Other Agriculture Study
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Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...
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Publication
Nigeria Transforming Agribusiness for Inclusive Recovery, Jobs Creation, and Poverty Reduction: Policy Reforms and Investment Priorities
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-30)Modern economic policy making in Nigeria has placed enormous emphasis on diversification of the economy to non-oil productive sectors. With the aim to restore economic growth following the 2015-16 recession and lay the foundations for long-term structural change, the economic growth and recovery plan (ERGP) recognized the need to diversify the economy to non-oil productive sectors such as agriculture and agro-allied industries, in order to build an economy that can generate inclusive growth and create jobs. This report aims to improve understanding of the potential of the agribusiness sector (primary agriculture plus off-farm agribusiness) to accelerate inclusive recovery from the 2020 recession, create jobs, and reduce poverty. A key early finding of the report is that the agribusiness sector is critical to accelerating inclusive recovery and creating jobs. The report builds on this evidence to identify the specific value chain groups that have most potential to create jobs, reduce poverty, and improve nutrition outcomes. Next, the report offers to highlight the complex set of factors that mediate the performance of agricultural value chains, distinguishing between issues that pertain to upstream primary agriculture, those that affect downstream off-farm agribusiness and cross-cutting challenges. The agribusiness enabling environment takes center stage in this part of the report, focusing on policy reforms around seed regulations, fertilizers quality control, warehouse receipts, and agricultural trade. Finally, the report takes deep dives to identify reforms to increase competitiveness in the value chains that were found to have the most potential to create jobs, reduce poverty, and improve nutrition outcomes. -
Publication
South Sudan: Linking the Agriculture and Food Sector to the Job Creation Agenda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)This report seeks to support the larger jobs study by examining how investment in South Sudan’s food sector can not only address food security needs, it can generate income and lay the foundation for livelihood and job creation in the country. It argues that applying a value chain lens to investments in the sector can contribute to creating direct, indirect, and induced labor in the food system. The goal is to move the country from a dependency on humanitarian aid to building recovery and resilience in the short term in a way that can produce stable jobs over the medium to long term. More specifically, it looks at the potential technology and organizational arrangements that investment programs can start supporting now to stimulate value chain development for increased economic activity and job creation. The assumption is that significant donor support will still be necessary for the short to medium term to support investments in reconstruction and food security. As security spreads, public sector capacity to support development can grow, private actors can establish or expand their operations, and the donor community can begin to disengage, addressing only the neediest communities while development organizations continue to work with the public and private sector actors to support development and economic transformation. -
Publication
Zambia Jobs in Value Chains: Opportunities in Agribusiness
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017)This study analyzes from a jobs perspective two high potential value chains (VCs) in Zambia’s agribusiness sector poultry and aquaculture. With more than 50 percent of workers and over 80 percent of poor Zambians recording themselves in agriculture in the 2010 population census, raising agricultural productivity is a determinant to reduce poverty. Yet small-scale farmers (SSFs) and modern commercial operations in large farms exist in parallel, as SSFs typically use backward production systems with scant capitalization. Zambia’s challenge is to overcome the persistent disconnect between low productivity smallholder agriculture and high productivity modern agribusiness firms. Developing market linkages will enable the agribusiness sector to meet the growing urban demand for food products, while connecting more people to jobs. -
Publication
Linking Women with Agribusiness in Zambia: Corporate Social Responsibility, Creating Shared Value, and Human Rights Approaches
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06)Three of sub-Saharan Africa’s central economic realities motivate this study. First, agriculture is the most important sector in most African economies, on average accounting for nearly one-fourth of GDP. Second, the private sector is increasingly active in transforming African agriculture and economies. By 2030, agriculture and agribusiness are anticipated to become a US$ 1 trillion industry in Africa, delivering more jobs, income, and economic growth. Third, women make up half of sub- Saharan Africa’s agricultural labor force on average (and two-thirds or more in some countries). Yet women’s strong presence in agriculture belies the comparatively weak commercial benefits they derive from it. Throughout Africa, women struggle to enter and operate highly productive and profitable agricultural enterprises. Their plots of land tend to be smaller, their crops less remunerative, and their access to land, inputs, and finance far more restricted and precarious than men’s. Africa boasts the highest share of ‘entrepreneurs,’ but these women are disproportionately concentrated in the ranks of the self-employed rather than among the employers. Women’s productivity is lower than men’s, not because they are women, but because informal, smaller firms are inherently less productive, and more women operate these types of enterprises. The real challenge in expanding opportunities and empowering women is not to help more women to become small-scale, informal entrepreneurs but to enable them to shift to activities capable of delivering higher returns and employing others. -
