Other Agriculture Study
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Publication
Thailand Rural Income Diagnostic: Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Farmers
(Washington, DC, 2022-10)This report applies the framework to diagnose the opportunities and constraints faced by the rural economy and households and to assess policy options to address these constraints. The approach builds on four steps. The first step consists in examining the socio-demographic profile and living conditions of rural households. The second step assesses opportunities to increase the income of rural households. The third step investigates the key constraints preventing rural households from taking advantage of these opportunities and explores the sequencing and overlap of the constraints. The final step examines the feasible policy actions that would help rural households overcome the key constraints to increasing their income. Details are provided in Figure 9. The analysis selects the key constraints that prevent households from taking advantage of identified opportunities. Prioritization of constraints requires assessing the likely benefits of pursuing the opportunities compared against the costs of relaxing the constraints. There are four criteria suggested by Hill (2018) that are used to identify the priority constraints that need to be address: (1) the constraint limits several important sources of income; (2) strength of evidence that addressing the constraint will help income growth, (3) the constraint has a stronger impact on poorer households or regions, and (4) existing evidence on the need to address the constraint first before other constraints can be addressed. Potential feasible policy solutions are suggested to the prioritized constraints. The potential for the policy solutions to address the constraints, their feasibility, and the size and breadth of their impact is graded based on the review of evidence and discussion with experts and stakeholders operating in the field. -
Publication
Transforming Agriculture in South Sudan: From Humanitarian Aid to a Development Oriented Growth Path
(Rome, Italy; Washington D.C., United States of America : FAO; World Bank, 2022)FAO teamed up with the World Bank on this strategic analysis of the investment, policy and institutional support needed to shift South Sudan’s agriculture sector from humanitarian relief to a development-oriented growth path. The team carried out a thorough review of lessons learned in South Sudan and other conflict-affected countries and held consultations with a wide range of stakeholders in the country. As a result, four complementary investment strategies were identified: agriculture production and food security; community resilience and social capital; value chain development and jobs; and peace consolidation. The authors advocate for combining these four strategies in a flexible way, depending on how the shocks currently affecting agriculture (conflict, violence, macro-economic instability, governance, natural disasters) evolve in the coming years. The Government of South Sudan and the World Bank consider this analytical work a milestone that will pave the way for future investments in agriculture and rural development in the country. This publication is part of the Country Investment Highlights series under the FAO Investment Centre’s Knowledge for Investment (K4I) programme. -
Publication
Dynamics of Rural Growth in Bangladesh: Sustaining Poverty Reduction
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05-17)The rural economy in Bangladesh has been a powerful source of economic growth and has substantially reduced poverty, especially since 2000, but the remarkable transformation and unprecedented dynamism in rural Bangladesh are an underexplored, underappreciated, and largely untold story. The analysis identifies the key changes occurring in the rural economy, the principal drivers of rural incomes, the implications for policy, and related actions to foster future growth, further reduce poverty, and improve food security and nutrition. A substantial strength of this study is its empirical foundation, consisting of three sets of detailed data on rural households. Two of the datasets are unique in tracking the same set of households for more than two decades. These data make it possible to examine how change is occurring within and among rural households; they shed considerable light on trends that tend to be obscured at more aggregate levels of analysis. Nationally representative surveys and aggregate secondary data provide complementary and contextually rich insights into the household data. -
Publication
Transforming Vietnamese Agriculture: Gaining More for Less
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04)Over the past quarter century, Vietnam’s agricultural sector has made enormous progress. Vietnam’s performance in terms of agricultural yields, output, and exports, however, has been more impressive than its gains in efficiency, farmer welfare, and product quality. Vietnamese agriculture now sits at a turning point. The agricultural sector now faces growing domestic competition - from cities, industry, and services - for labor, land, and water. Rising labor costs are beginning to inhibit the sector’s ability to compete globally as a low cost producer of bulk undifferentiated commodities. Going forward, Vietnam’s agricultural sector needs to generate more from less. That is, it must generate more economic value - and farmer and consumer welfare - using less natural and human capital and less harmful intermediate inputs. The strategic shift was highlighted in the government’s agricultural restructuring plan (ARP), approved by the Prime Minister in June 2014. The ARP defines sector goals in terms of the triple bottom line of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable development. It lays out expected changes in the roles and spending patterns of the government in the sector and discusses the need to work with other stakeholders, including in the private sector. It calls for an ambitious and ongoing process of learning and experimentation, and several potential directions are offered in this report. -
