Determinants of Farm Productivity in Africa: A Synthesis of Four Case Studies

Productivity Analysis, Downloads July 2008 - July 2009: 20,

Challenges for Creating and Sustaining A Green Revolution in Africa

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC DETERMINANTS OF HOUSEHOLD FOOD CONSUMPTION IN OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO (URBAN CONSUMPTION, AIDS MODEL)

Chronic food production deficits since the early 1970s have prompted policymakers of Burkina Faso to emphasize technological research to increase the production of the most-consumed locally-grown cereals: sorghum, millet and corn. It was observed that consumers, in particular urban, were developing preferences for cereals that are mostly imported, rice and wheat. The urban population constitutes a major prospective market for any rural surplus production that would result from technological advances. The major objective of this study was to estimate demand relationships among food items in Ouagadougou, Burkina, using household budgets. To identify the patterns of household food consumption, a demand system was specified with prices, income and household demographics. The almost ideal demand system was used as a theoretical basis for the model formulation. Prices, income, household composition, education, marital status and urbanization were jointly important in explaining household expenditure allocations. Both local and imported cereals responded positively to an income increase. However, incremental income changes would lead low income households to consume more local cereals than high income households; the latter would consume more wheat and rice than the former. This result indicated that an income redistribution from high to low income consumers would increase aggregate consumption of the local cereals. The household model was then used to forecast the levels of urban grain demand under alternative income and demographic scenarios. Confronted with projected rural marketable production, the demand levels implied by the household model suggested large national deficits for both wheat-rice and sorghum-millet-corn if no technological growth occurred. With increased production due to advances in technology, the urban demand levels did not exhaust the rural surplus of local cereals, but deficits persisted in the rice-wheat sector. The results underscored the importance of technological research since Burkina could become self-sufficient in at least the production of sorghum, millet and corn. The results also suggested the need for appropriate policies if such technological growth was to be sustained. In particular, a policy of favorable relative prices for the producers of local cereals was necessary. This requires a deliberate move away from the current policy of wheat and rice price subsidies for consumers. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.

Impacts des services sociaux sur la productivité agricole au Burkina Faso : approche par la fonction distance output

PRIFPRI3WCA

Covariate Shocks and Rural Poverty in Burkina Faso

The civil war in Côte d’Ivoire has caused an increase in household size due to returnees and a decrease in remittance received in rural Burkina Faso. This paper, taking advantage of a rare dataset covering the covariate shocks caused by the Ivorian Crisis, examines empirically the impact of such shocks on households’ welfare in rural Burkina Faso. It is found that the number of working-age returnees increases household cropped area: one working-age returnees increase 0.64 ha of cropped area and that the decrease of remittance from Côte d’Ivoire increases non-agricultural income: 1 FCFA reduction of remittance increases 0.78 FCFA of non-agricultural income. In spite of those coping behaviors, this paper demonstrates that the households do not fully smooth consumption against the reduction of remittance form Côte d’Ivoire. The impact is much larger for the asset-poor households than the asset-rich household, as expected. Female human capital, on the other hand, is found to enhance household expenditure per capita. Two-stage regression with non-agricultural income variable confirms the role of non-agricultural income in the reduction of poverty

The Impact of Self-imposed Adjustment: The Case of Burkina Faso, 1983-1989

adjustment policies; economic implications;Burkina Faso;