Publication
Agribusiness Indicators: Nigeria
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)The purpose of this Agriculture Business Indicators Study was to isolate the success factors and construct indicators that reflect the performance of the agriculture sector in Nigeria and that benchmark it in terms directly comparable to agriculture sectors in other developing countries. Providing policy makers and public officials with access to this type of empirical information is seen as way to stimulate and inform policy dialogue about what reforms are needed and about how scarce public resources can be most effectively invested. The indicators can be used to identify specifically where this investment can be used to leverage commercialization through value addition, increasing the competitiveness of a country’s agricultural products domestically, regionally, and in international markets. They can also inform decision makers and investors about which policy measures are likely to be the most effective in enhancing food security, reducing poverty, and encouraging sustainable forms of environmental management. To accelerate agricultural development capable of spurring competitiveness of agricultural products in the domestic, regional, and international markets and could enhance food security; poverty reduction and sustainable environmental management. The study entailed a review of existing literature and the use of informal surveys to obtain information from a variety of stakeholders and actors. The focus was on the key success factors that the Agribusiness Indicators (ABI) team determined to be the most critical factors influencing agribusiness development in Sub-Saharan African countries. The Nigeria study was informed by the outcomes of scoping missions which had been conducted in three initial pilot countries: Ghana, Ethiopia and Mozambique. -
Publication
Agricultural Sector Risk Assessment in Niger : Moving from Crisis Response to Long-Term Risk Management
(Washington, DC, 2013)Niger, owing to its climatic, institutional, livelihood, economic, and environmental context, is one of the most vulnerable countries of the world. Poverty is pervasive in Niger and it ranks low on almost all the human development indicators. Agriculture is the most important sector of Niger's economy and accounts for over 40 percent of national gross domestic product (GDP) and is the principle source of livelihood for over 80 percent of the country's population. The performance of the agricultural sector, however, due to its high exposure to risks, is very volatile. Niger has experienced multiple shocks, largely induced by agricultural risks over the past 30 years, which impose high welfare cost in terms of food availability, food affordability, and malnutrition. It also adversely affects household incomes, performance of the agricultural sector, the government's fiscal balance, and the growth rate of Niger's economy. Niger is a case of living perpetually with risk, thus more emphasis on long-term structural solutions, rather than short-term quick fixes, is required to improve the resilience of the agricultural sector. Designing and implementing a comprehensive agricultural risk management strategy will require sustained and substantial financial investments, shifting the focus from short-term crisis response to long-term risk management, streamlining disparate donor investments and isolated interventions toward the core problem, supporting decentralized community, and farm-level decision making, integrating agricultural risk management into the existing development frameworks, prioritizing agricultural risks into government and donor strategies, and focusing on implementation. -
Publication
Africa Can Help Feed Africa: Removing Barriers to Regional Trade in Food Staples
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10)Africa's growing demand for food has been met increasingly by imports from the global market. This, coupled with rising global food prices, brings ever-mounting food import bills. In addition, population growth and changing demand patterns will double demands over the next 10 years. Two key issues must be addressed: (a) establishing a consistent and stable policy environment for regional trade in fertilizers; and (b) investing in institutions that reduce the transaction costs of coordination failures. Many countries have enacted new fertilizer laws in recent years, but few have provided the resources to define and enforce regulations through standards and testing capacity. This report shows that reducing regulatory burdens on fertilizers and the consequent increase in use of fertilizers will have substantial impacts on returns to farmers, with consequent impacts on poverty. The report highlights the range of barriers to food trade in Africa along the entire value chain. The issues pertain to many ministries and agencies within government: trade, agricultural, health and safety, transport, and finance. This in turn requires a "whole of government' approach to freeing up food trade, which will require strong and effective leadership to articulate the rationale and sustain the momentum for reform. Leaders must also address the hard choices that will arise in dealing with the political economy constraints that have until now blocked the capacity of Africa to exploit its enormous potential to feed Africans. -
Publication
