Return to quality in rural agricultural markets: Evidence from wheat markets in Ethiopia

Return to quality in rural agricultural markets: Evidence from wheat markets in Ethiopia

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  • Author: Do Nascimento Miguel, Jérémy
  • Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 66

In many Sub-Saharan countries, farmers cannot meet the growing urban demand for higher quality products, leading to increasing dependency on imports. While the literature has focused on production-side constraints to enhancing smallholder farmers’ output quality, there is scarce evidence of market-side constraints. Using a unique sample of 60 wheat markets in Ethiopia, I examine the relationship between the price obtained by farmers and the quality supplied. Using objective and precise measures of observable (impurity content) and unobservable (flour extraction rate and moisture level) quality attributes, no evidence was found of a strong correlation between the two, suggesting that observable attributes cannot serve as proxies for unobservable ones. Transaction prices further reflect this, indicating that, markets only reward quality attributes that are observable at no cost. However, these results hide cross-market heterogeneity. Observable quality attributes are better rewarded in larger and more competitive markets, while unobservable attributes are rewarded in the presence of grain millers and/or farmer cooperatives on the market site. Both regression and machine learning approaches support these findings.


Return to Quality in Rural Agricultural Markets

Return to Quality in Rural Agricultural Markets

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  • Author: Jérémy Do Nascimento Miguel
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN:
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0


Buyers’ response to third-party quality certification: Theory and evidence from Ethiopian wheat traders

Buyers’ response to third-party quality certification: Theory and evidence from Ethiopian wheat traders

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  • Author: Abate, Gashaw Tadesse
  • Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 61

When quality attributes of a product are not directly observable, third-party certification (TPC) enables buyers to purchase the quality they are most interested in and reward sellers accordingly. Beyond product characteristics, buyers’ use of TPC services also depends on market conditions. We study the introduction of TPC in typical smallholder-based agriculture value chains of low-income countries, where traders must aggregate products from many small-scale producers before selling in bulk to downstream processors, and where introduction of TPC services has oftentimes failed. We develop a theoretical model identifying how different market conditions affect traders’ choice to purchase quality-certified output from farmers. Using a purposefully designed lab-in-the-field experiment with rural wheat traders in Ethiopia, we find mixed support for the model’s prediction: traders’ willingness to specialize in certified output does increase with the share of certified wheat in the market, and this effect is stronger in larger markets. It, however, does not decrease with the quality of uncertified wheat in the market. We further analyze conditions where traders deviate from the theoretically optimal behavior and discuss implications for future research and public policies seeking to promote TPC in smallholder-based food value-chains.


Farmers’ quality assessment of their crops and its impact on commercialization behavior: A field experiment in Ethiopia

Farmers’ quality assessment of their crops and its impact on commercialization behavior: A field experiment in Ethiopia

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  • Author: Abate, Gashaw T.
  • Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 44

Adoption of quality-enhancing technologies is often driven largely by farmers’ expected returns from these technologies. Without proper grades, standards, and certification systems, however, farmers may remain uncertain about the actual financial return associated with their quality-enhancing investments. This report summarizes the outcomes of a short video-based randomized training intervention on wheat quality measurement and collective marketing among 15,000 wheat farmers in Ethiopia. Our results suggest that the intervention led to significant changes in farmers’ commercialization behaviors—namely, it prompted farmers to adopt behaviors geared toward assessing their wheat’s quality using easily implementable test-weight measures, assessing the accuracy of the equipment used by buyers in their kebeles (scales, in particular), and contacting more than one buyer before concluding a sale. The training also led to improvements in share of output sold, price received, and collective marketing, albeit with important limitations. First, farmers who measured their wheat quality received a higher price, but only if their wheat was of higher quality. Second, farmers who found that their wheat was of higher quality were more reluctant to aggregate their wheat (that is, sell their products through local cooperatives) than those who found that their wheat was of lower quality. Lastly, the training intervention led to better use of fertilizer in the following season. Our discovery that a short training intervention can significantly change farmers’ marketing and production behavior should encourage the development of further interventions aimed at enhancing farmers’ adoption of improved technologies and commercialization.


Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa

Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa

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  • Author: Keijiro Otsuka
  • Publisher: Springer Nature
  • ISBN: 9811980462
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 312

This open access book seeks effective strategy to realize a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa based on more than ten years of research team’s inquiries into determinants and consequences of new technology adoption in rice farming in seven countries in this region. Rigorous statistical analyses are carried out by using valuable household data of rice farmers. The book is actually sequel to the two earlier books on the same subject published by Springer and edited by K. Otsuka and D.F. Larson, An African Green Revolution published in 2013 and In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution in 2016. The main message of the first book was that rice is the most promising cereal crop in SSA because of the high transferability of Asian rice technology, whereas that of the second book was that rice cultivation training programs are effective in significantly increasing rice yield in SSA. This third book has wider coverage in terms of topics, study periods, and study sites. It continues to show the significant impacts of rice cultivation training on productivity and newly demonstrates the high sustainability of the productivity impact of the training and the existence of spillover effects from trainees to other farmers by using panel data. We newly assess the important role of mechanization in intensification of rice farming, high returns to large-scale irrigation schemes, and the critical role of rice millers in improving the quality of milled rice. Based on these studies, this book provides clear pathways toward full-fledged Green Revolution in rice farming in sub-Saharan Africa.


Seed Trade in Rural Markets

Seed Trade in Rural Markets

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  • Author: Leslie Lipper
  • Publisher: Earthscan
  • ISBN: 1844077845
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 257

First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Impact of irrigation on poverty and environment in Ethiopia: draft proceedings of the symposium and exhibition, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 27-29 November 2007

Impact of irrigation on poverty and environment in Ethiopia: draft proceedings of the symposium and exhibition, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 27-29 November 2007

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  • Author: Makonnen Loulseged
  • Publisher: IWMI
  • ISBN:
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 483


Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia

Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia

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  • Author: Paul Dorosh
  • Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
  • ISBN: 0812208617
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 377

The perception of Ethiopia projected in the media is often one of chronic poverty and hunger, but this bleak assessment does not accurately reflect most of the country today. Ethiopia encompasses a wide variety of agroecologies and peoples. Its agriculture sector, economy, and food security status are equally complex. In fact, since 2001 the per capita income in certain rural areas has risen by more than 50 percent, and crop yields and availability have also increased. Higher investments in roads and mobile phone technology have led to improved infrastructure and thereby greater access to markets, commodities, services, and information. In Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges, Paul Dorosh and Shahidur Rashid, along with other experts, tell the story of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation. The book is designed to provide empirical evidence to shed light on the complexities of agricultural and food policy in today's Ethiopia, highlight major policies and interventions of the past decade, and provide insights into building resilience to natural disasters and food crises. It examines the key issues, constraints, and opportunities that are likely to shape a food-secure future in Ethiopia, focusing on land quality, crop production, adoption of high-quality seed and fertilizer, and household income. Students, researchers, policy analysts, and decisionmakers will find this book a useful overview of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation as well as a resource for major food policy issues in Ethiopia. Contributors: Dawit Alemu, Guush Berhane, Jordan Chamberlin, Sarah Coll-Black, Paul Dorosh, Berhanu Gebremedhin, Sinafikeh Asrat Gemessa, Daniel O. Gilligan, John Graham, Kibrom Tafere Hirfrfot, John Hoddinott, Adam Kennedy, Neha Kumar, Mehrab Malek, Linden McBride, Dawit Kelemework Mekonnen, Asfaw Negassa, Shahidur Rashid, Emily Schmidt, David Spielman, Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, Seneshaw Tamiru, James Thurlow, William Wiseman.


Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy

Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy

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  • Author: Matthias Kalkuhl
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 3319282018
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 626

This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from on-the-ground surveys, to panel econometrics and innovative high-frequency time series analysis as well as computational economics methods. It offers policy analysts and decision-makers guidance on dealing with extreme volatility.


Globalization and Poverty

Globalization and Poverty

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  • Author: Ann Harrison
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 0226318001
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 675

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.