Hello, and welcome to a new edition of the IFPR-Kampala’s USSP news and research digest!
As usual, this collection of recent news articles related to agriculture is compiled from online news sources. We also include links to recent publications on agricultural and policy-related research topics pertinent to Uganda and the wider region.
This week, we report on Researchers Make Breakthrough in Grasshopper Farming and on Bringing Blockchain to the Coffee Cup. We also have an article on how Fake processed food is becoming an epidemic in African urban life and on A very black market: how illegal charcoal fuels war and harms the environment.
Under research, we provide links to:
- Participation in the market chain and food security: The case of the Ugandan maize farmers
- The dynamics of smallholder farmers’ acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato vines in the Lake Victoria Zone Region, Tanzania
- Big cities, small towns, and poor farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia
- Organic Agriculture, Food Security, and the Environment
- Assessing farm performance by size in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda
- Who benefits from which agricultural research-for-development technologies? Evidence from farm household poverty analysis in Central Africa
Note that newsletters are archived on https://bjornvancampenhout.com/newsletter/
News:
Researchers Make Breakthrough in Grasshopper Farming
Uganda Radio Network
People who sell grasshoppers as a business may soon start breeding and supplying the delicacy throughout the year, thanks to researchers from Makerere University and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya. The researchers today launched a project will ensure that support is provided to business enterprises for rearing, and processing quality insect food products.
Bringing Blockchain to the Coffee Cup
Wall Street Journal
Denver’s Coda Coffee Co. this week is offering what it calls “the world’s first blockchain-traced coffee,” giving customers access to a cloud-based ledger that tracks every stop along their coffee’s supply chain. By scanning a QR code associated with the batch of coffee they bought, customers can see the date and location of every transaction—from collection at the farm to washing and drying, milling, export, roasting and retail.
Cotton by-products to turn around Uganda’s economy
The Exchange
Cotton by-products have been termed as the new hot property to turnaround the economy of struggling Uganda into a new direction. The product had been experiencing a change since last year, following its downfall from glory in the 1970s. The Government has not let the dream go to revive the former glory, and the farmers seem to cooperate with the new strategy.
Improve output, quality to benefit from Africa’s free trade area, farmers told
New Times
Grain sector stakeholders especially farmers, have been urged to improve productivity and enhance grain standards to take advantage of the huge market opportunities presented by the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) agreement. A total of 44 countries signed the CFTA deal in Kigali on March 21, while 30 signed the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, and 47 supported the creation of Africa’s one market by signing the Kigali Declaration.
Fake processed food is becoming an epidemic in African urban life
Quartz Africa
Recent research by the Confederation of Tanzania Industries estimates that over 50% of all goods, including food, drugs and construction materials, imported into Tanzania are fake. Anecdotal evidence suggests that rates could be between 10% and 50%, depending on the food category and the country.
A very black market: how illegal charcoal fuels war and harms the environment
The Economist
Charcoal is one of the biggest informal businesses in Africa. It is the fuel of choice for the continent’s fast-growing urban poor, who, in the absence of electricity or gas, use it to cook and heat water. According to the UN, Africa accounted for three-fifths of the world’s production in 2012-and this is the only region where the business is growing. It is, however, a slow-burning environmental disaster.
Research:
Participation in the market chain and food security: The case of the Ugandan maize farmers
P Montalbano, R Pietrelli, L Salvatici – Food Policy, 2018
Empirical assessment of the links between market chain participation and food security is characterized by conflicting evidence. Our goal is to deal with this issue at different points of the commercialization chain by providing a sound identification strategy using the Uganda World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) panel data. By looking at the dynamics of farmers’ consumption over time and controlling for a variety of household and production characteristics as well as possible confounding factors, our results show that farmers’ food security is positively affected by participation in the market chain, irrespective of the choice of outlet. This provides two key messages for policymaking: farmers selling to the market are better off and intermediaries do not hamper food security.
The dynamics of smallholder farmers’ acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato vines in the Lake Victoria Zone Region, Tanzania
RI Adam, L Badstue, K Sindi – Food Security, 2018
This paper offers new insights into smallholder farmer’s practices regarding acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato planting material in the Mwanza and Mara regions of Tanzania by examining three specific issues: (i) farmers’ sources of planting material; (ii) factors that influence farmers’ sourcing of planting materials outside their own farms and (iii) the types of transactions and social relations involved in farmers’ acquisition and distribution of sweetpotato planting material. Data were collected using mixed methods, including a survey of 621 households across nine districts, semi-structured key informant interviews with 28 women sweetpotato farmers, and six focus group discussions. Findings show that farmers in the study area rely almost exclusively on informal seed systems, and that the majority (> 56%) produce their own planting material. Individual, household and community level factors influence farmers’ acquisition of planting materials outside their own farms. The sources and mode of transaction related to acquisition/distribution of planting material are strongly influenced by the type of social relationship between the parties involved. Strong social ties facilitate the majority of local planting material acquisitions/distributions, and favor provision of locally available planting material as a gift/without payment. Weak social ties are primarily associated with the transaction modality of purchase/sale, and frequently help facilitate acquisition of new or exotic planting material. The findings provide entry points both for entities that seek to enhance small-scale farmers’ access to improved, high quality sweetpotato germplasm, as well as broader efforts to strengthen research and development strategies for integrating formal and informal seed systems.
