Search

PurposeThis study aims to improve our understanding of side selling in farmer cooperatives. Cooperative member side selling, in which farmers divert produce from cooperatives to competitors, threatens coffee cooperatives. This is a problem in Burundi, where many households earn income from coffee and cooperatives serve a collective action function.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from a survey of Burundian coffee farmers, we assess the determinants of two types of cooperative member side-selling behavior: selling to both cooperative and non-cooperative buyers and selling solely to non-cooperative buyers.FindingsFarmers who sell to both cooperative and non-cooperative buyers are more likely to be male household heads, be more invested in coffee and have larger farms than non-side sellers, among other characteristics. Farmers who only sell to non-cooperative buyers are poorer and less invested in coffee than non-side sellers.Research limitations/implicationsAdditional research is needed to better understand why side-selling behavior differs between groups and to better understand how household head gender influences side selling. In addition, this study lacks qualitative data supporting quantitative findings. Future research should include qualitative methods to better understand motivations for side-selling behavior.Originality/valueThe study provides important information on what influences cooperative member side selling and focuses on specific types of side-selling behavior that have been largely overlooked. The study focuses on the role of household head gender in side selling, which is important, given the centrality of women to African agriculture.

This study uses data from 1,024 coffee producing households to address two critical questions regarding the role of cooperatives in Rwanda’s coffee sector: Does cooperative membership increase adoption of best practices and coffee productivity? and do cooperatives improve farm household welfare? Using a propensity score matching technique to account for selection bias, we find that cooperatives are a critical institution for building farmer capacity, promoting adoption of improved technologies and inputs, and increasing productivity. We discuss the role that cooperatives can play in increasing farmer welfare and reestablishing the coffee sector as a pillar of growth in the country.

Coffee farmers who wish to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change must adopt environmentally sustainable practices that help in their adaptation to a changing environment. Among the...

Limited producer participation and voice in the governance structures of the coffee value chain in Rwanda, a common occurrence in many agricultural export sectors in the developing world, have resulted in low farm gate prices, restricted competition and few incentives for producers to invest human and capital resources in improved coffee production. A twenty year downward spiral of low productivity and stagnant production has ensued. Survey data from 1024 coffee producing households together with key informant interviews and focus group discussions are used to examine how patterns of investment in coffee affect farmers' productivity and profitability. Findings show that artificially low farm gate cherry prices have driven down coffee production levels and at the same time have enabled a rapid expansion coffee processing capacity. A typology of producers based on capacity to invest and incentives to invest in coffee is constructed to help explain why smallholders are the most productive and largeholder farmers are the least productive when cherry prices are low. Smallholders are ‘pushed’ to produce out of necessity (poverty avoidance) while largeholders are ‘pulled’ to produce uniquely by the lure of higher profit margins, which they achieve only when higher producer prices prevail. Policy recommendations are advanced for greater inclusion of producers in the price negotiation process and for adopting a floor price formula that includes the real cost of production as established by this research.

Efforts to slow down and eventually reverse the trend of climate change will take time, and in some cases, the negative impacts of climate change will be felt long before long-term solutions to this problem can bear fruit. Adaptation and mitigation strategies constitute the front line of attack for rural households in developing countries that rely on agricultural production and natural resource use as their main source of income and growth, and whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change. This study models the determinants of adoption of sustainable production practices by coffee producers in the department of Matagalpa, in northern Nicaragua. Using primary survey data, we analyze the extent to which cooperative membership impacts adoption of ten different practices. We find that coffee farmers who belong to cooperatives have adopted sustainable practices at higher rates than non-members, and that the odds of adoption are higher for members than for non-members. A factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying structural differences between the ten practices, and from this analysis three factors emerged and were modeled. We find that cooperative membership is a significant determinant of practices that promote water conservation, yet not significant for practices that promote soil and plant health, nor for practices related to field management. These findings are valuable for policy makers, donors, and development and extension practitioners in the coffee sector, as they can better inform and guide policies toward more efficient and effective paths of long-term climate change adaptation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the early stages of the transition to specialty coffee in Burundi and the role of an agribusiness support program as a catalyst for this transition. Design/methodology/approach This study uses two years of panel data (2007 and 2012) to analyze changes in technology adoption among coffee washing stations (CWSs) and how the adoption of improved technologies affects coffee quality. Findings Programmatic investment in Burundi’s coffee value chain resulted in a significant shift in adoption of processing technologies by CWSs. Producers who processed at these stations saw a significant increase in the quality of their coffee and forged sustainable trade relationships with international buyers. Research limitations/implications Future research should investigate the incentives and barriers of producers to invest in production boosting practices. Originality/value This is one of the first empirical papers that analyzes Burundi’s transition from ordinary to specialty coffee and how programmatic investments in improved technologies has helped to make the change possible.

