Publication: Using Satellite Imagery and a Farmer Registry to Assess Agricultural Support in Conflict Settings: The Case of the Producer Support Grant Program in Ukraine
Loading...
Published
2024-09-20
ISSN
Date
2024-09-20
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
While cash transfers have emerged as an attractive option to minimize negative long-term impacts of conflict, the scope for targeting and assessing their impact in such settings is often challenging. This paper shows how a digital farmer registry in Ukraine (the State Agrarian Register) helped to target and evaluate such a program, using the country’s $50 million Producer Support Grant in a way that largely avoided mis-targeting. The analysis applies a difference-in-differences design with panel data from 2019–23 on crop cover at the parcel/farm level for the universe of eligible farmers registered in the State Agrarian Register. The findings suggest that the program significantly increased area cultivated, although the effect size remained modest. Impacts were most pronounced near the frontline and for the smallest farmers. The paper discusses the implications in terms of a more diversified menu of support options and the scope of using the State Agrarian Register to help to implement these options, as well as lessons beyond Ukraine.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Deininger, Klaus; Ali, Daniel Ayalew. 2024. Using Satellite Imagery and a Farmer Registry to Assess Agricultural Support in Conflict Settings: The Case of the Producer Support Grant Program in Ukraine. Policy Research Working Paper; 10912. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42177 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Gender Gaps in the Performance of Small Firms: Evidence from Urban Peru(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper estimates the gender gap in the performance of firms in Peru using representative data on both formal and informal firms. On average, informal female-led firms have lower sales, labor productivity, and profits compared to their male-led counterparts, with differences more pronounced when controlling for observable determinants of firm performance. However, gender gaps are only significant at the bottom of the performance distribution of informal firms, and these gaps disappear at the top of the distribution of informal firms and for formal firms. Possible explanations for the performance gaps at the bottom of the distribution include the higher likelihood of small, female-led firms being home-based, which is linked to lower profits, and their concentration in less profitable sectors. The paper provides suggestive evidence that household responsibilities play a key role in explaining the gender gap in firm performance among informal firms. Therefore, policies that promote access to care services or foster a more equal distribution of household activities may reduce gender productivity gaps and allow for a more efficient allocation of resources.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication The Impact of Atlantic Hurricanes on Business Activity(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-22)This paper quantifies the short-run economic impact of 21 Atlantic hurricanes on U.S. local business activity from 2017 to 2024 using anonymized Mastercard transaction data aggregated by ZIP code. On average, hurricanes reduce merchant sales by 12.4 percent during the preparation, impact, and recovery phases—an estimated US$1.38 billion in lost revenue per storm. Substitution in spending across nearby areas or large online platforms is limited, indicating widespread local consumption declines. Economic disruption varies more by industry than storm intensity, with independent stores hit harder than chains. Local businesses with larger online presence face smaller, shorter sales declines, showing greater resilience.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Micro-Level Impacts of the War on Ukraine’s Agriculture Sector(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-21)This paper uses remotely sensed and farm-level data to assess the micro-level impacts of the war in Ukraine. Remotely sensed, high-resolution data on areas of war-induced agricultural field damage in different periods are combined with crop cover data for a 2019–23 panel of about 10,000 village councils. Estimates suggest that there were significant negative effects of field damage on crop area, with persistent, direct impacts, the size of which increased over time. However, the economic losses due to conflict-induced increased transport costs reduced profitability by more than 60 percent, far surpassing the losses from direct crop damage in conflict areas. The lack of diversification into less transport cost sensitive, higher value crops—even in areas far from the conflict zone—points to constraints to adaptation and diversification. By increasing the resilience of farmers in non-conflict areas, removing such constraints could accelerate post-conflict recovery and complement efforts toward reconstruction in directly affected areas.Publication Using Remotely Sensed Data to Assess War-Induced Damage to Agricultural Cultivation: Evidence from Ukraine(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-25)This paper explores whether satellite imagery can be used to derive a measure to estimate conflict-induced damage to agricultural production and compare the results to those obtained using media-based conflict indicators, which are widely used in the literature. The paper combines area for summer and winter crops from annual crop maps for 2019–24 with measures of conflict-related damage to agricultural land based on optical and thermal satellite sensors. These data are used to estimate a difference-in-differences model for close to 10,000 Ukrainian village councils. The results point to large and persistent negative effects that spill over to conflict-unaffected village councils. The predicted impact is three times larger, with a distinctly different distribution across key domains (for example, territory controlled by Ukraine and the Russian Federation) using the preferred image-based indicator as compared to a media-based indicator. Satellite imagery thus allows defining conflict incidence in ways that may be relevant to agricultural production and that may have implications for future research.Publication Using Satellite Imagery to Assess Impacts of Soil and Water Conservation Measures(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-01)Although efforts at soil and water conservation are routinely viewed as instrumental in reducing vulnerability to climate change, their impact has rarely been quantified. Combining data on the timing and intensity of soil and water conservation interventions in select Ethiopian watersheds from 2009 to 2016 with a pixel-level panel of vegetative cover and soil moisture data derived from satellite imagery makes it possible to assess the biophysical impacts of such measures using a difference-in-differences specification. The results point toward significant effects overall that vary by season, and that tree planting and other soil and water conservation activities are more effective on degraded than cultivated land. The results are consistent with before-after regressions for daily sediment load and stream flows in a subset of micro-watersheds. It thus appears that satellite imagery can improve the design and near-real-time monitoring of sustainable land management interventions for watersheds and landscape.Publication Using Satellite Imagery to Create Tax Maps and Enhance Local Revenue Collection(Taylor and Francis, 2020)Although taxes on land and property have many desirable attributes, the challenge of ensuring completeness of tax rolls and currency of valuations preclude their effective use to support urbanization and service provision in many developing countries. The example of Kigali shows how building footprints and heights generated from high-resolution satellite imagery, together with sales prices and routine statistical data, allow to assess and improve coverage and design of property tax systems. We show that only 40% of potential land lease fee revenue (of US$ 4.9 million) was collected and that moving to 1% value-based tax would increase revenue almost 10 times while being less regressive than the current system. While this could allow reducing the tax burden for low-income groups, exemptions should be applied with caution based on careful empirical analysis.Publication Using Satellite Imagery to Revolutionize Creation of Tax Maps and Local Revenue Collection(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05)The technical complexity of ensuring that tax rolls are complete and valuations current is often perceived as a major barrier to bringing in more property tax revenues in developing countries. This paper shows how high-resolution satellite imagery makes it possible to assess the completeness of existing tax maps by estimating built-up areas based on building heights and footprints. Together with information on sales prices from the land registry, targeted surveys, and routine statistical data, this makes it possible to use mass valuation procedures to generate tax maps. The example of Kigali illustrates the reliability of the method and the potentially far-reaching revenue impacts. Estimates show that heightened compliance and a move to a 1 percent ad valorem tax would yield a tenfold increase in revenue from public land.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Morocco Economic Update, Winter 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)Despite the drought causing a modest deceleration of overall GDP growth to 3.2 percent, the Moroccan economy has exhibited some encouraging trends in 2024. Non-agricultural growth has accelerated to an estimated 3.8 percent, driven by a revitalized industrial sector and a rebound in gross capital formation. Inflation has dropped below 1 percent, allowing Bank al-Maghrib to begin easing its monetary policy. While rural labor markets remain depressed, the economy has added close to 162,000 jobs in urban areas. Morocco’s external position remains strong overall, with a moderate current account deficit largely financed by growing foreign direct investment inflows, underpinned by solid investor confidence indicators. Despite significant spending pressures, the debt-to-GDP ratio is slowly declining.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.