Treatment of organic resources before soil incorporation in semi-arid regions improves resilience to El Niño, and increases crop production and economic returns

We are grateful for support from the DFID-NERC El Niño programme in project NE P004830, “Building Resilience in Ethiopia’s Awassa region to Drought (BREAD)”, the ESRC NEXUS programme in project IEAS/POO2501/1, “Improving organic resource use in rural Ethiopia (IPORE)”, and the NERC ESPA programme in project NEK0104251 “Alternative carbon investments in ecosystems for poverty alleviation (ALTER)”. We are also grateful to Anke Fischer (James Hutton Insitute) for her comments on the paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Children’s educational outcomes and persistence and severity of household food insecurity in India:Longitudinal evidence from Young Lives

Background Food insecurity is a pressing global challenge with far-reaching consequences for health and well-being. However, little attention has focused specifically on the experiences of children and adolescents over the age of 5 in food insecure households. Objective We examine whether the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are negatively associated with children’s educational outcomes. Methods We used data for the younger cohort of the longitudinal Young Lives data from Rounds 3 (2009), 4 (2013), and 5 (2016), when children were aged 8 y, 12 y, and 15 y respectively. Drawing on the Household Food Insecurity and Access Scale, we used descriptive statistics, graphical analysis, and multilevel regressions to document how the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are associated with children’s educational outcomes (years of education, maths, and vocabulary (PPVT) test scores). We controlled for potentially confounding sociodemographic characteristics, including children’s own baseline grade attained and test scores in ‘value-added’ models, to provide robust estimates of household food insecurity in predicting children’s educational outcomes. Results Household food insecurity generally declined between 2009 and 2016. Fewer than 50% of households were food secure across the three rounds of data we examined. Our robust, multivariate, value-added models show that the persistence and severity of food insecurity are negatively associated with all three children’s educational outcomes we examined. Conclusions We add to a small but growing literature exploring how household food insecurity is associated with children’s educational outcomes in the Global South. Our findings on severity of food insecurity highlight the importance of understanding food insecurity along the severity continuum rather than as a dichotomous state, as previously done in existing literature. Addressing household food insecurity in childhood and adolescence may be a key factor improve children’s educational outcomes

Assessing the efficiency of sweet potato producers in the Southern region of Ethiopia

Applying stochastic frontier Cobb–Douglas production function, the study assessed the efficiency of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) producers in the Southern region of Ethiopia. The study revealed the existence of fairly large technical inefficiency in sweet potato production. The technical efficiency ranged from 12.6 to 93.7%, with more than half of the producers above the mean efficiency level (66.1%). This suggests that there is room for output gains through technical efficiency improvement. If the average producers in the study region are to achieve the technical efficiency level of the most efficient producer in the sample (93.7%), they can realize nearly 30% output gains. The analysis of allocative efficiency also revealed that sweet potato producers were producing sweet potato with sub-optimal utilization of production inputs, suggesting that potential for output gains remains to be exploited through reconfiguration of the existing resource use. They can make more value out of their sweet potato production by reconfiguring their current utilization of production inputs in favour of more land and manure but less seed rate. Furthermore, age and education are important determinants of the efficiency of sweet potato production. In view of these findings, it is advisable to put in place appropriate extension intervention programmes that enable sweet potato producers to exploit the potential gains in sweet potato output through technical and allocative efficiency improvement

Patterns and structure of household income inequality in rural Ethiopia

The report examines patterns of gender income inequality in rural Ethiopia and draws insights and implications on whether income growth policy should be gender-neutral or gender-responsive. The report also examines the structure of the income distribution and draws insights and implications on whether income distribution policy should primarily address the disparity in income across the households within the same group or the gap between the different groups