Publication
Myanmar: Analysis of Farm Production Economics
(World Bank, Yangon, 2016-02-26)This report was prepared by the World Bank in partnership with the Livelihoods and Food Security Multi-Donor Trust Fund (LIFT). Both the World Bank and the LIFT are actively involved in supporting Myanmar’s agriculture sector given its significance in poverty reduction and food security, and they both consider the lack of reliable farm data to be a significant constraint to designing effective programs and policies. This report fills some of the data gaps. In addition to presenting the collected data, the report offers the first analysis of these data. It focuses on the assessment of the extent of crop diversification and an analysis of farm production economics, in particular (partial factor) productivity of agricultural land and labor and crop profitability. This focus was chosen to study Myanmar’s commercial production areas and to facilitate international comparisons, as most international studies follow a similar approach, focusing on advanced farmers in commercial production areas. The four main findings of the report are as follows: (i) Myanmar’s farming systems are diversified and during the monsoon season most farms produce paddy, during the cool and dry seasons most farms produce crops other than paddy, mainly beans and pulses, oilseeds, and maize; (ii) the analysis reconfirmed that agricultural productivity in Myanmar is low, irrespective of what indicators are used, limiting the sector’s contribution to poverty reduction and shared prosperity; (iii) low productivity is a result of multiple factors, many of them associated with the undersupply of quality public services such as research, extension, and rural infrastructure, in delivery of which the government has a key role to play; and (iv) going forward and given that paddy is less profitable and more costly to produce than other crops in most agro-ecological zones, especially during the cool and dry seasons, it is desirable to redesign public programs from exclusive support of paddy production to support for broad-based agricultural development. -
Publication
Improved Nutrition through Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services: Case Studies of Curriculum Review and Operational Lessons from India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)Even after several decades of green revolution, malnutrition continues to be a major development challenge in much of South Asia, and India has a major share of the malnourished people in the region. For nutrition goals to be integrated into extension the curricula provided to current and future agricultural extension agents must be revisited. As part of the South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI), this paper focuses on approaches to incorporating such nutrition content into the agricultural extension curriculum. Three state agricultural universities in Tamil Nadu, united Andhra Pradesh, and Bihar were used as case studies for the curriculum review. Through these case studies, face-to-face consultations at the national level down to program implementation at the village level have been developed. These include consultative workshops, and a conceptual framework and strategy for incorporating nutrition into extension curriculum development to improve nutrition outcomes. This strategy, detailed in this report, includes opportunities for collaboration from the national level to the community level. Specific lessons and follow-up actions are outlined that may be useful for other South Asian countries. The paper is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two reviews current literature on agriculture-nutrition linkages to develop a conceptual framework for integrating nutrition into agricultural extension programs. Research methods and approaches are given in chapter three. Results and discussions are given in chapter four. Lessons from the case studies are presented in chapter five, and chapter six consists of concluding remarks. -
Publication
Kazakhstan Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)Agriculture is among the most risk-prone sectors in the economies of Central Asia. Production shocks from weather, pests and diseases and adverse movements in agricultural product and input prices not only impact farmers and agri-business firms, but can also strain government finances. Some of these risks are small and localized and can be managed by producers. Others are the result of more severe, exogenous shocks outside agriculture that require a broader response. Failure to respond adequately to these more severe risks leads to a perpetual cycle of ‘shock-recovery-shock’ which reinforces poverty traps and compromises long-term growth. A broad-based program to improve livestock productivity is recommended to strengthen the resilience of livestock production systems and rangeland use in Kazakhstan. Proposed interventions include measures to: (i) reverse degradation of water, soil and vegetation cover; (ii) safeguard the long-term viability of rangeland ecosystems, while ensuring sustainable access to grazing land; and (iii) strengthen livestock services (veterinary, animal health, feed and fodder supply, destocking, water and grazing access, and weather and market information). These measures will enable farmers to manage their resources better, to respond to climate and market signals and to protect their resource base in times of drought. The recommendations developed under these three solution areas continue the underlying emphasis on mitigation as the foundation for risk management. They also highlight the mutually reinforcing benefits of measures to improve crop and livestock productivity for both risk management and sector growth. -
