designing and rating an area yield crop insurance contract this article documents the design and rate making procedures used in the development of the group risk plan grp the new federal crop insurance product that insures based on area yield the authors of this article worked closely with personnel in the federal crop insurance corporation and others in developing methodological and practical constraints needed in implementing a workable area yield contract grp indemnity payments are made based on percentage shortfalls in actual county yields relative to a forecasted yield historical county yield data are used to develop forecasted yields and premium rates

economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries this study provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal of development studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries in addition to providing a conceptual framework it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature a series of regularities emerge across these studies the poor consist of those who are always poor poor at all dates and those who move in and out of poverty with the latter group tending to be strikingly large such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes finally seemingly transitory shocks can have long term consequences the study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities

introduction imperfect information and rural credit markets puzzles and policy perspectives rural credit markets have been at the center of policy intervention in developing countries over the past forty years many governments supported by multilateral and bilateral aid agencies have devoted considerable resources to supplying cheap credit to farmers in a myriad of institutional settings the results of many of these interventions have been disappointing and one explanation for this must be that they were based on an inadequate understanding of the workings of rural credit markets the articles in this symposium issue are devoted to empirical and theoretical investigations of rural credit markets in the framework of the imperfect information paradigm the authors show how this framework is useful not only in explaining puzzling features of these markets but also in providing a policy perspective to assess the successes and failures of specific interventions

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

using weather index insurance to improve drought response for famine prevention there is a strong link between weather and the welfare of poor populations low frequency short term but catastrophic weather shocks can trigger destructive coping responses to disaster for example withdrawal of children from school distress sale of assets refugee migration crime and severe human suffering moreover these adverse impacts often persist as children s physical growth falters and household productivity asset accumulation and income growth are dampened dercon and krishnan 2000 hoddinott and kinsey 2001 hoddinott 2006 the prospect of such shocks may also induce underinvestment in assets at risk limiting poor households ability to grow their way out of poverty over time carter and barrett 2006 the problem originates with the difficulty poor households face in insuring covariate risk while informal social insurance arrangements and flexible credit contracts often

biofuels in developing countries are comparative advantages enough this paper investigates the role of comparative advantage on biofuel policy adoption results show that different countries have different drivers to create biofuel policies gdp proves to be more significant for oecd countries while arable land and feedstock prices are more significant for non oecd countries land allocation may also be of importance we speculate that a naturally endowed comparative advantage may not necessarily equate to a successful biofuel industry

poverty traps and index based risk transfer products summary a growing literature suggests that in low income countries households with few assets can be trapped in chronic poverty this article reviews relevant threads of the poverty traps literature to motivate a description of the opportunities presented by innovative index based risk transfer products these products can be used to address some insurance and credit market failures that contribute to the persistence of poverty among households in low income countries applications are considered at the micro meso and macro levels 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

agroclimatic shock income inequality and poverty evidence from burkina faso abstract this paper examines the impacts of agroclimatic shock on income inequality and poverty using household farm data from three agroecological zones of burkina faso together with income source decompositions of the gini coefficient and the foster greer thorbecke poverty index before and after a severe drought our findings reveal that because the poor lack acces to off farm income off farm income increases inequality and fails to shield poor households against agroclimatic risks the direction of the empirical relationship between changes in inequality and poverty after the drought depends critically on environmental variables and on apparent constraints on income diversification at different points in the income distribution

social and techno economical analysis of biodiesel production in peru peru has introduced a law to promote the use of biofuels with the objective to increase employment strengthening agriculture development providing an economic alternative to illegal drug production in this work the costs of biodiesel production from oil palm and jatropha were analyzed under different scenarios they include the participation of associations of smallholders and commercial producers as raw material provides in biodiesel business in peru the scenarios considered have a strong social dimension in which they explicitly consider how productions 39 costs change when smallholders supply a proportion of the feedstock to the industry production cost profiles were generated using the chemical process simulation and economical evaluation software packages provided by aspen technology total production cost found for oil palm biodiesel production ranged between 0 23 and 0 31 usd l and jatropha biodiesel production costs were between 0 84 and 0 87 usd l these production costs were analyzed and compared to biodiesel ex factory prices and diesel fuel production cost factors the results suggest that including smallholders in the supply chain can be under some conditions competitive with liquid biofuel production systems that are purely large scale c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