This chapter describes household livelihood strategies approach to the subject of sustainability and population growth. Treating population as an exogenous variable is especially problematic in that it obscures the fact that population-environment-development links are highly interactive. Fertility, mortality, and migration patterns can all influence income strategies and the ways in which households manage land and other resources, but these population variables are in turn affected by household income and resource management. Government and donor strategic and program planning needs to mirror the same set of interactions that characterize poor rural households. The chapter reviews the cornerstones of the population-environment-development debate and some of the research literature that has fueled the debate. The population-environment-development debate is important to because it provides a framework for understanding intersectoral linkages, and because it helps define the context and very nature of the individual linkages.

Adoption rates of leguminous crops remain low in sub-Saharan Africa despite their potential role in improving nutrition, soil health, and food security. In this study we explored Malawian farmers’ perceptions of various legume attributes and assessed how these perceptions affected allocation of land to legume crops using a logit link model. We found high regional variation in both consumption- and production-related preferences, but relatively consistent preferences across samples. While scientific understanding and farmer perceptions were aligned on some topics and for some legumes, there were discrepancies elsewhere, particularly in terms of soil fertility and nutrition. Understanding why these discrepancies exist and where there were potential biases are critical in explaining the extent of adoption. In many cases perceptions of legume attributes may be influenced by the cultural role of the crop in the household, particularly in terms of food security or market-orientation. The findings also suggest that researchers need to look beyond both the agronomic properties and farmers’ preferences to fully understand the extent of adoption. Socioeconomic factors, biases, and marketing concerns may also influence integration of legumes into maize-based cropping systems.

Summary Low soil fertility is a limiting factor to farm productivity, household nutrition, and economic development in many parts of Africa due to the continuous cultivation of maize over centuries. Diversifying maize monocrop with legumes has been proposed as one solution to declining soil fertility. Adoption of legumes in Africa remains low despite the much needed soil fertility and nutrition benefits provided by the crops. We employ choice experiments to examine farmers’ preferences for groundnut, soybean, and pigeon pea intercropped with maize and explore barriers and drivers to adoption in Central and Southern Malawi. Overall, farmers significantly discount legume yields in favor of maize yields despite the additional benefits provided by legumes. Labor constraints and market access are potentially more important barriers to legume adoption than previously thought. Results identified three types of farmers with varying preferences for grain yields, the largest group (48%) associated with strongly positive preference for both legume and maize grain yield, a medium-sized group (35%) that values only maize yield, and the smallest group (17%) having preferences only for legume yield. The medium group may be growing legumes for other benefits such as enhanced maize productivity, and the smallest group may be primarily subsistence producers. These findings suggest that uptake of legume maize intercrop systems might be improved if practitioners focus on legumes that have lower labor requirements and better marketability.

A conceptual model of the importance of landholdings to the social and demographic differentiation which impacts on income or income inequality was empirically tested in Rwanda. Another objectives was to demonstrate the importance of a dynamic process between household level variables which results in inequalities. Data on 1019 farm households (husbands wives and adult members) in 1988 were derived from a nationwide stratified random sample of households from the 1988 Nonfarm Strategies Survey of Rwanda. Data were obtained on demographic characteristics of household members nonfarm and off-farm employment of household members permanent and temporary migration patterns of selected household members fertility/family size behaviors and plans economic support networks sources of household income physical characteristics of the farm and residence hired farm labor and plans aspirations and opinions of parents and adult children on nonfarm training and employment and the future. The family development model is based on the 6 phases proposed by Hohn. A regression model of the social and demographic differentiation variables (education of household head control over labor family development cycle and expansion adult workers in the household and farm size) on income yields: an R = .60 and R2 = .36 at the .01 level of significance. The findings confirm that farmers with higher levels of education operate larger farms and use larger quantities of hired labor. Farm size also increases with the expansion of the family as tested in the analysis of variance. More paid labor and more family labor available is related to the increase in size of landholdings. Farm size is a pivotal variable in the process of income generation. Income inequality is affected by household variations in landholdings (beta = .31) and the household control over labor (beta = .31). The implication is that lesser educated farmers may improve their income by hiring farm labor. Social differentiation will exert a stronger effect on income. Family inheritance will not be necessary when access to credit guidance and employment opportunities are available to lower income young men and women.

