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
Foreign Investment in Agricultural Production : Opportunities and Challenges
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01)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
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
When Markets Do Not Work, Should Grants Be Used?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-04)To deal with problems of inadequate markets and the persistence of deep poverty, development agency personnel designing projects have increasingly turned to grants to provide solutions. This paper examines the theory of grants, draws lessons from a review of their use in twelve projects that started mostly in the years 1998-2000, discusses findings, and recommends ways to deal with problems faced in grant projects. The paper recommends the following: guidance notes, standard guidelines and manuals, and training for task managers, emphasizing the need to explicitly identify market failures and justify the use of grants to address them, as well as providing frameworks for detailed design of grant schemes; detailed cost-benefit analyses of all grant-financed investments, to the extent that such investments are of an economic nature for which such analyses are possible; broader analyses of other investments such as community-driven development (CDD) projects and cash or food-for-work schemes; analysis of pilot interventions or stylized model investments; Project Appraisal Documents should include more details of implementation, and give more guidance to the implementers; and the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) should evaluate grant schemes with special attention to justification, economic evaluation, and implementation details. -
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.