Overcoming Market Constraints on Pro‐Poor Agricultural Growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Poulton, Colin; Kydd, Jonathan; Dorward, Andrew

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7679.2006.00324.x

“…3 The farmer's decision to sell output at a market may also depend on market distance (Key et al 2000, Poulton et al 2006, Barrett 2008). We do not explicitly model the market participation decision, and instead assume that the farmer sells output at the market.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Vandercasteelen

¹

,

Beyene

²

,

Minten³

et al. 2018

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Version: February 2016 AbstractDue to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, a larger number of farmers is living in the rural hinterland providing food to urban residents. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. More in particular, we analyze unique data from teff producing farmers in major producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers more closely located to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. There is a strong and significant direct effect of urban proximity, which is suggested to be related with more use of formal factor markets, less transaction costs, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find strong and positive relationships of rural population density increases -as an alternative source of agricultural transformation -as they seem to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries.

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“…Investments in better road and port infrastructure and the takeoff of containers have been shown to decrease transaction costs of domestic and international trade and therefore stimulate farmers' market participation (Poulton et al 2006, Barrett 2008, Iimi et al 2015. Similarly, new communication systems make information exchange, search costs and communication less costly (Pingali 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities and Agricultural Transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Vandercasteelen

¹

,

Tamru

²

,

Minten

³

et al. 2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Version: February 2016 AbstractDue to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, a larger number of farmers is living in the rural hinterland providing food to urban residents. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. More in particular, we analyze unique data from teff producing farmers in major producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers more closely located to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. There is a strong and significant direct effect of urban proximity, which is suggested to be related with more use of formal factor markets, less transaction costs, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find strong and positive relationships of rural population density increases -as an alternative source of agricultural transformation -as they seem to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries.

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“…The industrialization of the food system, including centralized and concentrated retail power, poses specific challenges for small farmers, especially those living in developing countries. Unless farmers are organized or operating very large farms, they cannot provide the reliable supply and quality required by new markets (Poulton et al 2006;Norman et al 2003). In Uganda for example, the rapid urbanization offers new market opportunities for smallholder farmers to supply higher value markets such as supermarket chains and fast-food restaurants.…”

Section: Product Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%