Food as the basis for development and security: A strategy for Yemen

Yemen has been facing severe development challenges in recent years, but rapidly depleting oil and water resources combined with large population increases and a lack of job-creating growth are making a difficult situation even more complicated. In order to provide opportunities for Yemenis to escape the current situation of widespread poverty and food insecurity, the Government of the Republic of Yemen, under the leadership of the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, has developed a strategy to help all Yemeni people gain access to sufficient and nutritious foods in order to live active, productive, and healthy lives. The main objectives of the National Food Security Strategy, developed with the support of the International Food Policy Research Institute, are to (1) cut food insecurity by one-third by 2015, (2) reach moderate food security levels—meaning 90 percent of people have enough to eat year-round—by 2020, and (3) reduce child malnutrition by at least one percentage point per year. As a contribution to this process, the authors of this paper identify seven priority actions to help achieve these goals. 1. Leverage the fuel-subsidy reform process to promote food security. 2. Improve the business climate to foster pro-food-secure private investments in promising sectors. 3. Use qat reduction policies to enhance agricultural development. 4. Strengthen food security risk-management practices. 5. Implement the water-sector strategy decisively. 6. Target public investment to the food insecure more accurately and improve service provision, especially in rural areas. 7. Launch high-level awareness campaigns for family planning, healthy nutrition, and women's empowerment. The government, civil society groups, and international partners need to quickly, decisively, and jointly implement these seven actions in order to fulfill the strategic goals. The implementation process is likely to be most effective if conducted in a transparent and inclusive manner with effective follow-up and appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.food security, Poverty, Economic development,

Paving the way for development?: The impact of transport infrastructure on agricultural production and poverty reduction in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Given its vast land resources and favorable water supply, the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) natural agricultural potential is immense. However, the economic potential of the sector is handicapped by one of the most dilapidated transport systems in the developing world (World Bank 2006). Road investments are therefore a high priority in the government's investment plans and those of its major donors. Although these are encouraging signs, very little is known about how the existing road network constrains agricultural and rural development, and how proposed new road investments would address these constraints. To inform this issue, the present paper primarily employs geographic information system (GIS)-based data to assess the impact of market access on agricultural and rural development in the DRC. Compared to existing work, however, the paper employs a number of innovations to improve and extend the generic techniques used to estimate the importance of market access for agricultural and rural development. We then use our derived results to run simulations of how proposed infrastructure investments would affect market access, and how market access would in turn affect agricultural production and household wealth. We find highly significant and negative elasticities between travel times to sizable cities (50,000 or 100,000 population), although we also find that these elasticities are small relative to those of similar cross-country tests. Moreover, city access by itself is less important than access to cities and ports. This finding strongly suggests that increasing investment in ports in the DRC should be a priority in the infrastructure investment portfolio.infrastructure, Market access, road and river transport, Agricultural production, Poverty, Geographic Information System (GIS), Rural development, household wealth, Developing countries, road investment, Development strategies,

Paving the Way for Development: The Impact of Road Infrastructure on Agricultural Production and Household Wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Given its vast land resources and favorable water supply, the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) natural agricultural potential is immense. However, the economic potential of the sector is handicapped by one of the most dilapidated transport systems in the developing world (World Bank, 2006). Road investments are therefore a high priority in the government's investment plans, and those of its major donors. Whilst these are encouraging signs, very little is known about how the existing road network constrains agricultural and rural development, and how these new road investments would address these constraints. To inform this issue the present paper primarily employs GIS-based data to assess the impact of market access on agricultural and rural development (ARD). Compared to existing work, however, the paper makes a number of innovations to improve and extend the generic techniques used to estimate the importance of market access for ARD. First, the DRC road network data is augmented with survey-based data from Minten and Kyle (1999) on agricultural transport times to calculate improved “market access” measures for the DRC. Second, we follow Dorosh et al (2009) in estimating the long run relationship between market access and agricultural production, although we also investigate the relationship with household wealth. Finally, we run simulations of how proposed infrastructure investments would affect market access, and how market access would in turn affect agricultural production and household wealth.Infrastructure, market access, road and river transport, agricultural production, poverty., Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Food Security and Poverty, Production Economics,

Negotiation Games: Acquiring Skills by Playing

This paper shows the research done at the School of Industrial Engineers (ETSII) of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), in two consecutive academic courses. In this negotiation game each team is formed by three students playing different roles, with a different degree of complexity. The game is played three different times changing the conditions and doing the Zones of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) smaller so the negotiation is going “harder” and it was more difficult for the team to achieve an agreement. Roles were distributed according to the student’s experience, since it was understood that difficulty of the roles was different, especially when there was set a time limit for negotiation. The combination of playing and training has shown that students without particularly good negotiating skills at the beginning of the experiment attained better final results than those who have natural negotiating skills, but no benefit of training

ADOPTION, IMPACT EVALUATION, AND TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF IRON BIOFORTIFIED BEAN PRODUCTION IN RWANDA

