Prospects for equitable growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa

Improving agricultural technology equitably in Africa has been difficult in the past because of the vast differences, as well as weak institutions and infrastructure in its many regions. However, the prospects for equitable growth are good for several reasons. The distribution of land has not deteriorated, and there are few landless people in Africa. Technical packages do not favor large farms over small ones, and Africa's social institutions support people with a safety net for sources of income. The author, however, points out that equitable growth, though possible is not assured and several research and policy initiatives will be needed to capitalize on the potential. First, research must continue to focus on technology appropriate for small farms and crops. Policy makers must no longer withhold assistance from service enterprises or nonfarm activities of women. Rural infrastructure has to be upgraded, and finally, governments will need to monitor land tenure and tenancy.Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Research,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Rural - urban growth linkages in India

The rural nonfarm economy accounts for one-quarter of all full-time employment in rural India and for nearly one-third of rural income, and is also intimately linked to agriculture. This paper examines the importance of rural-urban growth linkages in India, and aims to assess the impact of agricultural growth on national demand for nonfarm products. In addition, because growing land scarcity raises concerns about prospects for rural labor absorption, the paper highlights the impact of agricultural growth on rural nonfarm incomes and employment.Four major sections address these objectives. The first provides a descriptive overview of nonfarm activity in India. It examines the importance, composition and location of nonfarm activity as well as general trends over the past 30 years. The second explores the relationship between agriculture and changes in nonfarm activity. After reviewing previous growth linkage studies, it compares nonfarm activity in high- and low-productivity agricultural states cross-sectionally and over time. The third section estimates the volume of rural nonfarm income and employment generated by agricultural growth, while the fourth projects patterns of demand for nonfarm goods emanating from alternative agricultural growth scenarios.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Agricultural exit problems: Causes and consequences

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. The pattern in developing Asia is characterized by fast growth and slow urbanization, primarily as the result of labor-intensive agricultural growth and strong farm–nonfarm linkages. But for all its success to date, Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality and jobless growth patterns. Africa presents a divergent pattern of slow growth with rapid urbanization stemming from urban-biased policies, low rural population density, and high rates of population growth. But whereas Africa's path of urbanization without growth presents problems like unemployment, congestion, and food-price inflation, it may also provide new development possibilities through greater political empowerment, lower fertility rates, and agglomeration externalities. The paper concludes with a discussion of how development strategies can address these agricultural exit problems." from authors' abstracteconomic growth, structural change, Urbanization, agricultural exits, rural to urban migration, rural non-farm employment, Inequality, employment, agglomeration externalities,

Farm-nonfarm linkages in rural sub-Saharan Africa

This paper is an accumulation, over the past 25 years, of a body of detailed work examining the structure of Africa's rural, nonfarm economy. First, it systematically reviews empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of the African rural, nonfarm economy. It then explores differences across locality and size, across countries and over time, in an effort to assess likely patterns of growth. A subsequent review of key production and consumption parameters allows an estimate of the magnitude of the agricultural growth multipliers in Africa. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of policies and programs that will be necessary if farm-nonfarm growth linkages are to achieve their full potential.Banks&Banking Reform,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

Food aid for market development in Sub-Saharan Africa

"Food aid remains significant for food availability in many low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, helping to reduce the gap between food consumption needs and supply from domestic production and inventories and commercial imports. Food aid remains a contentious subject, however, and there have been many recent pleas for more effective use of the resource. This study explores how food aid might be used for domestic food market development to facilitate poverty alleviation and economic growth. There are obvious risks to using food aid for market development, just as there have been in using food aid to try to stimulate agricultural development. Because food aid necessarily expands local food supply, it needs to be well targeted if adverse producer price effects are to be avoided. In particular, if food aid can be targeted so as to relieve short-term working capital and transport capacity constraints to the development of downstream processing and distribution capacity in recipient country food marketing channels, for example by helping build farmer cooperative groups, then food aid could have salutary effects on sub-Saharan African agriculture." Authors' Abstract

Transforming the rural Asian economy

Developing Asia as a whole has taken remarkable strides since the food crises of the 1960s. Improvements in food security, poverty reduction, and per capita income initiated by the Green Revolution have been substantial and lasting. Although life has improved for most rural Asians, about 670 million still live in poverty, and they must tolerate lower levels of health, education, and general well-being than their urban counterparts. To complete the economic transformation in rural Asia requires further growth, but growth that is more equitable and environmentally sustainable than it has been in the past. Meeting this challenge will warrant more efficient application of the lessons already learned about agricultural growth, public-sector investment, rural poverty reduction, and natural resource protection. The authors argue that six emerging challenges will also need special attention: (1) Making growth pro-poor; (2) Managing the legacy of the economic crisis; (3) Managing globalization; (4) Revitalizing agricultural research and technology dissemination; (5) Managing land and water scarcity and degradation; and (6) Building good governance and social capital.

