing property information databases (adding only market-relevant information to these databases), and by contracting private surveyors. -
Publication
A New Model of Public-Private Partnership for Land Access and Rural Enterprise Formation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02)The Honduras Land Access Pilot Project (PACTA) from 2001-2006 supported the acquisition of land and the formation of sustainable farm enterprises by self-organized landless and land-poor peasant families. The Government is now scaling up and diversifying the pilot into a national program far more inclusive than the current model. The SDR 6.2 million pilot project proved the viability of a public-private partnership strategy, with the private sector lending for land purchase and public sector funds being used for complementary investments and services to improve productivity and build capacity for independent development. The program was broadly aimed at the rural population with no access to land or precarious access to small parcels for subsistence production. Of the 1,226 families that took part in the program, 991 were part of this group day laborers, sharecroppers, or other kinds of subsistence producer. The rest were poor families with access to municipal forestland (two sub-projects) or communal land (one sub-project). These sub-projects were implemented at the end of the pilot phase. In addition, the sub-projects supported by PACTA in forest communities and afro-Honduran communities are promising for the diversification of economic activities in areas like tourism, crafts, fishing, sustainable timber harvest and wood processing, and environmental services. From this point of view, the achievements and lessons learned in the pilot project could be meaningful in the design of similar processes, not necessarily involving land purchase -
Publication
Building Infrastructure and Social Capital in Rural Egypt
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)Disparity in growth rates between Upper and Lower Egypt has been dramatic. While national per capita income averaged 3 percent growth annually beginning in the mid 1990s, and growth rates in metropolitan areas approached 8 percent -- Upper Egypt experienced negative per capita growth rates during the same period. By 2001, Upper Egypt accounted for 37 percent of the country's population, but 65 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Yet rural development programs under similar conditions throughout Egypt recently experienced some significant successes. The most notable success was a participatory approach to rural development planning introduced in the framework of the 1994 National Program for Integrated Rural Development -- known as Shorouk or Sunrise.