Do Farmers Really Benefit from High Food Prices? Balancing Rural Interests in Kenya's Maize Pricing and Marketing Policy

Published by Tegemeo Institute for Agricultural Policy and Developmentfood security, food policy, Kenya, maize, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing, Q18,

How Can Micro-Level Household Information Make a Difference for Agricultural Policy Making: Selected Examples from the KAMPAP Survey of Smallholder Agriculture and Non Farm Activities for Selected Districts in Kenya

Agriculture forms the foundation of Kenya’s economy. However, the information base on agriculture % including basic indicators on farmers’ input, production, and marketing behavior, household food consumption patterns, etc. % is weak and largely outdated. Agricultural policy is largely made on the basis of conventional wisdom about the way things work. In a dynamic, evolving economy, long-standing perceptions may become increasingly inconsistent with current reality, particularly when the system has been exposed to dramatic changes such as structural adjustment, market liberalization, and the advent of new technology. In such a setting, entrenched perceptions about the way farmers, traders and consumers actually behave may lead to unintended and even counterproductive government policy. This paper aims to demonstrate how monitoring the rural economy through timely, periodic and reasonably representative household surveys can inform debate on existing and emerging policy issues.kenya, agricultural policy, food security, household, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Security and Poverty, q12,

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Increasing Kenya's Agricultural Competitiveness: Farm Level Issues

The objective of this paper is to address the farm level issues that affect the production costs and so the competitiveness of domestic food and commercial production. It compares domestic production prices of key food commodities with the equivalent parity prices to assess the extent to which the domestic prices for maize, wheat, and sugar, and export and domestic crops are competitive. This paper identifies and assesses the factors that influence domestic production costs. It also identifies strategies that could increase food and export crops’ productivity, by that reducing production costs and encourage competitiveness of the domestic production

Do Farmers Really Benefit from High Food Prices? Balancing Rural Interest in Kenya's Maize Pricing and Marketing Policy

This paper uses information from rural household surveys in 24 districts in Kenya to inform current debate on maize pricing policy. Specifically, it sheds light on how rural farm households are being affected by governmental efforts to support maize price levels. Using information on landed import costs of white maize from South Africa with and without the import tariff, it simulates the effects of eliminating the tariff on rural smallholder farmers, large-scale farmers, and urban consumers. It then examines the implications of these findings for the design of strategies to promote agricultural productivity and rural income growth

Do Farmers Really Benefit from High Food Prices? Balancing Rural Interests in Kenya's Maize Pricing and Marketing Policy

This paper uses information from rural household surveys in 24 districts in Kenya to inform current debate on maize pricing policy. Specifically, it sheds light on how rural farm households are being affected by governmental efforts to support maize price levels. Using information on landed import costs of white maize from South Africa with and without the import tariff, it simulates the effects of eliminating the tariff on rural smallholder farmers, large-scale farmers, and urban consumers. It then examines the implications of these findings for the design of strategies to promote agricultural productivity and rural income growth

Do Farmers Really Benefit from High Food Prices? Balancing Rural Interest in Kenya's Maize Pricing and Marketing Policy

This paper uses information from rural household surveys in 24 districts in Kenya to inform current debate on maize pricing policy. Specifically, it sheds light on how rural farm households are being affected by governmental efforts to support maize price levels. Using information on landed import costs of white maize from South Africa with and without the import tariff, it simulates the effects of eliminating the tariff on rural smallholder farmers, large-scale farmers, and urban consumers. It then examines the implications of these findings for the design of strategies to promote agricultural productivity and rural income growth.Food Security, Food Policy, Kenya, Maize, Marketing, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, Q18,