Year Published
- 2008 (0)
- 2009 (0)
- 2010 (0)
- 2011 (0)
- 2012 (0)
- 2013 (1) Apply 2013 filter
- 2014 (0)
- 2015 (0)
- 2016 (0)
- 2017 (2) Apply 2017 filter
- 2018 (0)
- 2019 (2) Apply 2019 filter
- 2020 (0)
- 2021 (0)
Research Topics
Populations
- Countries/Governments (0)
- (-) Remove Rural Populations filter Rural Populations
- (-) Remove Smallholder Farmers filter Smallholder Farmers
- Women (3) Apply Women filter
Types of Research
- (-) Remove Data Analysis filter Data Analysis
- Literature Review (3) Apply Literature Review filter
- Portfolio Review (0)
- (-) Remove Research Brief filter Research Brief
Geography
- (-) Remove East Africa Region and Selected Countries filter East Africa Region and Selected Countries
- (-) Remove Global filter Global
- South Asia Region and Selected Countries (1) Apply South Asia Region and Selected Countries filter
- (-) Remove Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries filter Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries
- Sub-Saharan Africa (0)
- West Africa Region and Selected Countries (1) Apply West Africa Region and Selected Countries filter
Dataset
- ASTI (0)
- FAOSTAT (0)
- Farmer First (0)
- LSMS & LSMS-ISA (3) Apply LSMS & LSMS-ISA filter
- Other Datasets (2) Apply Other Datasets filter
Current search
- (-) Remove East Africa Region and Selected Countries filter East Africa Region and Selected Countries
- (-) Remove Data Analysis filter Data Analysis
- (-) Remove Market & Value Chain Analysis filter Market & Value Chain Analysis
- (-) Remove Education & Training filter Education & Training
- (-) Remove Rural Populations filter Rural Populations
- (-) Remove Smallholder Farmers filter Smallholder Farmers
- (-) Remove Technology Adoption filter Technology Adoption
- (-) Remove Global filter Global
- (-) Remove Food Security & Nutrition filter Food Security & Nutrition
- (-) Remove Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries filter Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries
- (-) Remove Research Brief filter Research Brief
While literature on achieving Inclusive Agricultural Transformation (IAT) through input market policies is relatively robust, literature on the effect of output market policies on IAT is rarer. We conduct a selective literature review of output market policies in low- and middle-income countries to assess their influence on IAT and find that outcomes are mixed across all policy areas. We also review indicators used to measure successful IAT, typologies of market institutions involved in IAT, and agricultural policies and maize yield trends in East Africa. This report details our findings on these connected, yet somewhat disparate elements of IAT to shed more light on a topic that has not been the primary focus of the literature thus far.
Studies of improved seed adoption in developing countries almost always draw from household surveys and are premised on the assumption that farmers are able to self-report their use of improved seed varieties. However, recent studies suggest that farmers’ reports of the seed varieties planted, or even whether seed is local or improved, are sometimes inconsistent with the results of DNA fingerprinting of farmers' crops. We use household survey data from Tanzania to test the alignment between farmer-reported and DNA-identified maize seed types planted in fields. In the sample, 70% of maize seed observations are correctly reported as local or improved, while 16% are type I errors (falsely reported as improved) and 14% are type II errors (falsely reported as local). Type I errors are more likely to have been sourced from other farmers, rather than formal channels. An analysis of input use, including seed, fertilizer, and labor allocations, reveals that farmers tend to treat improved maize differently, depending on whether they correctly perceive it as improved. This suggests that errors in farmers' seed type awareness may translate into suboptimal management practices. In econometric analysis, the measured yield benefit of improved seed use is smaller in magnitude with a DNA-derived categorization, as compared with farmer reports. The greatest yield benefit is with correctly identified improved seed. This indicates that investments in farmers' access to information, seed labeling, and seed system oversight are needed to complement investments in seed variety development.
According to AGRA's 2017 Africa Agriculture Status Report, smallholder farmers make up to about 70% of the population in Africa. The report finds that 500 million smallholder farms around the world provide livelihoods for more than 2 billion people and produce about 80% of the food in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Many development interventions and policies therefore target smallholder farm households with the goals of increasing their productivity and promoting agricultural transformation. Of particular interest for agricultural transformation is the degree to which smallholder farm households are commercializating their agricultural outputs, and diversifying their income sources away from agriculture. In this project, EPAR uses data from the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) to analyze and compare characteristics of smallholder farm households at different levels of crop commercialization and reliance on farm income, and to evaluate implications of using different criteria for defining "smallholder" households for conclusions on trends in agricultural transformation for those households.
Local crop diversity and crop cultivation patterns among smallholder farmers have implications for two important elements of the design of agricultural interventions in developing countries. First, crop cultivation patterns may aid in targeting by helping to identify geographic areas where improved seed and other productivity enhancing technologies will be most easily applicable. Second, these patterns may help to identify potential unintended consequences of crop interventions focused on a single crop (e.g. maize). This report analyzes the distribution of crop diversity and crop cultivation patterns, and factors that can lead to changes in these patterns among smallholder farmers in Tanzania with a focus on regional patterns of crop cultivation and changes in these patterns over time, the factors that affect crop diversity and changes in crop diversity, and the level of substitutability between crops grown by smallholder farmers. All analysis is based on the Tanzania National Panel Survey (TNPS) datasets from 2008 and 2010. The paper is structured as follows. Section I provides a description of regional patterns of crop cultivation and crop diversity between the two years of the panel. Section II presents background on the theoretical factors affecting crop choice, and presents our findings on the results of a multivariate analysis on the factors contributing to crop diversity. Finally, Section 3 provides a preliminary analysis of the level of substitutability between cereal crop of importance in Tanzania (maize, rice and sorghum/millet) and also between these cereal crops and non-cereal crops.