Using agriculture for development: Supply- and demand-side approaches

Abstract

For most poor countries of today, using agriculture for development is widely recognized as a promising strategy. Yet, in these countries, investment in agriculture has mostly been lagging relative to international norms and recommendations. Current wisdom on how to use agriculture for development is that it requires asset building for smallholder farmers, productivity growth in staple foods, an agricultural transformation (diversification of farming systems toward high value crops), and a rural transformation (value addition through rural non-farm activities linked to agriculture). This sequence has too often been hampered by extensive market and government failures. We outline a theory of change where the removal of market and government failures to use this Agriculture for Development strategy can be addressed through two contrasted and complementary approaches. One is from the "supplyside" where public and social agents (governments, international and bilateral development agencies, NGOs, donors) intervene to help farmers overcome the major constraints to adoption: liquidity, risk, information, and access to markets.

A deforestation-free path to scaling silvopastoral production systems

“…Conditional payments have the same essence as payments for ecosystem services, that is, to provide economic incentives for landowners to carry out and maintain speci c actions on their farms (Alix-Garcia et al, Andersson et al, 2018;Piñeiro et al, 2020) In this context, the objective of the conditional payment would be that cattle farmers prescribe an adequate and e cient use to the calves and male cattle that will not be incorporated in the specialization of their cattle herd designated to dairy production. Likewise, the strengthening of value chains makes it possible to create incentives for farmers to not only maintain the adoption of sustainable technologies, but also to not increase the area of land that is subject those strategies (Bold, et al, 2017;de Janvry & Sadoulet, 2020). These strategies could be used to mitigate the risk of deforestation leakage resulting from an increase in cattle herds under the implementation of the Colombian government's commitments to transform 147,000 hectares to SPS (which according to our results will lead to approximately 10,290 additional calves[1] after four years, of which about 5,145 would be males or fattening animals[2].…”

Areas of placement and specialization in the development of agricultural production management in Russia

“…In the course of study of strategic management of accommodation and specialization at the municipal level, starting with the functioning of the initial link of economic interactions of an agricultural organization, as well as the possibility of forming production, sales and transformation of manufactured products at this level, it is necessary to highlight a number of features of the relevant interactions and relationships [3][4].…”

An Analysis of the Tax Incidence of VAT to Milk in Malawi

“…Value chains are a mechanism to achieve this. This type of development approach has been named as a "demand-side" approach where private agents (entrepreneurs, producer organisations) create incentives for smallholder farmers to modernise through contracting and vertical coordination in value chains [48].…”

“…According to [48] "a demand-side approach consists in creating incentives for smallholder farmers to modernise through their participation in vertically coordinated value chains that provide links to markets for products with a profitable effective demand, while at the same time potentially offering solutions to market and institutional failures" (p. 9). The advantage of a demand-side approach, in contrast to a supply side one (e.g., aiming to remove barriers in production), is that it seeks broad complementarities to achieve modernisation, specific to the agent in question.…”