Factsheet

This study examined food security among HIV/AIDS-impacted households (compared to non-HIV/AIDS-impacted households) in rural South Africa, with a particular focus on the role of savanna woodland resources (e.g. wild foods) in shaping household resilience following the death of a prime-age adult. The study was conducted in the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance site in the rural north-east of South Africa. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 290 rural households in May and June 2006.

Factsheet

This study examines the role of research in agricultural policy making in Malawi at a time when the Africa Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development have been seeking to promote greater evidenced-based decision making in agriculture. Drawing on both theory and actual past experiences documented in the literature, results are intended to improve our understanding of the extent to which research has played any role in influencing policy change in Malawi. This is done in the context of the evolution of the country’s fertilizer subsidy policies.

Taking advantage of a unique quasi-experi-mental survey design, this study analyzes the productivity impacts of the Ethiopian land certification program by identify-ing how the investment effects (technological gains) would measure up against the benefits from any improvements in input use intensity (technical efficiency).

Factsheet

The past decade has seen several African countries increasing their agricultural growth, a trend largely underpinned by increases in land area cultivated instead of productivity increases. Meanwhile, scholars debate whether Africa should pursue a strategy of large-scale or smallholder farms, paying little attention to a special group of smallholder farmers who have transitioned to become medium- and large-scale farmers. This study, therefore, begins to analyze this group of farmers, using qualitative data from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Ghana.

Nepal is a landlocked country with wide diversity of climatic conditions, ranging from temperate to tropical. Agriculture is the largest economic sector, contributing 35 percent to GDP and employing two thirds of the total population. Rice is the major staple crop, fol-lowed by maize, wheat, and pulses. These crops are spread across three ecological belts: Hills (42 percent of land area), Mountain (33 percent), and Terai (23 percent). Nepal, once self-sufficient in food, has become a net importer in recent years.

Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of 13,466 islands, which are divided into 33 provinces. Java, Bali, and Nusa Tenggara are the inner islands and contain 62 percent of the total population of 246 million, but only accounts for 8 percent of the total land area. The inner islands are naturally more fertile than the outer islands that have nutrient-poor, acidic soils. In theory, fertilizer use should be higher on the outer islands, but in reality outer island fertilizer use is generally lower, making crop yields lower, especially when compared to Java.

We study the impact of export bans in Tanzania using a computable general equilibrium model. We find that although maize is an important food crop in Tanzania, its contribution to food price inflation is rather limited, and that banning cross-border maize exports lowers the national food price index by only 0.6-2.4 percent compared with the free-export scenario. The benefits of lower prices are captured primarily by urban households, but maize producer prices decrease by 7-26 percent, depending on the region.

This research was undertaken to understand how information about a new agricultural technology is transmitted through social networks, and what effect information gained through social networks has on technology demand at the household level. The technology in question is laser land leveling (LLL)-a resource-conserving technology-which we introduced in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India as part of the study. Using an experimental auction, we obtain farmers’ willingness-to-pay for the technology and identify potential adopters.

The Republic of Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country where nearly 65 percent of the population lives in rural areas. Wheat is the staple crop in Kyrgyzstan; however, average wheat yields were just 2.4 metric tons (MT)/ha as of 2013, which is well below potential yield estimates of 5.5 MT/ ha. The country is classified by the UN FAO as a low-income, food-deficit country that relies on wheat imports from Kazakhstan and Russia to cover 25 percent of its consumption requirements.