Transforming the rural nonfarm economy: Opportunities and threats in the developing world

"Rural residents across the developing world earn a large share of their income—35–50 percent—from nonfarm activities. Agricultural households count on nonfarm earnings to diversify risk, moderate seasonal income swings, and finance agricultural input purchases, whereas landless and near-landless households everywhere depend heavily on nonfarm income for their survival. Over time, the rural nonfarm economy has grown rapidly, contributing significantly to both employment and rural income growth. Long neglected by policymakers, the rural nonfarm economy has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In poor agrarian countries struggling with growing numbers of marginal farmers and lackluster agricultural performance, such as those in much of Africa, policymakers view the rural nonfarm economy as a potential alternative to agriculture for stimulating rural income growth. In countries whose economies are successfully shifting from agriculture to other sectors, policymakers see the rural nonfarm economy as a sector that can productively absorb the many agricultural workers and small farmers being squeezed out of agriculture by increasingly commercialized and capitalintensive modes of farming. Given frequently low capital requirements in the nonfarm economy, policymakers in both settings view the rural nonfarm economy as offering a potential pathway out of poverty for many of their rural poor. Expectations everywhere are high. How realistic are these expectations? Can the rural nonfarm economy indeed grow rapidly enough to productively absorb a growing rural labor force? And in doing so, can it, in fact, provide a pathway out of poverty for the rural poor? A recent book published for IFPRI by Johns Hopkins University Press and Oxford University Press in India, Transforming the Rural Nonfarm Economy: Opportunities and Threats in the Developing World, marshals empirical evidence from around the globe to explore these key policy questions. The book, edited by Steven Haggblade, Peter B. R. Hazell, and Thomas Reardon, examines key factors affecting growth and equity in the rural nonfarm economy in order to identify settings and policies that favor rural nonfarm growth and enable the poor to participate in growing segments of the evolving rural nonfarm economy." from textAgricultural industries Developing countries, Agriculture Economic aspects Developing countries, Developing countries Rural conditions., Nonfarm economy,

Managing droughts in the low-rainfall areas of the Middle East and North Africa:

Drought is a recurrent and often devastating threat to the welfare of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where three-quarters of the arable land has less than 400 mm of annual rainfall, and the natural grazings, which support a majority of the 290 million ruminant livestock, have less than 200 mm. Its impact has been exacerbated in the last half century by the human population increasing yearly at over 3%, while livestock numbers have risen by 50% over the quinquennium. Virtually no scope exists for further expansion of rainfed farming and very little for irrigation, hence there is competition between mechanized cereal production and grazing in the low rainfall areas, and traditional nomadic systems of drought management through mobility are becoming difficult to maintain. Moreover droughts seem to be increasing in frequency, and their high social, economic, and environmental costs have led governments to intervene with various forms of assistance to farmers and herders, including distribution of subsidized animal feed, rescheduling of loans, investments in water development, and in animal health. In this paper we examine the nature and significance of these measures, both with respect to their immediate benefits and costs to the recipients and to governments, and to their longer term impact on poverty and the environment. We conclude that while they have been valuable in reducing catastrophic losses of livestock and thus alleviating poverty, especially in the low rainfall areas where they are the predominant source of income, continued dependence on these programs has sent inappropriate signals to farmers and herders, leading to moral hazards, unsustainable farming practices, and environmental degradation, while generally benefiting the affluent recipients most.Rainfed farming., Environmental impact analysis., Irrigation., Droughts., Middle East., North Africa.,

Agricultural growth linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa:

How much extra net income growth can be had in rural areas of Africa by increasing the spending power of local households? The answer depends on how rural households spend increments to income, whether the items desired can be imported to the local area in response to increased demand, and, if not, whether increased demand will lead to new local production or simply to price rises. For every dollar in new farm income earned, at least one additional dollar could be realized from growth multipliers, according to Agricultural Growth Linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa.Income Rural areas Africa., Agricultural development Africa., Agricultural policy Economic aspects., Households Zimbabwe., Social accounting., Africa sub-Saharan,

Identification of adults with symptoms suggestive of obstructive airways disease: Validation of a postal respiratory questionnaire

BACKGROUND: Two simples scoring systems for a self-completed postal respiratory questionnaire were developed to identify adults who may have obstructive airways disease. The objective of this study was to validate these scoring systems. METHOD: A two-stage design was used. All adults in two practice populations were sent the questionnaire and a stratified random sample of respondents was selected to undergo full clinical evaluation. Three respiratory physicians reviewed the results of each evaluation. A majority decision was reached as to whether the subject merited a trial of obstructive airways disease medication. This clinical decision was compared with two scoring systems based on the questionnaire in order to determine their positive predictive value, sensitivity and specificity. RESULTS: The PPV (positive predictive value) of the first scoring system was 75.1% (95% CI 68.6–82.3), whilst that of the second system was 82.3% (95% CI 75.9–89.2). The more stringent second system had the greater specificity, 97.1% (95% CI 96.0–98.2) versus 95.3% (95% CI 94.0–96.7), but poorer sensitivity 46.9% (95% CI 33.0–66.8) versus 50.3% (95% CI 35.3–71.6). CONCLUSION: This scoring system based on the number of symptoms/risk factors reported via a postal questionnaire could be used to identify adults who would benefit from a trial of treatment for obstructive airways disease