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This literature review examines the returns to tertiary agricultural sciences education, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We include information from organizations’ program documents and gray literature, including the World Bank, UNESCO, ILO, IFPRI, ASTI, various Ministries of Education, country-specific NARS, and ADBG. We find no calculated rate of return (RoR) to tertiary agricultural science, including in SSA. We do find estimates for the return on tertiary education in general, ranging from 12-30% in SSA, along with qualitative support for the value of agricultural science education. The private value of this education can be somewhat inferred from the unmet demand of African students for agricultural science training in North America, Europe, and Australia, and the private and social value from the demand for educated researchers in NARS and SSAQ labor markets. Educated agricultural scientists are hypothesized to affect agricultural productivity via research and development and their influence on policy. Despite the dearth of quantitative ROR evidence, we do find several articles describing the need for increased higher agricultural education and proposing recommendations toward this aim. In this report, we summarize these qualitative results as evidence of the value of tertiary education.
This is "Section B" of a report that presents estimates and summary statistics from the 2008/2009 wave of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (TZNPS), part of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). We present our analyses of household characteristics by gender and by administrative zone, considering landholding size, number of crops grown, yields, livestock, input use, and food consumption.
This is "Section C" of a report that presents estimates and summary statistics from the 2008/2009 wave of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (TZNPS), part of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). We present our analyses of the basic characteristics of household heads and other household members, as well as our analyses of education for adults, children, and household heads by gender and zone.
The purpose of this literature review is to examine research and decision-making tools that model the impacts of agricultural interventions. We begin with a short explanation of what model features are being described. We then review decision-support tools and user-end modeling tools (menu-driven tools with an interface designed for easy use), as well as academic and professional research models for assessing the potential impacts of agricultural interventions. This review also includes decision tools and models for analyzing agricultural and environmental policies outside of technology impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The other tools mentioned here, for example a tool that considers nutritional intervention impacts, are included to help provide a broader understanding of the structure and availability of user-end, decision-making tools. In the final section of this brief, we review the most complex models used more in academic research than for in-field decision-making.
Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, such as provisioning of fresh water, food, feed, fiber, biodiversity, energy, and nutrient cycling. Agricultural production can substantially affect the functioning of ecosystems, both positively and negatively. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the impacts of agricultural technologies and practices on ecosystem services such as soil fertility, water, biodiversity, air, and climate. The report describes the environmental impacts of different aspects of intensive cropping practices and of inputs associated with intensification. We further explore these impacts by examining intensive rice systems and industrial crop processing. Although this report focuses on the impacts of agricultural practices on the environment, many of the practices also have implications for plant, animal, and human health. Farmers and others who come in contact with air, water, and soils polluted by chemical fertilizers and pesticides may face negative health consequences, for instance. By impacting components of the ecosystem, these practices affect the health of plants and animals living within the ecosystem. We find that the unintended environmental consequences of intensive agricultural practices and inputs are varied and potentially severe. In some cases, sustaining or increasing agricultural productivity depends upon reducing impacts to the environment, such as maintaining productive soils by avoiding salinization from irrigation water. However, in other cases, eliminating negative environmental impacts may involve unacceptable trade-offs with food provision or other development goals. Determining the appropriate balance of costs and benefits from intensive agricultural practices is a location-specific exercise requiring knowledge of natural, economic, and social conditions.
This research brief reports on full time equivalent (fte) positions devoted to research and development of major food and cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Data on fte by country and crop were collected from individual Agricultural Science and Technology Indicator (ASTI) country briefs. ASTI data are obtained from unpublished surveys conducted by CGIAR centers. Our report includes 23 countries in SSA.
This report provides a general overview of trends in public and private agricultural research and development (R&D) funding and expenditures in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The request is divided into two sections, covering public funding and private funding. Within each section, relevant data is presented on historical funding patterns, the types of research conducted, and which countries within SSA are financing R&D at the highest level. We find that the majority of growth in African public agricultural research funding took place in the 1960s, when real public spending on agricultural research increased 6% a year. From 1971 to 2000 annual growth averaged 1.4% a year. Public financing of agricultural R&D experienced a moderate shift in the 1990s from bilateral and multilateral donor funding to domestic government financing. The shift varied by country, but donor funding dropped for all SSA countries an average of 10%. Private research and development funding is heavily concentrated in developed countries with the United States and Japan the two biggest spenders. Within SSA, private R&D expenditures comprise 2% of all R&D spending. The main private actors in SSA are companies based in South Africa and Nigeria. The private sector is focused on research areas that involve marketable inputs, such as chemicals, seeds, and machines/