Understanding Poverty in Cash-crop Agro-forestry Systems: Evidence from Ghana and Ethiopia

Hirons, Mark; Robinson, Elizabeth; McDermott, Constance L.; Morel, Alexandra; Asare, Rebecca Ashley; Boyd, Emily; Gonfa, Techane; Gole, Tadesse Woldemariam; Malhi, Yadvinder; Mason, John; Norris, Ken

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.07.021

Cited by 30 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Through our household survey we are aware that the community located at this elevation and who farm predominantly within the buffer zone are primarily migrants, who arrived during the Ethiopian famine in the early 1980s [25]. However, when looking across all of our monitored farmers, identifying as a migrant was not significantly correlated to the likelihood of being vulnerable to this climate shock.…”

Section: Low Yielding and Vulnerable Farmersmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…To capture management and household-level livelihood data, a household survey was performed in early 2015, immediately following the 2014 harvest. Data collected from this survey included land area, cash outlays for labor and inputs as well as reported sources of income (more details can be found in [25]). Total coffee income for each year was calculated using per hectare coffee yields from monitored shrubs, reported coffee price recorded by the Yayu Coffee and Tea Office and farmer reported total land area.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

Morel

Hirons

Demissie

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Smallholder farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture are particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events and, therefore, it is necessary to identify adaptive measures that would increase farmer resilience to these shocks. The management options in a low-input system, like forest coffee (Coffea arabica), are limited and there are several factors out of farmers' control driving their vulnerability to changing climatic conditions. These can relate to social structures and landscape factors, which can interact to reduce farmers' adaptive capacity, creating a state of contextual vulnerability. We explored the potential synergies of this interaction across elevation, patch area and shade management gradients for smallholder coffee farms around the UNESCO Yayu Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve in Ethiopia before, during and immediately following the 2015/16 El Niño. We documented a dramatic collapse in coffee yields across all farms, resulting in coffee incomes 29.5%±18.0% and 19.5%±10.0% of 2014 incomes in 2015 and 2016, respectively. We identified farms at elevations between 1500 and 1600 m with canopy openness between 40% and 45% as being consistently low yielding over our study period. We found these farmers had the highest rates of income diversification and, therefore, were already exhibiting adaptive capacity. Farmers with the largest income losses were spatially concentrated between 1600 and 1700 m, located in larger patch areas with lower canopy openness. Farmers at this elevation have access to poor infrastructure, restrictions on shade management and reported higher dependence on income from coffee, indicating an interaction of biotic and social factors exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, due to a nationally declared state of emergency, we were unable to survey farmers on the adaptive measures they undertook; therefore, we are limited in assessing their resilience. However, we do show the importance of considering both biotically and socially-mediated influences for assessing smallholder vulnerability, particularly barriers to diversifying incomes.

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Section: Low Yielding and Vulnerable Farmersmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

Morel

Hirons

Demissie

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Using this model and considering the yield factors that a farmer could realistically influence, we estimate potential maximum yields and subsequent income increases across monitored farms. From a household survey we undertook in the region and empirically observed relationships between cocoa income and poverty (Hirons et al, 2018b), we estimate the possible impact of modeled yields on household poverty outcomes. These methods allowed us to ask the following research questions: (i) what are the ecological limits to cocoa production; (ii) if specific limits can be relaxed, what is the potential to increase yields and improve incomes; and (iii) how might cocoa income improvements affect household living standards?…”

Section: Study Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, data was collected on: fertilizer and other input use, weeding and harvesting labor, yield variability, shade tree decision-making, access to credit and extension, household demographics (size, age, ethnicity, and gender), land tenure arrangements, other assets, living standards, security, cash expenditure and income as well as overall household satisfaction and choice. More details on our approach can be found in Hirons et al (2018b).…”

Section: Household Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Ecological Limits of Poverty Alleviation in an African Forest-Agriculture Landscape

Morel

Hirons

Sasu

et al. 2019

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Cocoa yields in Ghana remain low. This has variously been attributed to low rates of fertilizer application, pollinator limitation, and particularly dry growing conditions. In this paper we use an African forest-agriculture landscape dominated by cocoa (Theobroma cacao) to develop an ecological production function, allowing us to identify key ecological and management limits acting on cocoa yields simultaneously. These included more consistent application of fertilizers inter-annually, distributing rotting biomass throughout the farm and reducing the incidence of capsid attacks. By relaxing these limits, we estimate plausible increases in yields and, by extension, farm incomes. Our analysis reveals that resulting increases in cocoa yields requiring both ecological and intensive management interventions could be significant (113 ± 60%); however, benefits are disproportionately realized by the wealthiest households. We found that wealthier households benefited proportionally more from ecological intensification methods (e.g., leaving more rotting biomass in their farms) and the poorest households benefited proportionally more from capital-intensive intensification methods (e.g., pesticide and fertilizer applications). We treated poverty as multi-dimensional, and show that only certain dimensions of poverty (school attendance, assets, and food security) are significantly related to cocoa incomes, while several other dimensions (access to clean water, sanitation and electricity, and infant mortality) are not. We explore how increased household cocoa incomes could impact different dimensions of poverty. Our findings suggest, that if all households adopted the optimal level of each of these management options, and in so doing had similar poverty profiles to those households already managing optimally, we would see the community-averaged probability: a child of a household misses school decrease from 47 to 31%, a household would be able to acquire assets increase from 40 to 59% and a household would have access to an adequate amount of food increase from 62 to 79%.

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A framework to understand the social impacts of agricultural trade

Schaafsma

Dreoni

Ayompe

et al. 2022

Sustainable Development

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While international trade in agricultural commodities can spur economic development especially where governance is strong, there are also concerns about the local impacts of commodity production and their distribution. Previous frameworks have primarily focused on trade effects on environmental conditions in production regions, as well as economic growth and food security. Instead, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of agricultural trade on multidimensional wellbeing and equity. The purpose of the framework is to guide the analysis of the impacts of trade on people, by identifying the core concepts and organising the complexity of the local social impacts of global value chains. The framework is supported by evidence from studies on trade in soy, coffee, cocoa, and palm oil.

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Understanding Poverty in Cash-crop Agro-forestry Systems: Evidence from Ghana and Ethiopia

Cited by 30 publications

References 47 publications

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

The Ecological Limits of Poverty Alleviation in an African Forest-Agriculture Landscape

A framework to understand the social impacts of agricultural trade

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