Livestock and Livelihoods in Rural Tanzania : A Descriptive Analysis of the 2009 National Panel Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06)In 2006, the government approved a national livestock policy based on the premise that the livestock industry has an important role to play in building a strong national economy and in the process, reducing inequalities among Tanzanians by increasing their incomes and employment opportunities. This report presents an analysis of rural livelihoods in Tanzania, with particular emphasis on the livestock sub-sector, smallholder farmers' living standards, and issues with access to productive assets. The report attempts to answer basic questions such as: to what extent is keeping livestock an activity of the relatively better off, and to what extent are poorer households able to engage?; how does the role of livestock vary with different levels of income and well-being?; how are livestock holding size and structure associated with differences in welfare, gender, and geography?; how important are input and output markets for small livestock keepers?; what form does this market participation take in practice, and to what extent?; and to what extent do the non-income services of livestock (for example, manure, draught power) benefit crop production? The study is based on data from the Tanzania national panel survey (NPS) collected by the national bureau of statistics (NBS) from October 2008 to October 2009 as part of the first wave of a nationally representative living standards survey. Data was collected using household, agricultural, and community questionnaires in which information was obtained at the individual, household, plot, and community level The report is organized as follows: section one gives background information; description of the data is presented in section two, in section three the authors analyze the composition of rural income, household endowment of human capital, and access to infrastructure and assets, in order to gain an understanding of the level of wellbeing in the rural space. A descriptive analysis of the characteristics of small rural livestock owners and their production practices is provided in section four, which highlights the heterogeneity of the households engaged in the livestock sector and presents evidence of the sector's importance to rural livelihoods in terms of both income and consumption. Section five concludes with a discussion of key results and their implications for policy and further analysis. -
Publication
Linking Smallholders to Livestock Markets in Tanzania : Combing Market and Household Survey Data
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-11)Linking farmers to markets is widely viewed as a milestone towards promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. However, market and institutional imperfections along the supply chain thwart perfect vertical and spatial price transmission and prevent farmers and market actors from getting access to information, identifying business opportunities and allocating their resources efficiently. This acts as a barrier to market-led rural development and poverty reduction. This paper reviews and analyses household information, and the major livestock market and marketing data available in Tanzania, in relation to market-led development possibilities. Household-level data collected by the Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics and market data collected and disseminated by the Livestock Information and Knowledge System of the Tanzania Ministry of Industry and Trade are reviewed and utilized together. Both types of data help identify market opportunities for livestock producers, but only their joint use could provide policy makers with the information needed to design and implement policies that facilitate access to markets for livestock producers. Options to promote integration of household-level data and market data are discussed, which would facilitate the implementation of the Tanzania statistical master plan and contribute to the implementation of the global strategy to improve agricultural and rural statistics. -
Publication
Priorities for the Development of Smallholder Agriculture in Swaziland
(Washington, DC, 2011-06-27)The purpose of this policy note is to contribute to an understanding of the factors that combine to constrain the development of smallholder agriculture in Swaziland. It seeks to shed light on why, despite being well-endowed in land and water resources, and despite having a climate that is generally favorable for the production of crops and livestock, Swaziland is obliged to import substantial amounts of food to feed the population. Also, why, in spite of the significant investments that have made in the agricultural sector and in spite of the extensive farming experience of the 70 percent of the population that lives off the land, smallholder farm productivity and production have been declining over time. Finally, the policy notes identify priority areas where strategic interventions are needed to turn things around and get smallholder agriculture going as a driver of growth and poverty reduction. This note provides an overview of smallholder agriculture in Swaziland, identifes constraints that may be contributing to poor performance in the smallholder sector, and evaluates technological options that could improve productivity of smallholder farmers. In addition, it summarizes the findings of a recent review of public spending on agriculture, undertaken to identify trends and patterns in agricultural spending over the last five years and to determine whether the government's budget allocations have been effective in supporting the intended development of smallholder agriculture. After addressing these questions, the policy note points to entry points where future government interventions could help to reverse the current negative trends.