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Showing all content in Farms
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Project
Relaxing seasonal constraints to improve labour productivity: Scaling-up with a private sector partner (country wide project)
In Zambia, small-scale agriculture employs the vast majority of the rural population, despite low levels of productivity and farming income. Most small-scale farms run out of food and cash four to five months after the harvest. Consequently, farmers engage in costly strategies to finance consumption until the next harvest, most commonly selling family labour off-farm in the...
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Project
Relaxing seasonal constraints to improve labour productivity: Scaling-up with a private sector partner
In Zambia, small-scale agriculture employs the vast majority of the rural population, despite low levels of productivity and farming income. Recent studies have demonstrated that small scale farmers are most likely to deviate from their original production plan during the “hungry season” that precedes the harvest. Since harvest occurs once a year, most of these farmers...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Can information help reduce imbalanced application of fertilisers in India: Experimental evidence from Bihar
Imbalanced use of fertilisers is a serious problem in India, and in Bihar, the use of chemical fertiliser is much higher relative to the rest of India. The Government of India launched the flagship Soil Health Card (SHC) programme in 2015, in which, farmers receive SHCs with recommendations on the application of different fertilisers. This brief provides empirical...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Conservation credits: Payments for voluntary groundwater conservation
Paying farmers to pump less groundwater could be a cost-effective and equitable way to reduce water and electricity consumption in irrigated agriculture. A pilot of conservation credits among 90 smallholder farmers in three villages in Gujarat proceeded smoothly and was received well by the communities. Results suggest that financial incentives may be able to...
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Blog post
Adapting to climate change through temporary migration in Bangladesh
With climate change, we are seeing more extreme weather events and increasingly frequent hazards, putting agriculture and rural livelihoods at ever greater risk. Temporary migration can help households withstand these types of short-term hardships and income deficits, and may be a viable mechanism for adapting “in place” to changing environmental conditions. However,...
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Publication - Working Paper
From bilateral trade to centralised markets: A search model for commodity exchanges in Africa
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Project
Managing agricultural risk in Mozambique
Mozambique is primarily an agricultural economy with 81% of its population engaged in agriculture, which accounts for 32% of its GDP. “There are now 400 extreme weather events every year, four times as many as in 1970” (The Economist, 2017). The direct costs of these extreme events in the form of lost lives, assets, and habitat are evident. For farmers in...
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Data Item
Data: The agricultural productivity gap in developing countries
According to national accounts data for developing countries, value added per worker is on average four times higher in the non-agriculture sector than in agriculture. Taken at face value this “agricultural productivity gap” suggests that labor is greatly misallocated across sectors in the developing world. In this paper we draw on new micro evidence to ask to what...
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Data Item
Data: Sugar mills: Ownership, productivity and crop choice
An old theoretical and empirical literature has struggled with how ownership structure affects economic outcomes. We seek to answer this question by examining the effect that different ownership structures have on the outcomes of sugarcane farmers in India. The econometric strategy exploits the zoning system - whereby farmers living within a zone are forced to sell sugar to...
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Project
Building capacity for the Ghana Commodities Exchange
Formally lauched in November 2018, the Ghana Commodities Exchange (GCX) is set to transform agricultural markets in Ghana. The GCX links farmers with traders more effectively, and provides facilities like grain storage and quality control. To ensure the smooth running of the exchange upon its opening, this project sought to build technical capacity amongst its...