Micronutrient malnutrition, also known as hidden hunger, is a public health problem in many developing countries. Hidden hunger limits cognitive and physical development of children and increases both children’s and adults’ susceptibility to infectious diseases. The most common outcome of iron deficiency is anemia and in Rwanda, iron micronutrient malnutrition is highly pervasive. Thirty seven percent of children under five years of age and nearly 20 percent of women of childbearing age suffer from anemia in the country. Since 2012, HarvestPlus and its partners have been intensively disseminating iron biofortified common beans (Phaseolus Vulgaris) (IBB) varieties to help alleviate iron deficiency in Rwanda. On one hand, Rwandan farmers may be uncertain about the economic returns of this new technology owing to insufficient knowledge about the types and costs of inputs needed, the yield distribution, expected market prices, and the demand for the produce. On the other hand, policy makers and donors cannot observe the outcomes that bean farmers would experience under all treatments of the IBB program. The counterfactual outcomes that a bean farming household would have experienced under other treatments are not observable. In this context, this dissertation uses a multiprong analytical framework to: 1) analyze how peer interactions, households and farm characteristics, as well as regional factors influence smallholder farming households’ decisions to grow IBB varieties, 2) evaluate the impact of the IBB program on Rwandan farmer’s livelihoods, focusing on the outcomes of yields and incomes for beneficiary households, and 3) estimate the impact of the IBB program on smallholder farming households’ technical efficiency. The spatial econometric results indicate spatial interdependence in smallholder farming households' decisions to adopt IBB. In addition to the directly targeted beneficiaries, the spatial parameters from the econometric analysis suggest that the biofortification program affected non-beneficiaries as well. This finding indicates that (1) a household is more likely to grow IBB if the household is near other early IBB adopters who informed them about the nutritional and yield benefits of IBB technology and (2) the propensity of a household to grow IBB varies with the characteristics of neighboring farmers. The impact evaluation analysis supports the hypothesis that IBB growers had significantly higher yields and incomes, as compared to farmers that grew non-biofortified beans, whether improved or traditional. In addition, the impact assessment shows that farmers who grew iron biofortified varieties were relatively more efficient and obtained greater bean production than the control group

Assessing food security in Yemen

The lack of updated information about food security is of concern to many countries, especially during and after economic crises, natural disasters, and conflicts. In this paper we present an analytical framework for assessing the effects of such crises on food security. This methodology can compensate for the lack of recent data in the aftermath of various crisis situations and thus provide important information to policymakers. We apply this methodology to Yemen, a country where the recent food price crisis and global economic recession have been especially damaging. Little is known about how the recent triple crisis (food, fuel, and financial crisis) has affected food security and what the current state of food security is on the macro- (national) and microlevels (local). The results of our findings suggest an alarming state of food insecurity. Food security at the macrolevel has dramatically deteriorated in recent years, and it is projected that the country will remain highly vulnerable to external shocks in the future if no action is taken. At the household level we found that 32.1 percent of the population in Yemen is food insecure and that 57.9 percent of all children are malnourished. Rural-urban inequalities are high in Yemen. The number of food-insecure people living in rural areas (37.3 percent) is more than five times higher than in urban areas (17.7 percent). Underweight children and children with stunted growth are found more commonly in rural than urban areas. Major challenges for food security are the lack of job-creating growth within the oil-dependent economic structure; a distorted economic incentive system, coupled with an inefficient social transfer system rapidly depleting oil and water resources; and the growing production and consumption of qat.food security, Middle East and Northern African (MENA) region, Poverty,

Global and local economic impacts of climate change in Syria and options for adaptation:

There is broad consensus among scientists that climate change is altering weather patterns around the world. However, economists are only beginning to develop tools that allow for the quantification of such weather changes on countries' economies and people. This paper presents a modeling suite that links the downscaling of global climate models, crop modeling, global economic modeling, and subnational-level computable equilibrium modeling. Important to note is that this approach allows for decomposing the potential global and local economic effects on countries, including various economic sectors and different household groups. We apply this modeling suite to Syria, a relevant case study given the country's location in a region that is consistently projected to be among those hit hardest by climate change. Despite a certain degree of endogenous adaptation, local impacts of climate change (through declining yields) are likely to affect Syria beyond the agricultural sector and farmers and also reduce economy-wide growth and incomes of urban households in the long term. The overall effects of global climate change (through higher food prices) are also negative, but some farmers can reap the benefit of higher prices. Combining local and global climate change scenarios shows welfare losses across all rural and urban household groups of between 1.6 – 2.8 percent annually, whereas the poorest household groups are the hardest hit. Finally, while there is some evidence that droughts may become more frequent in the future, it is clear that even without an increase in frequency, drought impacts will continue to put a significant burden on Syria's economy and people. Action to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and variability should to be taken on the global and local level. A global action plan for improving food security and better integration of climate change in national development strategies, agricultural and rural policies, and disaster risk management and social protection policies will be keys for improving the resilience of countries and people to climate change.Climate change, Development, drought, Growth, Poverty,

Monte Carlo estimation of the probability of causal contacts between communicating civilizations

In this work we address the problem of estimating the probabilities of causal contacts between civilizations in the Galaxy. We make no assumptions regarding the origin and evolution of intelligent life. We simply assume a network of causally connected nodes. These nodes refer somehow to intelligent agents with the capacity of receiving and emitting electromagnetic signals. Here we present a three-parametric statistical Monte Carlo model of the network in a simplified sketch of the Galaxy. Our goal, using Monte Carlo simulations, is to explore the parameter space and analyse the probabilities of causal contacts. We find that the odds to make a contact over decades of monitoring are low for most models, except for those of a galaxy densely populated with long-standing civilizations. We also find that the probability of causal contacts increases with the lifetime of civilizations more significantly than with the number of active civilizations. We show that the maximum probability of making a contact occurs when a civilization discovers the required communication technology.Fil: Lares Harbin Latorre, Marcelo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Funes, Jose Gabriel. Universidad Católica de Córdoba. Área de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Gramajo, Luciana Veronica. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; Argentin