Publication
Tajikistan Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)Agriculture is among the most risk-prone sectors in the economies of Central Asia. Production shocks from weather, pests and diseases and adverse movements in agricultural product and input prices not only impact farmers and agri-business firms, but can also strain government finances. Some of these risks are small and localized and can be managed by producers. Others are the result of more severe, exogenous shocks outside agriculture or outside the country, which require a broader response. Failure to respond adequately to these more severe risks leads to a perpetual cycle of ‘shock-recovery-shock’, which reinforces poverty traps and compromises long-term growth. The agriculture sector’s exposure to production and price risk is increasing. Climate change is increasing production risks in the short to medium-term by increasing the frequency and severity of droughts and floods and in the longer-term by reducing the availability of water for irrigation due to accelerated glacial melt. The modernization and commercialization of agricultural production and processing, which is critical for sector growth, also raises the sector’s exposure to price risk at a time of high volatility on international markets for agricultural commodities. An effective response to these risks requires a broader, more integrated approach to risk management than the current system of ex-ante, public sector activity associated with crop and livestock disease and ad hoc, ex-post emergency responses to local disasters. Measures to strengthen risk mitigation will need to be mainstreamed into sector development and investment programs, additional human and financial resources will need to be allocated to the public institutions responsible for ex-ante and ex-post risk management, and the potential for transfer (insurance) mechanisms will need to be clarified and developed where feasible. Given the limited human and financial resources available for public sector activity, a clear sense of the priorities for agriculture risk management is also required, together with a balanced view of the respective roles of public and private sector stakeholders. -
Publication
Kyrgyz Republic Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)Agriculture is among the most risk-prone sectors in the economies of Central Asia. Production shocks from weather, pests and diseases and adverse movements in agricultural product and input prices not only impact farmers and agri-business firms, but can also strain government finances. Some of these risks are small and localized and can be managed by producers. Others are the result of more severe, exogenous shocks outside agriculture or outside the country, which require a broader response. Failure to respond adequately to these more severe risks leads to a perpetual cycle of ‘shock-recovery-shock’, which reinforces poverty traps and compromises long-term growth. The agriculture sector’s exposure to production and price risk is increasing. Climate change is increasing production risks in the short to medium-term by increasing the frequency and severity of droughts and floods and in the longer-term by reducing the availability of water for irrigation due to accelerated glacial melt. The modernization and commercialization of agricultural production and processing, which is critical for sector growth, also raises the sector’s exposure to price risk at a time of high volatility on international markets for agricultural commodities. An effective response to these risks requires a broader, more integrated approach to risk management than the current system of ex-ante, public sector activity associated with crop and livestock disease and ad hoc, ex-post emergency responses to local disasters. Measures to strengthen risk mitigation need to be mainstreamed into sector development and investment programs, additional human and financial resources need to be allocated to the public institutions responsible for ex-ante and ex-post risk management, and the potential for transfer (insurance) mechanisms will need to be clarified and developed where feasible. Given the limited human and financial resources available for public sector activity, a clear sense of the priorities for agriculture risk management is also required, together with a balanced view of the respective roles of public and private sector stakeholders. -
Publication
Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment: Methodological Guidance for Practitioners
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)In the agricultural sector, risks are inherent and ubiquitous, posing potentially serious consequences for stakeholders and consumers. Risks disrupt supply chains, causing extensive financial and economic losses. Agricultural risks are also the principal cause of transient food insecurity, creating a poverty trap for millions of households across the developing world that enforces a vicious cycle of shock and recovery. Climate change is exacerbating this cycle by shifting the frequency and intensity of weather related risks and increasing uncertainty. Effective agricultural risk management (ARM) is crucial to increasing economic growth, improving food security, and reducing poverty. Although levels of risk vary within and between countries, lower-income and highly agriculture-dependent countries are more vulnerable to agriculture-related risks. In these countries, there is an urgent need to better assess risks, understand the interconnections between different types of risk, and improve agricultural risk management strategies.