Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Nature, Extent, Causes And Issues In Agricultural Distress, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

This paper explains the nature and extent of distress in Indian agriculture by analytically separating the issues therein into two interrelated domains—the agricultural and the agrarian—the former being about production and the latter about distribution; the former about the farm and the latter about the farmer; the former about the inadequacies and inappropriateness of the agricultural developmental programmes, and the latter about the livelihood of the people involved in or dependent upon agrarian activities. In this broader thinking farmers’ suicides and indebtedness become symptoms of a larger malaise. Drawing on our understanding of farmers’ suicides, we show some interrelated demand-side …

Decomposing Poverty Change: Within- And Between-Group Effects, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

This slide share explains the method of 'Decomposing Poverty Change: Deciphering Change in Total Population and Beyond' published in the Review of Income and Wealth.

The Influence Of London On Labor Markets In Southern England, 1830-1914, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] Historians have long acknowledged that London, because of its enormous size and rapidly growing demand for labor, acted as a powerful magnet for migrants from throughout southern England. However, while there is a large literature documenting the flow of migrants to London, there have been surprisingly few attempts to determine the consequences of this migration for southern labor markets. This article attempts to redress the imbalance in the literature by examining the influence of London on agricultural labor markets during the nineteenth century. In particular, the article examines the effect of distance from London on wage rates in southern …

Comments On Geraghty, Márquez, And Vizcarra, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

Professor Boyer reviews and comments upon the three dissertations that were finalists for the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize in 2002.

The Economic Role Of The English Poor Law, 1780-1834, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] Over the 85-year period from 1748/50 to 1832/34, real per capita expenditures on poor relief increased at an average rate of approximately 1 percent per year. There were also important changes in the administration of relief with respect to able-bodied laborers during the period. Policies providing relief outside of workhouses to unemployed and under-employed able-bodied laborers became widespread during the 1770s and 1780s in the grain-producing South and East of England. The so-called Speenhamland system of outdoor relief flourished until 1834, when it was abolished by the Poor Law Amendment Act. The aim of the thesis is to provide …

Hunger, Ethics And The Right To Food, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

he management of hunger has to look into the issues of availability, accessibility and adequacy of food supply. From an ethical perspective, this paper argues in favour of the right to food. But, for this to become viable, the state has to come up with an appropriate and effective bill on food and nutrition security, address the issue of inadequate provisioning of storage space by state agencies leading to rotting of food grains - a criminal waste when people are dying of hunger; and rely on local level institutions involving the community, that complement the administrative structure to identify the …

Access To Land: Some Issues, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

The paper, or rather note, is a brief review of some existing literature. It underscores the need for improved land access to the tiller from the point of view of both equity and efficiency. Some of the suggestions are: (i) opening up of the land lease market so that tenancy does not go underground (ii) in states like West Bengal where tenancy is protected, provision could be made to make them owners in part of the land while giving up claims for the rest, (iii) reduce transaction costs in land markets, which include fees but also bribes being paid, (iv) …

Eu Trade Barriers In The Agri-Food Sector: When Protection Breeds Dependence, Olivier Cadot, Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann, Jacques Gallezot

Olivier Cadot

This paper looks for firm-level evidence that high rates of protection breed concentration of firm activities into highly protected sectors, endogenously generating vested interests in the maintenance of protection. We combine data on the EU’s trade protection for food and agricultural products measured by ad-valorem equivalents (AVEs) with survey data on France’s agri-food sector to show that indeed, small and mid-size firms and cooperatives in that sector are heavily concentrated in product lines protected by tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) at high rates. Those firms and cooperatives can be expected to be at the forefront of resistance to multilateral tariff cuts, in …

Impacts Of Sudan Macroeconomic Policy On Agriculture, Issam A.W. Mohamed Professor

Professor Issam A.W. Mohamed

The crisis of Southern Sudan and eminent secession in 9 July 2011 is a nightmare to the Sudanese national economy. The dependence on oil revenue that controlled the country for the past 11 years and negligence of the other real economy's economic sectors, agriculture and industry severely threatens the country. That is not only with diminished returns but with also with economic nightmarish economic catastrophe, famine and internal implosion. Short-sightedness on utilizing the oil money that bubbled the economy atrophied the real economic sectors and disabled it from responding to secession consequences of parting with 75% of revenues from oil …

Wto-Doha Multilateral Trade Negotiations And Agriculture, Professor Issam A.W. Mohamed

