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Poor Farmers (poor + farmer)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Agrifood Sector Liberalisation and the Rise of Supermarkets in Former State-controlled Economies: A Comparative Overview

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2004
Thomas Reardon
Former state-controlled economies (FSCEs) have become the most important destination of global retail chain investments. These economies, which spread from North Africa, across Central and Eastern Europe, to East Asia, include more than one and a half billion consumers and a large share of the world's agricultural area and poor farmers. They have undergone an often radical transformation of their agrifood system over the past decade. The take-off of supermarkets in FSCEs started seriously in the mid-late 1990s, and is now moving fast. This article compares FSCE experience in the supermarket revolution and considers its implications for policy-makers and rural development practitioners. [source]

Distributional effects of WTO agricultural reforms in rich and poor countries

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 50 2007
Thomas W. Hertel
SUMMARY WTO agricultural reforms Rich countries' agricultural trade policies are the battleground on which the future of the WTO's troubled Doha Round will be determined. Subject to widespread criticism, they nonetheless appear to be almost immune to serious reform, and one of their most common defences is that they protect poor farmers. Our findings reject this claim. The analysis conducted here uses detailed data on farm incomes to show that major commodity programmes are highly regressive in the US, and that the only serious losses under trade reform are among large, wealthy farmers in a few heavily protected sub-sectors. In contrast, analysis using household data from 15 developing countries indicates that reforming rich countries' agricultural trade policies would lift large numbers of developing country farm households out of poverty. In the majority of cases these gains are not outweighed by the poverty-increasing effects of higher food prices among other households. Agricultural reforms that appear feasible, even under an ambitious Doha Round, achieve only a fraction of the benefits for developing countries that full liberalization promises, but protect the wealthiest US farms from most of the rigors of adjustment. Finally, the analysis conducted here indicates that maximal trade-led poverty reductions occur when developing countries participate more fully in agricultural trade liberalization. , Thomas W. Hertel, Roman Keeney, Maros Ivanic and L. Alan Winters [source]

Food security problems in sub-Saharan Africa: Operations Research as a tool of analysis

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2008
Caspar Schweigman
Abstract For many years, the author has been involved in teaching and research in the use of Operations Research as a tool of analysis to study food security problems in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, grass root problems of poor farmers. The paper presents an introduction to the way Operations Research methods have been applied in case studies and research projects, and discusses in retrospect the author's views on the strengths and limitations of the application of Operations Research. The paper has in particular been written for people who are not familiar with applications of Operations Research in agriculture, and are interested to learn about its potential usefulness in practice. The retrospective part is largely based on food security studies in e.g. Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Bénin, Togo and Eritrea and on participation in several interdisciplinary research programmes in Africa. [source]

Introduction: is it possible to create pro-poor agriculture-related biotechnology?

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2005
Joanna Chataway
Biotechnology represents hope for those who believe that new technology can contribute to overcoming a range of pressing productivity and environmental constraints facing poor farmers. Pouring money into the science and technology however without recognizing institutional and systemic complexities associated with creating ,pro-poor' technologies is unlikely to deliver much for those farmers. Moreover, there are a range of economic and political contextual factors which further complicate efforts to put the technology to use for poorer farmers. This article outlines some of the issues and possible new approaches which are discussed in more detail in later articles in this special issue. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]