Assessing the adoption and impact of organic and fair trade certification of pepper in India

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Micro insights on the pathways to agricultural transformation: Comparative evidence from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural income growth on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by agricultural income growth. This study provides a comparative analysis of the patterns of micro-level changes that occur among small-holder farmers in Uganda and Malawi in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia (SEA). Our analysis provides several important insights on agricultural transformation in these two regions. First, agricultural income in all examined countries is vulnerable to changes in precipitation and temperature, an effect that is nonlinear and asymmetric. SSA countries are more vulnerable to these weather changes. Second, exogenous increases in agricultural income in previous years improve non-farm income and trigger a change in labor allocation within the rural sector in SEA. However, this is opposite in SSA where the increase in agricultural income reduces non-farm income, indicating a substitution effect between farm and non-farm sectors. These findings reveal clear agricultural transformation driven by agricultural income in SEA, but no similar evidence in SSA

Divorce Mixed Crop-Livestock Farming to Increase Dietary Diversity? Evidence from Smallholders in Lao PDR

Under-nutrition and lack of micro-nutrients continues to remain a challenge in developing countries. As the undernourished are largely smallholder farmers, it is predominantly perceived that farm diversification and mixed crop-livestock agricultural systems can help alleviate this problem. But empirical evidence in this context is limited. Hence, this work examines whether farm production diversity as well as mixed crop-livestock farming lead to dietary diversity among smallholder farmers in Laos, using a two year panel data. Results from the fixed effects regression indicate that although farm production diversity does lead to a higher dietary diversity; the effect diminishes with continued diversification. The counterfactual analysis from the endogenous switching regression shows that following mixed crop-livestock farming system reduces household dietary diversity. We further find that markets play a significant role in enhancing the dietary diversity of the specialized farmers

Adoption and Impact of Black Pepper Certification in India

This paper analyses the adoption of organic farming under fair trade marketing practices and its impact on household income of black pepper (piper nigrum) farmers in India. We use a set of panel data, collected from 300 smallholder farmers who plant black pepper as their main crop in 2010 and 2011.The aim of the paper is to investigate the use of panel data for adoption models using the case of organic and fair trade certified black pepper in Idukki district, Kerala, India. We compare two adoption models: (i) a multinomial cross-section logit applied for both survey years separately and (ii) a panel multinomial random effects logit model. The panel adoption model which allows capturing unobserved heterogeneity in adoption decisions was found to be superior over the cross section models. We find that farm size and market distance are the major factors that influence adoption. To measure the differential gain of adop-tion, we applied propensity score matching with multiple treatment effects accompanied by sensitivity analysis to test robustness of impact results. Results show that certified organic farmers have a significantly higher income but participation in fair trade regimes does not generate additional monetary benefits

Household Welfare Impacts of Black Papper Certification in Kerala, India

Organic farming and fair trade certified commodities considered as catering to niche markets is growing rapidly. So far little is known on the welfare impacts of such innovations and it is of particular interest if the joint adoption of both systems adds additional benefits to smallholders in developing countries. Hence, this paper examines the household welfare impacts of an organic and fair trade certification by smallholder black pepper farmers in Kerala, India. We use panel data collected from 300 smallholder rural pepper growers in Idukki district and apply a multinomial endogenous switching regression model along with a coutnerfactual analysis to estimate certification impacts. Results show that both certification systems have a significant impact on income compared to conventional black pepper farming. However, membership in fair trade marketing systems does not increase income of organic farmers, but has positive asset effects

Will teaching sustainability standards to oil palm smallholders in Indonesia pay off?

This study presents an ex-ante cost-benefit analysis of introducing sustainability standards to smallholder oil palm farmers in the province of Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia. Sustainability standards are defined as a set of oil palm management practices derived from the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) scheme. Economic and environmental benefits of ISPO are derived from a panel data set from some 185 oil palm smallholders collected in 2010, 2012 and 2013. We explore two basic strategies for the introduction of ISPO namely: (1) a conventional extension campaign and (2) a farmer field school approach. Our calculations show that the farmer field school approach results in a higher economic rate of return compared to conventional agricultural extension campaigns. A major conclusion from this analysis is that the Government of Indonesia should invest if ISPO standards are to be adopted on a large scale by smallholder farmers

Signalling change: Micro insights on the pathways to agricultural transformation

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural productivity on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by exogenous agricultural productivity growth. This study identifies early trends in the agricultural sector that indicate an onset of structural change. We also comparatively analyse the patterns of micro-level changes between Sub-Saharan African (SSA) farmers and rural smallholders in Southeast Asia (SEA). We use panel data from the Living Standard Measurement Study – Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) on Uganda and Malawi and from the Thailand Vietnam Socio-economic panel (TVSEP). We apply a fixed effects instrumental variable regression to identify the exogenous component of the agricultural productivity shock. Results indicate that exogenous increases in lagged agricultural income improve average village off-farm income and trigger a change in cultivation patterns within the agrarian sector in both SEA and SSA. However, we find that the patterns of transformation are not uniform across countries.Non-PRIFPRI1; CRP2; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural EconomiesDSGD; PIMCGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM