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22. The changing context for small farms and implications for their future
- Author:
- Peter Hazell
- Publication Date:
- 06-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The majority of farms in the developing world are small (less than 2 hectares) and they are home to the majority of the rural poor. Their future will have an important bearing on whether poverty and hunger can be halved by 2015. However, small farms are seriously challenged today in ways that make their future precarious. Globalization and rising per capita incomes in many countries are changing the nature and composition of demand for agricultural products. At the same time, marketing chains are changing and are becoming more integrated and more demanding of quality and food safety. This is creating new opportunities for higher value production for farmers who can compete and link to these markets, but for many other small farms the risk is that they will simply be left behind. In developing countries, small farmers also face unfair competition from rich country farmers in many of their export and domestic markets, and they no longer have adequate support in terms of basic services and farm inputs. And the spread of HIV/AIDS is further eroding the number of productive farm family workers, and leaving many children as orphans with limited knowledge about how to farm. Left to themselves, these forces will curtail opportunities for small farms, overly favor large farms, and lead to a premature and rapid exit of many small farms. If most small farmers are to have a viable future, then there is need for a concerted effort by governments, NGOs and the private sector to create a more equitable and enabling economic environment for their development. This must include assistance in forming effective marketing organizations, targeted agricultural research and extension, revamping financial systems to meet small farm credit need s, improved risk management policies, better education and training for nonfarm jobs and where all else fails, targeted safety net programs. These interventions are possible and could unleash significant benefits in the form of pro-poor agricultural growth. For many countries, the alternative is a dramatic increase in rural poverty and waves of migrants to urban areas that could overwhelm available job opportunities, urban infrastructure and support services.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Globalization, and Third World
23. The economics of certified organic farming in tropical Africa: A preliminary assessment
- Author:
- Simon Bolwig and Peter Gibbon
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The paper examines the relative profitability of certified organic and conventional farming operations in tropical Africa as well as differences between organic and conventional farmers in rates of adoption of farming practices and in household factor endowments. The paper is based on three surveys in Uganda of smallholder farmers of respectively, organic coffee, cocoa, and pineapple and of matching control groups of conventional farmers. Organic production was in all cases organised on a contract farming-type basis, in schemes operated by the firm exporting the organic product. The central conclusion from the study is that farms that engaged in certified organic export production were significantly more profitable in terms of net farm income earnings than those that engaged only in conventional production. This was the result of generally significant differences between organic and conventional farmers' gross farm incomes, although these differences were further amplified by differences in costs. Income differences related partly to differences between organic and conventional farmers' factor endowments. Preliminary analyses indicted that, among factor endowments, area under crops subject to organic certification (CSC) and numbers of CSC plants had the strongest relations to farmers' sales volume and incomes,. Labour availability and average age of CSC plants had a much lower level of importance. As for other factors, yields were strongly related to sales volumes, but average price received was of lesser importance. The precise relative contribution of these different factors to sales volumes and incomes remains to be established in a further paper, however. The results for average net income also show enormous differences in profitability between organic farmers of different cash crops, with pineapple farmers earning three and five times more than cocoa and coffee farmers, respectively. It is worth underlining that, in contrast to the experience in developed countries, we found that organic conversion in tropical Africa is associated with increases rather than reductions in yield, which relates to the low-input characteristics of conventional farming on the continent. Focus group interviews suggest that organic farmers enjoyed higher yields due to more effective farm management technique, but the survey results on rates of adoption of yield-enhancing farming practices could not verify this.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa
24. Agricultural development for poverty reduction – some options in support of public policy interventions
- Author:
- Helle Munk Ravnborg and Julio A. Berdegué
- Publication Date:
- 04-2007
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- A renewed focus on agriculture is emerging among donor organizations. In 2005, The World Bank published its report Agricultural Growth for the Poor. An Agenda for Development and Dfid published a policy paper entitled Growth and poverty reduction: the role of agriculture, and soon, the World Development Report 2008 entitled Agriculture for Development will be published. The key concern driving this renewed focus is the wish to increase the contribution of agriculture and agricultural growth to poverty reduction. This DIIS brief provides a short introduction to the main messages of the above documents and proposes five main elements of a strategy for supporting public policy interventions in favour of pro-poor agricultural growth.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa
25. Supporting local innovation for rural development: analysis and review of five innovation support funds
- Author:
- Esbern Friis-Hanse and Henrik Egelyng
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The aim of this study is to follow up the 1st GRA-World Bank workshop on in- novation systems at the community level, “Touching the Hearts of the People”, held in Kuala Lumpur 6-8 February 2006. By resolution, this workshop recommended that a 'review of existing innovation support funds and outline of a global mechanism to foster community level innovations' should be undertaken. The study is also, in part, a response to a recent report from the World Bank's Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program, which calls for the establishment of an “innovation fund to promote successful IK practices” (Gorjestani, N., in WB 2004; 45-53).
- Topic:
- International Relations, Agriculture, Development, and Economics
26. An Overview of the Certified Organic Export Sector in Uganda
- Author:
- Peter Gibbon
- Publication Date:
- 03-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper reports the results of a survey of almost all certified and in-conversion organic export operations in Uganda in late 2005. It covers products exported, company size and ownership, standards exported to, certification costs, total export values, value-added in Uganda, marketing channels, crop procurement systems, management of organic operations and the main challenges experienced by exporters. Findings include that numbers of certified exporters are growing rapidly. Export values are also growing, but more slowly: They reached USD 6.2 million in 2005. A handful of firms exporting coffee and cotton dominate the sector and this situation is likely to remain. Though the sector is maturing, most recent entrants are small, relatively weak and currently depend on donor support.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa
27. Concepts and Experiences with Demand Driven Advisory Services
- Author:
- Esben Friis-Hansen
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The current institutional framework for agricultural services in East and Southern Africa was designed for a state-sponsored supply-driven approach. These institutions demand large field staff levels and are associated with high costs often financed by World Bank loans. These institutions are moreover ill-suited to respond to the demands from clients that are now emerging through development interventions and policies. Farmers are marginally involved with planning the content and means of service provision. Top-down approaches also fail to target agricultural services to women and vulnerable groups. Demand-driven advisory services have evolved over recent years and involve changing the role of extension agents from advisors to facilitators; increasing control by farmers through cost sharing; increasing the use of contracted services; and emphasizing knowledge provision rather then narrow technical advice.
- Topic:
- Agriculture and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Africa
28. Poverty reduction, civil society, farmer innovation and agricultural service provision, Uganda
- Author:
- Jannik Boesen, Sarah Kasozi, and Richard Miiro
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper looks at the potential for poverty alleviation in one part of Uganda, based on a poverty analysis of the local, and on analyses of the local civil society and of development discourses that are often dominated by the central over the local. In response to calls for micro-studies of actually existing civil society it points to the usefulness of including community wide processes and hegemonic discourses in analyses of the local civil society's development role.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Civil Society, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa
29. Gendered district poverty profiles and poverty monitoring Kabarole, Masaka, Pallisa, Rakai and Tororo districts, Uganda
- Author:
- Helle Munk Ravnborg, Michael Kidoido, Zarupa Akello, Jannik Boesen, Sarah Kasozi, Anne Sorensen, Bernard Bashaasha, and Veronica Wabukawo
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The overall objective of the Danida supported Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS) in Uganda is to improve the conditions for the poorest part of the population and contribute to reduce gender-based inequalities in Uganda in general and in the pilot focus districts in particular. Late in 2000, Danida asked Department of Agricultural Economics, Makerere University, Kampala, and Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, to form an external task group with the purpose of monitoring the gender and poverty impact of the ASPS.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Civil Society, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa
30. 'Self-fulfilling geopolitics'? - or: the social production of foreign policy expertise in Europe
- Author:
- Stefano Guzzini
- Publication Date:
- 12-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper sketches the very first research hypotheses and methodological framework for exploring the puzzle why at the peaceful end of the Cold War, more militarist versions of realism and decidedly geopolitical thought have known a comeback in different European countries while not in others. It proposes a constructivism-inspired analysis which, in a sequence, explores geopolitics as an intellectual tradition, an expression of state interests, and of identity politics. It proposes to analyse the actual revival (and/or the lack of) via a sociological process-tracing inspired by already existing institutionalist approaches yet embedded in an application of Bourdieu's field theory to 'foreign policy'. Needless to say that the most important part needs still to be done, both on the methodological level (the concrete framework) and on the comparative empirical analysis which necessarily asks for a collaborative teamwork.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Environment, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
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