Essays on consumer welfare and new food product development in West Africa

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Agricultural EconomicsTimothy J. DaltonEconomic indicators (price, income, taste, and preference) and non-economic (information, time and equipment, food quality and safety) indicators are key elements of the food environment that need further investigation in developing countries. The main objective of this thesis is to evaluate the effect of these factors on consumer behavior in West Africa, especially in Niger and Burkina Faso. The first essay analyzes the implications of world cereal price shocks on rural household welfare in Burkina Faso by establishing a link between farmers and world markets. The approach is grounded in agricultural household modelling with the world price for cereals, transmitted to farmers, through local producer and consumer prices. Household net welfare after a price shock is derived as a function of behavioral responses to local price change induced by the international price shock. The main result of this analysis is that the increase in prices during the period from 2006 to 2014 is translated to welfare improvement ranging from 0.02 percent for 2006 to 0.06 percent for 2011 for farmers in Burkina Faso. The second essay assesses urban consumers' preference for food quality attributes of value-added cereal products in Niamey, Niger. It combines qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the effect of quality attributes on consumers' food choice. A particular focus is placed on assessing consumers' marginal willingness-to-pay (WTP) for quality attributes in an experimental setting. The evaluation accounted for taste and preference heterogeneity inherent to consumers’ responses to changes in quality attributes. The results suggest market demand inferred from significant marginal WTP for the nutritional quality attribute as measured by the expiration date, the presence of micronutrients, and the country of origin of the product. In addition, demand is found to be highly heterogeneous across consumers socio-demographic and economic characteristics. As a result, better communication and appropriate targeting by food processors and policymakers could be an additional tool to enhance food quality and diet through the market. Finally, the third essay theoretically and empirically assesses the impact of a time-saving food attribute on consumer’s food choice in urban areas of Niger. The theoretical assessment relied on a ``Beckerian’’ time allocation model to derive how a time-saving food product affects consumers' utility and food choice. The empirical approach combines hedonic tasting, random utility and a latent class framework to identify taste heterogeneity patterns underlying consumers' choice. Both the hedonic and latent class models confirm the theoretical prediction that a time-saving characteristic can either increase or decrease the demand for food that embodies the attributes. A significant market segment of about 38% includes consumers with a positive valuation of the time-saving product, highlighting the potential of this attribute to increase consumers welfare, reduce energy use and prevent food preparation-related health issues

Are smallholder farmers better or worse off from an increase in the international price of cereals?

Citation: Nakelse, T., Dalton, T. J., Hendricks, N. P., & Hodjo, M. (2018). Are smallholder farmers better or worse off from an increase in the international price of cereals? Food Policy, 79, 213–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2018.07.006The effect of agricultural price shocks on household welfare in low-income countries is a major concern for policymakers attempting to reduce poverty rates. This study estimates the impact of an increase in the world cereal price on rural households in Burkina Faso in an agricultural household model framework. We account for imperfect transmission of global prices to local prices as well as supply and demand response of rural households to price signals. The increase in price during the period from 2006 to 2014 is translated to welfare improvement ranging from 0.02 percent for 2006 to 0.06 percent for 2011 for farmers in Burkina Faso

Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Assessing the Impact of Agro-pastoral Programs on the Productivity of Farmers Organisations: The Case of Cameroon

Between 2001 and 2007, the poverty headcount in Cameroon has remained steady around 40%. In fact, poverty has reduced in urban areas while it has increased of about 3 points in rural areas. This, despite the numerous agro-pastoral programs that were undertaken by the government between 2002 and 2008 in favour of rural people. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of these actions on the productivity of famers’ organisations. The methodology is based on a combined assessment approach combining both qualitative and quantitative aspects. The qualitative analysis uses Likert scale. The quantitative approach is based on Rubin's causal model and uses propensity score matching techniques. The main data used are those of the survey on the assessment of the impact of programs (EIPA) conducted by Ministry of Economy and Planning in 2009. The results obtained with both methods (qualitative and quantitative) are consistent and indicate that programs implemented by Cameroun government and donors between 2002 and 2008 have had a positive impact on the productivity of farmers’ organizations. The analysis of satisfaction, while indicating an overall appreciation of programs by leaders and members of Famers organisations (FOs), shows that the level of satisfaction seems to be negatively correlated with the regional level of poverty. The matching techniques revealed that FOs aid recipients have experienced a 4% increase in their productivity. More specifically, the study reveals that the impact of government programs is more important in the livestock sector (16%) and in the crops growing sector; it is quite null. Furthermore, non-beneficiaries organisations of the livestock sector could have had an increase of their productivity of about 10% if they had benefited from government assistance. The study therefore recommends that the government to (i) put more means in the livestock sector, which seems to be very promising and can emerge as an important growth leverage of Cameroon economy; (ii) revise the assistance strategies of FOs engaged in the agriculture sector by adopting more targeting approaches and, (iii) establish a monitoring –evaluation system

