Other Agriculture Study
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Publication
Malawi Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)With more than three-quarters of its workforce employed in agriculture, Malawi is highly vulnerable to any adverse events affecting the agriculture sector, and agricultural risks are ever present in the country. Agricultural risks can obstruct development and enforce poverty traps, particularly for a country as reliant on agriculture as Malawi. Because of the size of the sector in the economy and the importance of agricultural products for export, agricultural growth correlates closely with gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Malawi’s effort to manage risks and to provide relief in response to adverse events diverts significant resources from longer-term development investments. To better understand the dynamics of agricultural risks and identify appropriate responses, incorporate an agricultural risk perspective into decision making, and build the capacity of local stakeholders in risk assessment and management, the agricultural risk management team (ARMT) of the agriculture and environment services department of the World Bank conducted an agriculture sector risk assessment. The purpose of this report is to assess existing agricultural risks, prioritize them according to their frequency and impacts on the sector, and identify areas of risk-management solutions that need deeper specialized attention. Three levels of risks were assessed: production risks, market risks, and enabling environment risks to selected supply chains. The report takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to assessing risk. This report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction and context. Chapter two provides an overview of the agriculture sector and the selected crops. Chapter three maps the production, market, and enabling environment risks to food crops and export crops. Chapter four looks at the adverse impacts of agricultural risks in terms of losses, both at the national level and for different regions. Chapter five prioritizes the risks in terms of their frequency and the severity of their impacts, and discusses solutions based on this prioritization, ongoing risk-management activities, and the feedback from the consultative workshop. -
Publication
Agriculture in Nicaragua: Performance, Challenges, and Options
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11)This work summarizes background papers prepared for the World Bank Group with significant input from government counterparts and other development partners. It takes stock of major recent developments and argues that a lot has been achieved in the last decade in terms of production of commodities for export and food consumption, with favorable impact on rural poverty reduction. It also argues that the two factors driving the recent agricultural performance, namely favorable international prices and expansion of the agricultural frontier, have reached their limits. So while trade policies are broadly on target, much can be done by focusing on the productivity of small family agriculture and improving competitiveness by reducing transaction costs (logistics) affecting small, medium, and large commercial farms. In the short to medium term, the household income of the rural poor will continue to depend largely on agriculture. Thus interventions will need to take into account the heterogeneity of smallholder agriculture while simultaneously increasing its resilience to climate risks through climate-smart agriculture. -
Publication
Kenya: Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11)Despite myriad challenges, Kenya has emerged in recent years as one of Africa’s frontier economies, with headline growth in the most recent decade propelling the country toward middle-income status. Less well understood is how risk dynamics associated with production, markets, and policy adversely impact sector performance, in terms of both influencing ex ante decision making among farmers, traders, and other sector stakeholders and causing ex post losses to crops, livestock, and incomes - destabilizing livelihoods and jeopardizing the country’s food security. The present study was commissioned in part to bridge this knowledge gap. It is the first step in a multiphase process designed to integrate a stronger risk focus into sector planning and development programs. It seeks to learn from and build on a range of broad initiatives by the Government of Kenya (GoK) and its development partners purposed to enhance Kenya’s resilience and response to natural disasters. The ultimate objective is implementation of a holistic and systematic risk management system that will reduce the vulnerability and strengthen the resiliency of Kenya’s agricultural supply chains, and the livelihoods that depend on them. This sector risk assessment is the primary output of phase one. The study’s main objective is to identify, assess, and prioritize principal risks facing Kenya’s agriculture sector by analyzing their impacts via quantitative and qualitative measures. The study’s main findings highlight an agriculture sector increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather variability. Chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two provides an overview of Kenya’s agriculture sector and a discussion of key growth constraints. Chapter three assesses the main agricultural risks (production, market, and enabling environment). Chapter four analyzes the frequency and severity of the major risks identified and assesses their impact. Chapter five presents some stakeholder perceptions of these risks and the potential to improve their management. Chapter six concludes with an assessment of priorities for risk management and a broad discussion of possible risk management measures that can help to strengthen the resiliency of agricultural supply chains and the livelihoods they support. -
