Other Agriculture Study
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Publication
Guatemala: Food Smart Country Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-28)The term food smart refers to a food system that is efficient, meets the food needs of a country, and is environmentally sustainable. Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) is one of the critical pillars to build a smart food system. This diagnostic focuses on the FLW pillar, from farm to fork to landfill, with the objective of alerting policymakers to the role that addressing food loss and waste can play in meeting their various global and national policycommitments. -
Publication
Chile’s Forests: A Pillar for Inclusive and Sustainable Development
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-06-01)The economic success of the Chilean forest sector relies heavily on its forest plantations, which are facing significant challenges. Plantations are intensively managed for pulp and other wood products for export. This commercial orientation has promoted voluntary forest management and chain of custody certification and the development and adoption of the Chilean Sustainable Forest Management Certification System (CERTFOR). However, as afforestation rates decline, overall production in forest plantations is falling, which can be explained by lower productivity and management effectiveness of small- and medium-sized forest plantations. Additional challenges include (a) the environmental impact of current management practices, and (b) the possibility of a wood deficit in the coming years. With the focus shifting away from plantations, Chile’s native forests have the potential to provide an increasing range of goods and services. Native forests are generally characterized by unsustainable management practices and thus are highly degraded, often only providing firewood. While considerable research on silvicultural techniques has been conducted, only small areas have adopted sustainable forest management practices, with a focus on thinning of second-growth forests and selective cuttings. However, native forests have the potential to revitalize regional and local economies through more sustainable management systems. For this resource to be sustainably utilized, it is essential to address challenges such as degradation, decapitalization, and poor development of the goods/services market that natural forests generate. Native forests have enormous resilience, and, over time, can recover and build more sustainable production systems, consequently increasing the supply of timber and nontimber resources, as well as biodiversity and other ecosystem services. -
Publication
Chile’s Forests: A Pillar for Inclusive and Sustainable Development
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020)Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Chile embarked on a long journey to develop a forestry model adapted to its national circumstances, achieving considerable progress in the last four decades by significantly increasing its forest cover and developing a highly competitive industry with global reach, making forestry among the country’s main economic activities. Despite the significant achievements made in establishing a vast natural capital based of planted forests in the country, the forest sector faces new challenges. The effects of climate change with increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation are accelerating desertification, land degradation and drought processes. Furthermore it is increasing the frequency and intensity of forest fires, affecting the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people, the future availability of timber, and generating a variety of other impacts on the country's ecosystems. This new scenario also entails the need to strengthen, modernize and adapt the current institutional framework to enable it to more effectively support the continuous growth of the forest sector in the current national and global context, and continue generating economic, social and environmental benefits for the country. -
Publication
Tapping the Potential of Bolivia's Agriculture and Food Systems to Support Inclusive and Sustainable Growth
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)Agriculture and the rural space will continue to demand the attention of policy makers in Bolivia for several reasons, even as urbanization gains momentum. First, agriculture is a proven engine of economic growth. Aside from showing its strength in decades past, in recent years agriculture shielded the Bolivian economy from the worst effects of the decline in other primary sectors, and in the future, healthy rates of agricultural growth will make the overall economy more diversified and more resilient. Second, a robust and dynamic agricultural sector will continue to curb dependence on the mining and gas sectors, while contributing significantly to inclusive growth, value addition, the creation of more and better jobs on and off of the farm, and better nutrition for all. Third, because agricultural growth in Bolivia has proven to be pro-poor, maintaining that growth is essential for continued reductions in poverty. Fourth, because climate and other shocks affecting agriculture can significantly disrupt steady gains in economic growth, poverty reduction, and food security, building a resilient agricultural sector is critical to sustain those gains. Finally, although policy makers will want to support agricultural growth, they will not want that growth to compromise the future for generations of Bolivians by squandering and degrading irreplaceable natural resources. -
Publication
Charcoal in Haiti: A National Assessment of Charcoal Production and Consumption Trends
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-11)A widely cited report from 1979 suggested that existing wood supplies in Haiti would be enough to meet increasing charcoal demand until around the year 2000, but that ongoing charcoal production could result in an environmental ‘apocalypse’ (Voltaire 1979, 21, 23) The prediction that wood supplies in Haiti would be exhausted by 2000 was also supported by a report on trends emerging from early remote sensing analyses of aerial photographs spanning from 1956 to 1978, for threedifferent locations in Haiti (Cohen 1984, v–iv). And yet, some 40 years later, Haitians continue to produce large quantities of charcoal despite these dire predictions to the contrary. The estimations and subsequent extrapolations presented here are conservative, using midrange estimates on a number of variables, including charcoal bag carrying capacities for different-sized vehicles in the classificatory typology, an average weight assumption for charcoal bags, and the utilization of annual extrapolation methods (for Port-au-Prince and all of Haiti) based on extending data sampled during representative low and peak periods of charcoal production to corresponding low and peak seasons across the entire year. This research provides targeted answers to a narrow set of research questions, helping to fill an important information gap in Haiti. Most notably, the total volume of charcoal moving into Port-au-Prince has implications on the total required volume of primary production of biomass for charcoal and the total value of the charcoal value chains, demonstrating the magnitude of importance of charcoal production for Haiti. These two up-to-date figures may inform policy decisions for development and government programming related to landscape management, reforestation, tree planting, agroforestry, and agricultural projects in Haiti. -
Publication
Rapid and Integrated Agriculture Risk Management Review for Brazil: Towards an Integrated Vision