Welfare effects from food price shocks and land constraints in Niger

Households in low-income and food insecure nations such as Niger are vulnerable to food price shocks as a large portion of their budgets are spent on calories derived from cereals and other staples. However, there is very weak understanding of the structure of food demand in many African nations making proactive food policy recommendations ineffective. This is particularly acute in West Africa where the paucity of quantitative expenditure and consumption information has forced some studies to borrow demand parameters from other low-income nations located in regions outside of Sub-Saharan Africa. We empirically estimate food demand elasticities as tools to conduct a short-run welfare analysis of price shocks and build upon the welfare impacts to assess long-run pressure on farmland and trajectories toward future availability and price scenarios. The welfare analysis finds that an increase in millet price reduces rural welfare while a sorghum price increase primarily reduces urban households’ welfare. Given population growth, acreage-driven millet and sorghum production growth, and the income elasticities for both staples, holding all else constant, any food price shock in the future will likely result in higher welfare losses for consumers. Taken together, food price policy should focus on millet to improve the welfare of rural and the poorest households in Niger. Facing a land frontier constraint reinforces calls for total factor productivity growth in millet and sorghum to reduce pressure on marginal land. Technological change in food production and the identification of import opportunities are required to relieve upward pressure on prices given current consumption patterns, trade, land frontier constraints, and the importance of these two crops in the national food system

Rural media, agricultural technology adoption and productivity: evidences from small rice farmers in Burkina Faso

In this paper we examine empirically the effect of Information and Communication Technologies on the adoption of improved rice varieties and its indirect effect on productivity with focus of the rural radio in Burkina Faso. The econometrics framework adopted is the Rubin Causal Model that has emerged as the standard approach for evaluating policy/program effect using an observational data. We found that adoption of modern varieties is significantly higher for the farmer that have listened radio program on rice before 2008 than those who have not. Also the use of rural radio appears to significantly increase the propensity of adopting modern varieties by 6%. We also estimate that the local average treatment effect of adoption of improved varieties induced by listening rice program radio on rice yield significantly positive. Ours results suggest that using rural radio could be an effective strategy to speed up the adoption of improved agricultural technologies and increase rice farmer productivity

The Impact of Changes in Commodity Prices on Household Welfare in Rural Burkina Faso

We use unique panel data to estimate the effect of an increase in the price of food commodities on household welfare in Burkina Faso. Our analysis includes the negative impacts on households as food consumers, as well as the positive impacts as food producers to estimate their net welfare change. The data were collected each year by the Burkina Faso Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, which covered periods of food price crises. To evaluate the welfare effect of the price shocks, we first estimate demand and supply responses and then derive the net welfare change at the household and country level. Overall, the price shocks are associated with a gain in the rural household welfare because the producer’s effect outweighed the consumer’s effect

Assessing the effect of consumer purchasing criteria for types of rice in Togo A choice modeling approach

Many reports on consumer preference in West Africa indicate that consumers prefer imported rice to locally produced rice due to the inferior grain quality of the latter. Complementing these reports, this study was undertaken to provide valuable information to researchers and policy makers on consumer criteria for selecting alternative types of rice in Togo. Using a multiple correspondence analysis on 336 respondents in 15 prefectures in Togo, the results highlighted the features cleanness, whiteness and taste as the first, second and third purchasing criteria respectively for non-parboiled imported rice while the choice of non-parboiled local rice was based on taste, swelling capacity and, again, taste as the first, second and third selection criteria, respectively. These results were reinforced by using a random utility model to perform the consumer utility analysis and their willingness-to-pay for the most important purchasing criteria of rice types. The results clearly showed that the surveyed consumers preferred non-parboiled imported rice to the non-parboiled local rice; the average utility of non-parboiled imported rice (2.198) was considerably greater than that estimated for non-parboiled local rice (-0.197) in the first purchasing criteria. To have the same level of utility provided by non-parboiled imported rice by consuming non-parboiled local rice, the surveyed consumers were willing to pay more for cleanness (231.2 FCFA/kg) and whiteness (263.5 FCFA/kg) in the first and second purchasing criteria categories, respectively. Although these results might have some limitations due to errors and inaccuracies in the consumer responses to the survey questionnaire, they do have implications for research and policy makers in Togo and the rest of West Africa