Publication
Linking Farmers and Agro-processors to the Tourism Industry in the Eastern Caribbean
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)The main objective of this Economic and Sector Work (ESW) is to identify opportunities for stronger linkages between domestic agricultural supply chains and the tourism sector in the OECS, and to outline priority interventions with potential to strengthen these linkages. Since this topic has been analyzed in a number of studies, the approach for this ESW is not to conduct yet another comprehensive study. Instead, the goal is to validate and build on previous work through detailed field interviews with a selected sample of ‘game changers in the private and public sectors, and to come up with priority areas of focus and investments. The continued focus on strengthening the agriculture-tourism linkages is appropriate given the unexploited possibilities for increasing the share of locally sourced food purchased by the tourism sector and reducing the growing food import bill. The studies also identified specific types of food with potential to satisfy demand from the tourism sector. Both studies caution, however, that the potential for local production to replace imports is limited, given the regions agro-climatic conditions and price competitiveness. The World Bank, FAO study estimated that the scope to substitute tourism import demand by local produce is limited to around 11 percent of hotel food imports, equivalent to approximately 2 percent of the total food import bill. The study estimated that the annual ‘leakage of the tourism sector in fresh products could be reduced by about US$10 million, arguing that local and regional markets have greater potential to lower the food import bill. -
Publication
Connecting Food Staples and Input Markets in West Africa: A Regional Trade Agenda for ECOWAS Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-01)The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa (World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1 supply can be met by better connecting African markets to each other. That report called for a stronger focus on removing trade barriers and building on the forces of regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the continent’s population and to some of its most vulnerable countries. Staple foods are the main source of calories in Africa and in West Africa. In that region, rice, followed by maize and cassava, provides the main source of calories in coastal countries, with millet and sorghum being an important source of food in Sahelian countries (Haggblade et al. 2012). The challenge of food supply is particularly acute in West Africa with some of the world’s fastest growing populations, including urban populations. West Africa’s 2011 population of 342 million is expected to increase to 516 million by 2030 and to 815 million by 2050 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2013); in this time frame, the region’s urban population will grow from 44 percent to 63 percent of the total population (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2014). As this report will show, strong reasons exist to bring a more strategic focus on promoting regional trade. The first compelling reason is that there is already a sizeable amount of trade in the region, revealing existing important complementarities between countries in the ECOWAS space. Because a large share of this trade is informal, this reality is not always well taken into account. A second reason is that developing these complementarities by facilitating trade and creating the regional soft and hard infra¬structure to incite cross-border flows would further enable (a) the exploitation of comparative advan¬tages and economies of scale in the region; (b) access to and diffusion of better production technologies; (c) competitive access to inputs, research, and extension services; and (d) improved security in the face of shocks that lead to food crises. Finally, a third reason is that existing national policies that affect trade are, by and large, inefficient and incoherent at the regional level; therefore a better use of policy making and institutions is needed to achieve food policy objectives. -
Publication
Republic of Moldova Food Security Assessment
(Washington, DC, 2015-04-24)This report provides an analysis of food security in Moldova. It attempts to outline the specific characteristics of food insecurity found in Moldova and to identify its underlying causes. This report provides a basis on which sound public policy can be built. The understanding of food security as a concept has evolved in Moldova over time, but policy has remained focused on food availability as the primary attribute of food security. The report looks at how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where these people live, who they are, and why they face food security challenges. The report adopts the international food security concept and analytical framework based on the four key dimensions: (i) the availability of food; (ii) access to food; (iii) utilization of food; and (iv) the stability of these three dimensions over time. The report is divided into following parts. The part one outlines the methodology used and provides a brief overview of Moldovas agriculture sector. In part two the report focuses on overall food security outcomes by assessing how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where do they live, who they are, and when is food security most affecting them. Part three provides a comprehensive analysis of the four dimensions of food security (availability, access, utilization, and stability) and identifies bottlenecks. Part four introduces the institutional actors and the policy framework. The report concludes with policy recommendations.