(World Bank, Brasilia, 2017)The agriculture sector of Brazil faces a large number of risks linked to the productive process, which has led to substantial losses to the country in the past years. An adequate and integrated management of those risks can leave farmer incomes less exposed to losses, benefiting the sector and the country as a whole. Therefore, given the always-present resource limitation, it is important to maximize the economic returns of agriculture risk management actions. Brazil built important agriculture risk management policies and programs, but there are several signs that it is possible to improve their efficiency of effectiveness with more coordination and a prioritization in the treatment of gaps and opportunities. The objective of this work was to undertake a rapid and integrated review of agriculture risk management in Brazil, identifying gaps and opportunities for improving current public policies and programs at the federal level in the short and long term. Beyond potential improvements in specific agriculture risk management policies and programs, an improved coordination and integration of current tools can reduce the risk profile of the sector. In this context, the World Bank, Brazilian Agriculture Research Company (Embrapa ) and Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA) put forward a rapid and integrated review of agriculture risk management in Brazil. This rapid review suggests that actions that seek the implementation of an integrated agriculture risk management vision are supported by society at large and by the public sector’s interest. Finally, planning requires the need for a stable institutional framework, which calls for a national plan and an agriculture law, with at least a five-year horizon and that must consider not only the agriculture risk management issues, but also rural development ones. -
Publication
Weather Data Grids for Agriculture Risk Management : The Case of Honduras and Guatemala
(Washington, DC, 2013-01)One of the major constraints for the improvement of agricultural risk management in Central America, and in particular to the development of weather index-based insurance, is the availability of complete meteorological data. Limitations with the data are related to restrictions in weather station coverage (density), and problems with the quality (errors and gaps in the information) and availability of historical records. This paper evaluates the reconstruction of historical meteorological records with gridded datasets for Honduras and Guatemala1 using the methodology in Uribe Alcantara et al. (2009).The reconstruction with synthetic series is implemented by replacing missing observations with estimations from regular grids (or gridded analyses). The development of synthetic series proposed here will facilitate, among other potential uses, the implementation of risk analysis in insurance contracts where meteorological information is limited or incomplete. This paper is organized in four sections. Section one describes the conceptual approach and methods implemented for the evaluation of the data and the development of the gridded analysis. Section two describes the results of the implementation of the gridded analysis for Honduras and Guatemala. Section three provides a brief description of possible applications of the regular grids for the development of weather insurance contracts. Section four summarizes the main conclusions. -
Publication
Impacts of Climate Change on Brazilian Agriculture
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013)This report evaluates the requirements for an assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture to guide policy makers on investment priorities and phasing. Because agriculture is vital for national food security and is a strong contributor to Brazil's GDP growth, there is growing concern that Brazilian agriculture is increasingly vulnerable to climate variability and change. To meet national development, food security, climate adaptation and mitigation, and trade goals over the next several decades, Brazil will need to significantly increase per area productivity of food and pasture systems while simultaneously reducing deforestation, rehabilitating millions of hectares of degraded land, and adapting to climate change. There is inadequate data to accurately model projected climate challenges facing Brazil. The report concludes that key integrated and linked interventions are needed in the short term to significantly improve currently available assessments of climate change impact on Brazilian agriculture and to guide policy makers with the priorities and phasing of needed investments. -
Publication
El Salvador Country Land Assessment
(Washington, DC, 2012-06)This study assesses the alignment of land use, land tenure, and land market outcomes in El Salvador with public policy aspirations in recent decades for efficient, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable development in both urban and rural spaces. In doing so the study indirectly gauges the effectiveness of land sector institutions in facilitating such developmental outcomes in agricultural production, urbanization, and forest management. Chapter 1 briefly reviews some of the prominent struggles over land in El Salvador and outlines the salient features of today's institutional framework for land governance. Chapter 2 asks the question, "How effective have public policy interventions, including the Agrarian Reform, been in reducing rural inequality and tenure insecurity?". Chapter 3 explores what has happened to the lands transferred to Agrarian Reform cooperatives under the last iterations of the Agrarian Reform. Chapter 4 asks the question, "How has land governance in El Salvador responded to the challenges of urban land supply in the last decade?". In Chapter 5 the extent to which urban spatial expansion in El Salvador has been occurring in an inclusive way is explored. Chapter 6 presents the findings of the original analyses of land use in relation to deforestation. Chapter 7 analyzes available land market data in three Departments, Ahuachapan, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate, to identify trends and land use dynamism in the first decade of this century. Chapter 8 looks at the study's empirical findings from a more integrated, cross-sectoral perspective so that their implications for public policy are better understood. The final Chapter of the study presents policy options for consideration by the Government of El Salvador and the country's civil society organizations in order to address the key challenges related to land tenure, land use, and territorial planning. -
Publication
Towards a Vision for Agricultural Innovation in Chile in 2030
(World Bank, 2011-05-31)This paper aims to develop a vision statement for the agricultural sector that may then guide the future investments in Chile's agricultural innovation system, A joint and shared perspective on how the sector might look and what role agricultural innovation should play in getting there is a prerequisite for any effective strategy. But developing such a vision is not only a function of what the country wants: it also depends on the context in which Chile's agricultural sector will find itself. This paper therefore reports on a participatory process to explore the many uncertainties that surround Chile's agriculture and to derive possible implications and answers. This will then lead to a vision for the sector that should be realistic both in terms of Chile's agricultural ambitions and its surrounding uncertainties. Based on the vision, a series of topics that needs to be explored in the agricultural innovation system if Chile wishes to make its vision come true will be identified and briefly described. The current paper is the second one in a series of three that were agreed between the Government of Chile and the World Bank to support the development of a long term agricultural innovation strategy. The first paper reviewed the functioning of the three main public technological institutes and made recommendations on how their performance can be improved. This second study explores the future of Chile's agriculture towards 2030, using a scenario planning methodology and developing a vision for the future of its agricultural innovation system. The third study will then outline a concrete action plan to make progress on the main topics that need to be addressed in order to achieve the vision.