Professor Issam A.W. Mohamed

The Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which launched in November 2001. With the start of this round, non-trade concerns (NTCs) were explicitly renowned and integrated into the negotiation process. Generally, multi-functionality proponents attempt to resist agricultural trade liberalization by giving high support to protect their domestic producers. These are net food importing countries, some small countries with highly protected agricultural sector and large trade deficits in some main outputs and unfavourable agro-climatic conditions. The opponents of the multi-functionality argument all claim to recognize the legitimacy of …

Persistence Of Crisis In Indian Agriculture: Need For Technological And Institutional Alternatives, Srijit Mishra, D. Narasimha Reddy

Srijit Mishra

The crisis in Indian agriculture has two dimensions - agricultural developmental and agrarian livelihood. Some aspects of the agricultural crisis are decelertion in production, productivity and value of output from early 1990s in almost all crops. Withdrawal of the state from public investment in irrigation and related infrastructure, providing access to formal credit, and waning link between research & extension and farming. As a result, the farmer faces multiple risks, vagaries of weather, price shocks, and spurious inputs among others, further compromising on his already lower returns. On agrarian crisis, what is worrying is that the deceleration in agriculture happened …

A Second Look At The Pesticides Initiative Program: Evidence From Senegal, Olivier Cadot, Melise Jaud

Olivier Cadot

This paper investigates whether the Pesticides Initiative Program has significantly affected the export performance of Senegal's horticulture industry. We apply two main microeconometric techniques, difference-in-differences and matching difference-in-differences, to identify the effect of the Pesticides Initiative Program on exports of fresh fruits and vegetables. We use a unique firm-level dataset containing data on sales, employment, and exports by product and destination markets, as well as firm enrolment year, over 2000-2008. The results suggest that while the program had no significant effect on exports pooled over all products and destinations, it had a positive effect when considering fresh fruits and vegetables …

Small And As Productive: Female‐Headed Households And The Inverse Relationship Between Land Size And Output In Kenya, Mwangi Githinji, Charalampos Konstantinidis, Andrew Barenberg

Mwangi Wa Githinji

Access to land and particularly its distribution has reemerged as an important part of both academic and policy discussions in the last decade, leading to the resuscitation of the debate on the relationship between size of holdings and output per land unit. Across the world, studies have suggested the existence of a decreasing relationship between land size and output per unit of land. The most-widely accepted explanation for this relationship is that households with smaller holdings tend to be labor rich relative to land, and therefore can achieve higher output through the increased application of labor. Despite the rich literature …

Exploring Sectoral Contributions To Growth In Fiji: A Focus On Agriculture Development, Ronald R. Kumar

Dr Ronald R Kumar

Information, Direct Access To Farmers, And Rural Market Performance In Central India, Aparajita Goyal

Aparajita Goyal

This paper estimates the impact of a change in procurement strategy of a private buyer in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Beginning in October 2000, Internet kiosks and warehouses were established that provide wholesale price information and an alternative marketing channel to soy farmers in the state. Using a new market-level dataset, the estimates suggest a significant increase in soy price after the introduction of kiosks, supporting the predictions of the theoretical model. Moreover, there is a robust increase in area under soy cultivation. The results point toward an improvement in the functioning of rural agricultural markets. (JEL …

Nutrient Based Subsidy (Nbs) & Support Systems For Ecological Fertilization In Indian Agriculture, Srijit Mishra, Gopikrishna Sr

Srijit Mishra

The intensive agriculture model was introduced in India in the 1960s as part of the Green Revolution. This brought in a package which included massive irrigation projects, new high yielding input responsive varieties and chemical fertilizers. Initially, it did increase production. But now, the food production is stagnating and one has been observing diminishing returns and falling dividends, especially in the agriculture intensiveareas of the country.

