Agricultural Investment And Productivity In Developing Countries

Includes 8 papers by various authors.

Investing in agriculture is one of the most effective ways of reducing hunger and poverty, promoting agricultural productivity and enhancing environmental sustainability. Covering the development of sustainable agriculture, food production and food security, this paper explains the relationship between all levels of investment and their interdependence to be successful. It also describes how to drive increased investment, at what stage and where, providing a useful overview of investment in agriculture for policymakers and researchers.

Agricultural development is crucial in developing countries, and particularly in the poorest countries where it accounts for large shares of employment and income and whose poverty is due simply to having a large share of the workforce in low-productivity agriculture. Raising productivity in agriculture is critically important for development, as is smoothly moving workers out of agriculture into more productive employment in other sectors. Raising agricultural productivity helps both to raise incomes and to reduce poverty-both by raising the incomes of poor people working in agriculture and by lowering the prices of foods that make up a disproportionately large share of the expenditures of poor people. In small and open economies, the in-crease in profitability of agriculture following improvements in productivity might tend to retain or even attract workers into agriculture. By contrast, at a global level, or at national level when policy focusses on self-sufficiency, improvements in agricultural productivity will free up labor for employment in other sectors. Incomes are generally much higher in non-agricultural work in developing countries-more than double those in agriculture after careful adjustment for key differences. This raises the possibility of a double dividend from structural transformation as workers move into higher-productivity activities. A key question for development policy is whether it is enough to simply evaluate the gains from higher productivity within agriculture, or whether potential benefits from structural change be included as well. This paper examines the arguments on this question. It concludes that these dividends may be substantial-but whether they are or not depends on the source of the initial differences in productivity and on the direction of movement when agricultural productivity rises. If it results from policy barriers such as restrictions on the transfer of farmland or requirements for residence permits in urban areas, there are likely to be substantial welfare gains when labor moves out of agriculture. They may also be substantial if urban wages are artificially high and attract substantial numbers of job-waiters into unemployment. However, these gains may be illusory if the income gaps arise primarily from differences in skills or from reluctance to move created by asset fixity.

Agricultural Investment and Productivity provides a deep and systematic look at the opportunities for and constraints to investments in sustainable agriculture in East Africa, offering important insights into what works and how to analyze agricultural investments in one of the poorest regions of the world. The book critically examines the reasons behind East Africa's stagnant agricultural productivity over the past forty-five years, using the primary lens of investments in fertilizers, seeds, and sustainable land management technologies, These investments have a tremendous impact on production volume, ultimately affecting the income of millions of families throughout the region.

Increasing food prices have renewed concerns about long-term agricultural demand and supply in the global economy. This book looks at results, methods, and data on international agricultural productivity for a better understanding of long-run trends and the policies that determine them. By presenting an international assessment of total factor productivity growth in agriculture, including up-to-date empirical analysis for developed and developing countries and regions, it provides a response to the rising global scarcity of agricultural production. It is essential reading for researchers, poli.

The report assesses the World Bank Group?s support for growth and productivity in the agriculture sector. Enhancing agricultural growth and productivity is essential to meeting the worldwide demand for food and to reducing poverty, particularly in the poorest developing countries. Between 1998 and 2008, the period covered by this evaluation, the World Bank Group (WBG) provided $23.7 billion in financing for agriculture and agribusiness in 108 countries (roughly 8 percent of total WBG financing), spanning areas from irrigation and marketing to research and extension. However, this was a time of declining focus on agricultural growth and productivity by both countries and donors. The cost of inadequate attention to agriculture, especially in agriculture-based economies, came into focus with the food crisis of 2007-08. The crisis added momentum to an emerging renewal of attention and stepped-up financing to agriculture and agribusiness at the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as at several multilateral and bilateral agencies. World Bank financing rose two and a half times from 2008 to 2009, though that increase in lending seems to have been accompanied by a decline in analytical work, which this review finds valuable for results. This evaluation seeks to provide lessons from successes and failures to help improve the development impact of the renewed attention to the sector. Ratings against the World Bank?s stated objectives and IFC?s market-based benchmarks for agriculture and agribusiness projects have been equal to or above portfolio averages in East Asia, Latin America, and the transition economies in Europe, with notable successes over a long period in China and India. But performance of WBG interventions has been well below average in Sub-Saharan Africa, where IFC has had little engagement in agribusiness. Inconsistent client commitment and weak capacity have limited the effectiveness of WBG support in agriculture-based economies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and constraints on staffing and internal coordination within the WBG have also hurt outcomes. Financial sustainability has been constrained by insufficient government funding and the difficulty of maintaining agricultural services and infrastructure. The WBG has a unique opportunity to match the increases in the financing for agriculture with sharper focus on improving agricultural growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greater effort will be needed to connect sectoral interventions and achieve synergies from public and private sector interventions; to build capacity and knowledge exchange; to take stock of experience in rain-fed agriculture; to ensure attention to financial sustainability and to cross-cutting issues of gender, environmental and social impacts, and climate; and to better integrate WBG support at the global and regional levels with that at the country level.

ILO pub-WEP pub. Comparison of the impact of agrarian structure on agricultural production and agricultural employment in developing countries - comprises case studies of relationships between farm size, labour intensiveness, land utilization, agrarian reform and technological change in Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, West Pakistan, India and Malaysia, concludes that small farms are more productive than larger farms, and falls within the framework of the WEP. Graphs, references and statistical tables.