Both the research and policymaking communities have shown considerable interest in identifying mechanisms that might improve the targeting of transfers to needy beneficiaries. Self-targeting mechanisms such as food for work have attracted particular attention because of their purported ability to induce self-selection out of the pool by the relatively well-off, thereby enabling concentration of transfer resources on the neediest subpopulations with minimum expenditure on administration. This paper calls attention to an important oversight in the existing literature on self-targeting: its dependence on households facing a parametric wage. Since imperfect factor markets plague many of the settings, such as rural Ethiopia, in which FFW is widely used, this oversight matters. Using a unique data set in which rural Ethiopian households declared reservation wage rates for FFW participation, we find significant errors of both exclusion and inclusion in any public works employment scheme. These errors appear perfectly consistent with a simple structural model that allows for household-specific valuation of labor as a function of relative factor endowments and human capital characteristics, with an added premium for public project participation that depends on one's history of past participation.

The need for systematic, empirical analysis of food aid targeting and impacts is overwhelming, especially given the large numbers of people concerned and volume of funds allocated to the problem of feeding Ethiopia's food insecure. This research examines the efficiency of food aid targeting in rural Ethiopia based on empirical evidence from a nationally representative survey of 4166 farm households. A key finding of the study is that there is no significant association between household food insecurity (vulnerability) and food aid receipts—a result of high errors of exclusion and inclusion at both the wereda and household levels. Four factors are identified as causes of the high level of targeting error: (1) the primary beneficiaries of food aid programs are found to be households at the extremes in terms of food availability: those with the least and those with the most food available; (2) a disproportionate number of female and aged heads of households received food aid, irrespective of their food needs; (3) an inability of the food aid system to reach households outside of the historically deficit areas; and (4) a disproportionate concentration of food aid in the region of Tigray.

SummaryThis study examines effects and interactions of socioeconomic status, access to water supply and sanitation, and breast-feeding practices in relation to child growth in two provincial cities in the Philippines. Multivariate analysis identified food expenditure per head, education of the household head and gender of the child as significant predictors of nutritional status. The duration of partial and full breast-feeding was negatively (though non-significantly) associated with growth. Sanitation facilities and breast-feeding are, however, important determinants during the first year of life. Among children over 1 year of age, socioeconomic variables and gender are the most important predictors. Breast-feeding is shown to provide more important health benefits for children in lower income households. The need for further studies on the causes of gender differences in nutritional status was apparent.

Three prominent themes in fertility research – the old-age security hypothesis, the social-mobility hypothesis, and wealth-flows theory are based on the notion that parents in Third-World settings often maintain a high level of childbearing in order to improve their own social and economic well-being. Using data from 1,019 farm households in Rwanda, we provide an empirical test of this ‘anthropological assumption’ as it pertains to the contributions that departed children make to their parental households. Analysis confirms that children are, in fact, of considerable economic value for their parents, but also shows that such intergenerational support is conditioned by other variables, such as the number of children still living within the household, the distance between households, and individual characteristics of parents and their children.

Efforts to control rampant population growth in sub-Saharan Africa have been stymied by confusion between the potential causes and consequences of high fertility in the region. A controversy has surfaced over the causal direction of the fundamental relationship between human fertility and size of landholdings. Members of one school of thought claim that farm couples modify their fertility behaviour according to the amount of land they own or operate. Yet others argue that the size of landholdings varies as a function of family size (an indicator of the availability of family labour). In the present study we use a two-stage least-squares regression on data from a 1988 survey of 747 farm households in Rwanda to disaggregate and compare the strengths of these two possible paths of influence. The results show that landholdings exert a positive influence on human reproduction, but not the reverse. Moreover, this influence is slightly stronger for couples who own all the land they operated, probably because the...