The chemical and synthetic fertilizers, particularly Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium (NPK), are highly subsidized. The amount of subsidy on this has grown exponentially during the last three decades from a mere Rs. 60 crore …

When Beef Was King. Or Why Do Colombians Eat So Little Pork?, Shawn Van Ausdal

Shawn Van Ausdal

This article seeks to understand why Colombians, compared to many other Latin Americans, have traditionally eaten so much more beef than pork. The article first points to the development of a culinary tradition that favored beef. The bulk of the argument, though, centers on the fact that, historically, beef has been substantially cheaper than pork. This price difference, in turn, is rooted in the low productivity of Colombian agriculture, which made corn, often used to fatten hogs, expensive. Additional factors that favored beef include a receding agrarian frontier, a small hog population, the various advantages of cattle, a conflict–ridden history …

Risks, Farmers’ Suicides And Agrarian Crisis In India: Is There A Way Out?, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

Poor returns to cultivation and absence of non-farm opportunities are indicative of the larger socio-economic malaise in rural India. This is accentuated by the multiple risks that the farmer faces – yield, price, input, technology and credit among others. The increasing incidence of farmers’ suicides is symptomatic of a larger crisis, which is much more widespread. Risk mitigation strategies should go beyond credit. Long term strategies requires more stable income from agriculture, and more importantly, from non-farm sources. Private credit and input markets need to be regulated. A challenge for the technological and financial gurus is to provide innovative products …

Are There Lessons For Africa From China’S Success Against Poverty?, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

At the outset of China’s reform period, the country had a far higher poverty rate than for Africa as a whole. Within five years that was no longer true. This paper tries to explain how China escaped from a situation in which extreme poverty persisted due to failed and unpopular policies. While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that context matters, two lessons for Africa stand out. The first is the initial importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture, which will require both market-based incentives and public support. The second is the role played by strong …

Critical Examination Of Ghana’S Agriculture Policy Under Vision 2020 Document - Ppt, Hector Addison

Hector Addison

Ghana, like many developing economies has a huge agricultural based with cocoa being the major export commodity. Since independence in 1957, Ghana had struggled to put together and implement and model of development that guarantees better life for her citizenry. This paper looks at one such document and analyzes it from agriculture perspective in the context of present realities. It is clear that Ghana stands to gain from a transformed agricultural sector which might lead the way to discover the eluded glory as a resource endowed nation

Agrarian Scenario In Post-Reform India: A Story Of Distress, Despair And Death, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

Indian agriculture today is under a large crisis. An average farmer household’s returns from cultivation would be around one thousand rupees per month. The incomes are inadequate and the farmer is not in a position to address the multitude of risks: weather, credit, market and technology among others. Social responsibility of education, healthcare and marriage instead of being normal activities add to the burden. All these would even put the semi-medium farmer under a state of transient poverty. The state of the vast majority of small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers is worse off. An extreme form of response …

Suicide Mortality Rates Across States Of India, 1975-2001: A Statistical Note, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

Age-adjusted (5+ years) suicide mortality rate (per 100000 persons) has been calculated by sex across states of India for 1975-2001. Farmers and non-farmers suicide mortality rate are also given for 1995-2001.

Farmers' Suicides In Maharashtra, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

An agrarian crisis has precipitated a spate of suicides in Maharashtra. The suicide mortality rate for farmers in the state has increased from 15 in 1995 to 57 in 2004. The rain-dependent cotton growing farmers of Vidarbha are faced with declining profitability because of dumping in the global market by the US, low import tariffs, failure of the Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme and withdrawal of the state (resulting in declining public investment in agriculture, poor government agriculture extension services and the diminishing role of formal credit institutions). The farmer now depends on the input dealer for advice, leading to supplier-induced …

The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions In Medieval English Agriculture, Gary Richardson

Gary Richardson

The prudent peasant mitigated the risk of crop failures by scattering his arable land throughout his village, Deirdre McCloskey argued, because alternative risksharing institutions did not exist. But, alternatives did exist, this essay concludes. Medieval English peasants formed two types of farmers’ cooperatives. Fraternities protected members from the perils of everyday life. Customary poor laws redistributed resources towards villagers beset by bad luck. In both institutions, the expectation of reciprocation motivated farmers with surpluses to aid neighbors with shortages.

Information And The Subsistence Farmer's Decision To Deforest In Latin America, James F. Casey

James F Casey

No abstract provided.

Self Reliant Agriculture For Arid Lands, David A. Bainbridge

David A Bainbridge

More than a billion people face the challenge of supporting themselves in the world's arid lands. Much can be improved by refining and adopting the best traditional practices and crops from around the world. The lessons learned can also help develop new and improved agronomic practices and crops.

Tonga: Rural Employment And Development, Piyasiri Wickramasekara

PIYASIRI WICKRAMASEKARA

The report first highlights the nature of the rural employment problem In Tonga in the early 1990s. It goes on to discuss important Issues affecting the rural and agricultural sectors. The study further reviews the institutional machinery for rural development and makes a number of recommendations for an employment-oriented rural development strategy.