Adoption determinants of exotic rice cultivars in Bangladesh

Agrarian Bangladesh relies heavily on rice. Since independence, many varieties have been released and targeted to increase productivity, farmers' income, and food security. However, few gained widespread adoption. Moreover, farmers in the border regions are adopting exotic cultivars, and it's gradually spreading throughout the country. But, the reasons for adopting exotic rice cultivars are still unexplored. Using field data from 1,260 farm households and 42 focus group discussions, this study analyzes farmers' preferences for domestic and exotic rice varieties and identifies the factors of adoption linked to design national breeding programs and farmers' welfare. Findings show, exotic varieties (69%) monopolized the area coverage in the dry season, whereas in the wet season, domestic varieties (58%) dominated. Farmers select exotic varieties for their better yield and price, low production costs, high grain quality, resistance to pests and diseases, and ability to withstand stresses. Risk analysis shows domestic varieties adoption is riskier with lower returns. The empirical findings indicate that household characteristics, access to institutions and infrastructure, varietal characteristics, and weather condition, all play a significant role in adoption decisions. National breeding should focus on developing rice varieties in response to market demands and farmer preferences toward sustainable food security in Bangladesh

Trans-disciplinary responses to climate change: lessons from rice-based systems in Asia

Climate change will continue to have a largely detrimental impact on the agricultural sector worldwide because of predicted rising temperatures, variable rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. Reduced crop yields will lead to higher food prices and increased hardship for low income populations, especially in urban areas. Action on climate change is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13) and is linked to the Paris Climate Agreement. The research challenge posed by climate change is so complex that a trans-disciplinary response is required, one that brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in networks where the lines between “research” and “development” become deliberately blurred. Fostering such networks will require researchers, throughout the world, not only to work across disciplines but also to pursue new South–North and South–South partnerships incorporating policy-makers and practitioners. We use our diverse research experiences to describe the emergence of such networks, such as the Direct Seeded Rice Consortium (DSRC) in South and Southeast Asia, and to identify lessons on how to facilitate and strengthen the development of trans-disciplinary responses to climate change

Helping feed the world with rice innovations: CGIAR research adoption and socioeconomic impact on farmers

Rice production has increased significantly with the efforts of international research centers and national governments in the past five decades. Nonetheless, productivity improvement still needs to accelerate in the coming years to feed the growing population that depends on rice for calories and nutrients. This challenge is compounded by the increasing scarcity of natural resources such as water and farmland. This article reviews 17 ex-post impact assessment studies published from 2016 to 2021 on rice varieties, agronomic practices, institutional arrangements, information and communication technologies, and post-harvest technologies used by rice farmers. From the review of these selected studies, we found that stress-tolerant varieties in Asia and Africa significantly increased rice yield and income. Additionally, institutional innovations, training, and natural resource management practices, such as direct-seeded rice, rodent control, and iron-toxicity removal, have had a considerable positive effect on smallholder rice farmers’ economic well-being (income and rice yield). Additional positive impacts are expected from the important uptake of stress-tolerant varieties documented in several Asian, Latin American, and African countries

Adoption Determinants of Exotic Rice Cultivars in Bangladesh

Agrarian Bangladesh relies heavily on rice. Since independence, many varieties have been released and targeted to increase productivity, farmers' income, and food security. However, few gained widespread adoption. Moreover, farmers in the border regions are adopting exotic cultivars, and it's gradually spreading throughout the country. But, the reasons for adopting exotic rice cultivars are still unexplored. Using field data from 1,260 farm households and 42 focus group discussions, this study analyzes farmers' preferences for domestic and exotic rice varieties and identifies the factors of adoption linked to design national breeding programs and farmers' welfare. Findings show, exotic varieties (69%) monopolized the area coverage in the dry season, whereas in the wet season, domestic varieties (58%) dominated. Farmers select exotic varieties for their better yield and price, low production costs, high grain quality, resistance to pests and diseases, and ability to withstand stresses. Risk analysis shows domestic varieties adoption is riskier with lower returns. The empirical findings indicate that household characteristics, access to institutions and infrastructure, varietal characteristics, and weather condition, all play a significant role in adoption decisions. National breeding should focus on developing rice varieties in response to market demands and farmer preferences toward sustainable food security in Bangladesh