Big cities, small towns, and poor farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia
J Vandercasteelen, ST Beyene, B Minten, J Swinnen – World Development, 2018
Urbanization is happening fast in the developing world and especially so in sub-Saharan Africa where growth rates of cities are among the highest in the world. While cities and, in particular, secondary towns, where most of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa resides, affect agricultural practices in their rural hinterlands, this relationship is not well understood. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual model to analyze how farmers’ proximity to cities of different sizes affects agricultural prices and intensification of farming. We then test these predictions using large-scale survey data from producers of teff, a major staple crop in Ethiopia, relying on unique data on transport costs and road networks and implementing an array of econometric models. We find that agricultural price behavior and intensification is determined by proximity to a city and the type of city. While proximity to cities has a strong positive effect on agricultural output prices and on uptake of modern inputs and yields on farms, the effects on prices and intensification measures are lower for farmers in the rural hinterlands of secondary towns compared to primate cities.
Organic Agriculture, Food Security, and the Environment
EM Meemken, M Qaim – Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2018
Organic agriculture is often perceived as more sustainable than conventional farming. We review the literature on this topic from a global perspective. In terms of environmental and climate change effects, organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit of output. Organic farming, which currently accounts for only1%of global agricultural land, is lower yielding on average. Due to higher knowledge requirements, observed yield gaps might further increase if a larger number of farmers would switch to organic practices. Widespread upscaling of organic agriculture would cause additional loss of natural habitats and also entail output price increases, making food less affordable for poor consumers in developing countries. Organic farming is not the paradigm for sustainable agriculture and food security, but smart combinations of organic and conventional methods could contribute toward sustainable productivity increases in global agriculture.
Assessing farm performance by size in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda
JC Julien, BE Bravo-Ureta, NE Rada – Food Policy, 2018
Many Sub-Sahara African countries have long endured sluggish agricultural productivity growth and a farm structure dominated by smallholders. This prevailing structure has led to public policies focusing on access to land and its distribution as ways to boost agricultural supply. Drawing on data from the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) for three East African countries (Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda), our purpose is to: test whether smaller farms in these countries are more productive than larger ones; examine how managerial performance varies with farm size; and assess how public policy may improve farm performance. We adopt the Random Parameters Stochastic Production Frontier model to estimate and then decompose Total Factor Productivity (TFP) across different farm size classes. In doing so, we test for possible measurement errors of farmer self-reported land area using Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and explore the imperfect factor markets hypothesis. The results show that across the three countries TFP is higher for smaller farms than for larger ones. Overall, managerial performance is low suggesting that programs designed to enhance managerial capacity would promote farm productivity across all sizes. Other policies are size specific. Access to agricultural input markets improves the productivity of the small farms, while greater spending on transportation infrastructure and extension services enhances the productivity of the large.
Who benefits from which agricultural research-for-development technologies? Evidence from farm household poverty analysis in Central Africa
JH Ainembabazi, T Abdoulaye, S Feleke, A Alene… – World Development, 2018
It remains a challenge for agricultural research-for-development (AR4D) institutions to demonstrate to donors which technologies contribute significantly to poverty reduction due to a multitude of impact pathways. We attempt to overcome this challenge by utilizing the potential outcomes framework and quantile treatment effects analytical approaches applied on panel household data collected from Central Africa. Our findings show that adoption of AR4D technologies reduced the probability of being poor by 13 percentage points. A large share of this poverty reduction is causally attributable to adoption of improved crop varieties (32%) followed by adoption of post-harvest technologies (28%) and crop and natural resource management (26%), with the rest 14% attributable to unidentified and/or unmeasured intermediate outcomes or factors. The findings further indicate that relatively poor farm households benefit from adopting improved crop varieties more than the relatively better-off households. Correspondingly, the relatively better off households benefit from adopting post-harvest technologies enhancing crop commercialization much more than the relatively poor households. The findings reveal interesting policy implications for successful targeting of agricultural interventions aimed at reducing rural poverty.
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