Food-for-work (FFW) programmes have been widely heralded as a means of providing self-targeting transfers coupled with investment in public goods. This paper reviews the changing context that has sparked such interest in FFW, the simple theory that makes it so conceptually appealing, and conceptual problems with that simple theory, all illustrated with empirical examples, primarily from east Africa. We conclude with an attempt at distilling some useful rules of thumb as to when, how and why FFW can serve effectively as short-term insurance, a longer-term rehabilitation and development intervention, or both.

One of the Government of Rwanda’s key post-war policy objectives has been to increase agricultural productivity and ensure food security by promoting a transition from semi-subsistence production and marketing practices to intensive production and highly commercialized agricultural markets. The government wants farmers to increase land and labor productivity through the use of modern inputs, thereby generating substantial surpluses which can be sold to pay for inputs and generate increases in farm incomes.

A burgeoning recent literature emphasizes "livelihood" diversification among smallholder populations (Chambers and Conway 1992, Davies 1993, Ellis 1998, Bryceson 1999, Ellis 2000, Little et al. 2001). While definitions vary within this literature, the concept of livelihoods revolves around the opportunity set afforded an individual or household by their asset endowment and their chosen allocation of those assets across various activities to generate a stream of benefits, most commonly measured as income. This holistic perspective has the potential to enhance our understanding of the strategies that farm households pursue to ensure food and income security given the natural and economic environment in which they operate. Diversification patterns reflect individuals' voluntary exchange of assets and their allocation of assets across various activities so as to achieve an optimal balance between expected returns and risk exposure conditional on the constraints they face (e.g., due to missing or incomplete markets for credit, labor, or land). Because it offers a glimpse as to what people presently consider their most attractive options, given the incentives and constraints they face, the study of diversification behavior offers important insights as to what policy or project interventions might effectively improve either the poor's asset holdings or their access to higher return or lower risk uses of the assets they already possess. Since diversification is not an end unto itself, it is essential to connect observed livelihood strategies back to resulting income distributions and poverty. Not all diversification into off-farm or non-farm income earning activities offers the same benefits and not all households have equal access to the more lucrative diversification options. Yet the livelihoods literature offers little documentation or explanation of important differences between observed diversification strategies. This paper addresses that gap by offering a comparative analysis using data from three different countries, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Rwanda. Like Dercon and Krishnan (1996) and Omamo (1999), we emphasize that interhousehold heterogeneity in constraints and incentives must factor prominently in any sensible explanation of observed diversification behaviors. Indeed, section 4 demonstrates that at a very fundamental level - the choice of basic livelihood strategy - households would prefer locally available livelihood strategies other than those they choose, were they not constrained from doing so. A simple appeal to the principle of revealed preference thus suggests that heterogeneous constraints and incentives play a fundamental role in determining livelihood diversification patterns manifest in income diversification data. The plan for the remainder of this paper is as follows. The next section presents the basic conceptual foundation from which we operate. Section 3 then introduces the data sets and definitions employed in the analysis. Section 4 presents findings relating to the observed variation in income sources across the income distribution, to distinct livelihood strategies pursued by rural African households, to the determinants of strategy choice, and to the effects of alternative livelihood strategies on income dynamics. These findings point especially to significant rural markets failures - especially with respect to finance and land - that force poorer subpopulations to select strategies offering demonstrably lower returns while wealthier subpopulations are able to enjoy higher return strategies to which entry is at least partly impeded by fixed costs and lower marginal costs of participation. Section 5 concludes.

The conservation of scarce land resources is essential to the long-term viability of agriculture in Rwanda. High population density, steep slopes, and abundant rainfall prevail in the highland portions of this African country, making the task of erosion control uncommonly difficult for the peasant farmer. The specific use to which land is put, e.g., cultivation, fallow, pasture, woodlots, and, if it is cultivated, the particular combination of crops grown, can be seen as contributing to both the cause and the solution of the land degradation problem. Based on data from a nationwide survey of over 4800 agricultural fields in Rwanda, this study reviews the extent to which the land use and cropping patterns employed by farmers are appropriately suited, in terms of erosion control, to the topographical and environmental characteristics of their landholdings. Analyses of other aspects of the traditional agricultural system, e.g., variations in relative soil fertility, the use of organic fertilizers, and the location of fields relative to the household, are introduced to help explain why farmers often fail to maximize erosion control through land use and cropping practices. Adjustments to current land use practices that can be expected to reduce soil loss are discussed.