Why is it important to measure the Market Development Gap? An application to the agricultural sector of Uganda

An abundant literature exists on measuring the effects pricing and trade policy on agricultural commodity prices since the seminal work by Krueger, Schiff and Valdes (1991) and then the massive worldwide project led by Kym Anderson (2009) on distortions to agricultural incentives. Much less empirical analysis is available on the effects of market and policy failures on production incentives or disincentives. This is most likely due to the difficulty of disentangling the effects of explicit policy instruments from other factors influencing price levels. In addition, this topic is much less relevant for high income countries where most of the OECD type of policy measurement work has occurred. Important challenges related to data scarcity in developing countries as well as methodological options have also prevented researchers from further investigating this topic. In this paper, these other factors are described as the Market Development Gap. The Market Development Gap is a concept that refers to the excessive marketing costs and inefficient price transmission resulting from poorly functioning market, inadequate market structure and uncompetitive behavior of agents in the value chains. The paper attempts to identify the major sources of market development gap in African commodity markets and proposes a methodological framework to measure it as a residual of price gap and the estimated policy-induced price gap. This methodology is applied to several commodities in Uganda. We find a number of cases where the estimation of the market development gap helps to better understand the factors driving the important disincentives affecting producers

Supporting farmers and consumers under food price uncertainty: the role of price support policies

This research work follows the recent trend in most African countries in introducing (or strengthening) price support programs for selected cereals. Under this background, this study examines the impact of a potential implementation of a minimum support price MSP) policy on cereals in Ethiopia. To that end, positive and negative productivity shocks were considered under alternative producer and consumer pricing policies backed-up by public storage services. The quantitative analysis show that the effectiveness of price policies and government intervention in the commodity market depends on the nature of the productivity changes. Producer price floors are effective only when there are productivity gains which would ultimately decrease producer prices, suggesting the productivity enhancing role of this policy option. Also, producer price support works against consumers as prices of target commodities could not fall anymore beyond the level dictated by the support program. On the other hand, price ceiling on commodities is effective only when there are productivity losses since consumer prices tend to increase. Consumer price support policies help urban households since they slightly dampen increases in consumer prices and declines in incomes to these households. However, rural households lose more welfare mainly due to further losses in incomes as the control in consumer prices limit the increase in producer prices for cereals. The price policy of keeping producers prices of cereals within a 5% floor does not effectively affect the economy since producer prices tend to increase significantly if productivity is falling by the simulated levels due to exogenous shocks, such as extreme weather conditions

Infrastructure investments for improved market access in subSaharan Africa: A CGE analysis

Many governments adopt agricultural policies that affect production incentives across commodities. In addition, severe market failures in the form of high marketing margins often lower the prices that farmers receive. Yet the impacts of excessive market-access costs for farmers has not been sufficiently analysed, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using the newly available FAO/MAFAP dataset, we augment the GTAP model with domestic support and border protection, as well as data on market development gaps (MDGs) in selected SSA countries. We undertake several policy simulations to explore the impacts of changes in excessively high marketing costs. Our findings indicate that addressing MDGs can bring positive overall benefits, with particularly strong gains accruing to sectors and countries with very negative MDGs, such as the non-traditional crops in Ethiopia. In other cases, reducing positive MDGs, which operate as protection of certain sectors from imports, is projected to lead to a decline in exports and output, such as in the case of Ethiopian oilseeds

How has the minimum support price policy of India affected cross-commodity price linkages?

For several decades, the government of India has implemented a minimum support price (MSP) policy for agricultural commodities to reduce price risk levels for farmers. Concerns have been raised about whether this policy could affect market integration of related agricultural products, modify price incentives, and ultimately alter resource allocation and production between commodities. This study uses a panel vector auto-regression model across six states for the period 2002-2017 to analyse the effects of the MSP on the transmission of price shocks between cereals and oilseeds. The results demonstrate that the MSP partially and completely offsets price linkages between agricultural commodities, potentially introducing distortions in price incentives that affect land allocation and production between commodities. Beyond the effects of the MSP across commodities, Indian authorities can expect that price shocks on maize be transmitted to soybean over the next production period. Finally, this study demonstrates that the use of alternative data frequencies can identify differences in market reactions over time that can be related to production cycles and delays in price transmission