countercyclical safety nets for the poor and vulnerable abstract relatively little is known about how government safety net programs insure against low consumption and stabilize asset bases compared to what is known about their role in transferring income the insurance function requires a flexible budget that can be scaled up rapidly to meet unanticipated circumstances safety nets serving an insurance function also differ from other transfer programs in their targeting they need to determine transitory need rather than more chronic correlates of poverty moreover insurance safety nets need a more flexible implementation strategy than do more permanent programs this paper reviews these issues from the perspective of low income countries

credit as insurance in agrarian economies abstract this paper examines consumption credit as an insurance mechanism in agrarian economies it explains the more rapid adoption of new technology in the green revolution by large farmers who had greater access to consumption credit the paper also demonstrates how the emergence and expansion of consumption credit markets by mitigating the need for hoarding in order to meet consumption contingencies enhances growth by encouraging investment

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

the measurement and trend of inequality comment in the september 1975 issue of this review morton paglin posits a new summary statistic the paglin gini which he uses to measure and analyze the level and trend of income inequality in the united states this measure intends to recognize only income differences among families unrelated to the observed age income profile as contributing to meaningful income inequality this is to be contrasted with the standard lorenz gini in which all differences in income among living units contribute to inequality paglin s measure indicates substantially less inequality in the united states than is indicated by the lorenz gini moreover paglin inequality falls considerably in the post world war ii period while other measures indicate very little change in inequality over this period paglin is addressing an important problem for the postwar period when the age distribution the length of time spent in school and the propensity of the young and the old to form their own households have all changed rapidly the trend in the conventional gini coefficient has no obvious normative interpretation however it is often given one unfortunately paglin s proposed index of inequality does not meet its objective and even if it did its normative content would be no clearer than that of the standard measure indeed no single indicator is sufficient to capture trends in normatively relevant inequality without further analysis like any other time series a time series of inequality must be approached with a well specified multivariate model after describing paglin s procedure in the next section we challenge his measure in section ii in section iii paglin s interpretation of policy relevant inequality is questioned and in section iv the implications of the paglin gini for the equity of the transfer system are analyzed section v is a summary of our critique

household consumption smoothing through ethnic ties evidence from cote d ivoire abstract this paper investigates the hypothesis that households in cote d ivoire take part in spatially diversified risk sharing arrangements with members of their own ethnic group empirical tests are presented using several estimation methods to deal with heteroscedasticity measurement error and extreme value problems to examine whether results are robust across estimation procedures the hypothesis of complete risk sharing within ethnic groups is rejected however there appears to be some partial insurance performed by individual households with other members of the same ethnic group particularly for the households residing in the regions least likely to have access to formal financial arrangements

risk crop choice and savings evidence from tanzania rural households engaged in agricultural activities face considerable risks in their income process these income risks are especially important if they result in consumption fluctuations this is likely if insurance and credit markets are absent one possible strategy for household is to take up low risk activities even if they imply lower returns such response cannot be viewed independently from the other options available to households to reduce consumption fluctuations this paper focuses on the importance of liquid asset formation for risk taking behaviour by households an intertemporal model of consumption under liquidity constraints is developed in which households can choose between income activities with different returns and riskiness it shows that if liquid asset holdings are large providing a buffer for consumption shortfalls then households will be more willing to take up high risk activities evidence based on survey data from shinyanga district tanzania is presented consistent with this prediction this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

prices credit markets and child growth in low income rural areas in this paper it is argued that fluctuations in child growth in rural areas of bangladesh during and after severe floods in i988 can provide insight into the structure of credit markets a model of intertemporal resource allocation is developed and euler equations relating growth patterns of children to the cost of borrowing by household are then derived from the model the evidence indicates that although some of the variation in growth patterns over the relevant period may be attributed to variation in illness and the price of rice growth patterns for children in landless households were influenced by credit market imperfections this paper links two prominent strands of research in economic development the first strand examines the extent to which households in poor rural economies are able to protect themselves from the adverse weather and other shocks that importantly influence earnings in underdeveloped areas while it has long been thought that credit market imperfections and other forms of market failure make it difficult for poor individuals in these economies to smooth consumption both within and across years there remains some question about the magnitude and pervasiveness of these imperfections while there is evidence that fluctuations in economic conditions result in inefficient allocation of resources e g morduch 1990 rosenzweig and wolpin i993 some recent papers have emphasised the fact that consumption patterns of households in the same village comove in a manner consistent with the idea that a substantial fraction of idiosyncratic variation in income is effectively

moral hazard and nonmarket institutions dysfunctional crowding out or peer monitoring the authors examine a situation in which insurance is characterized by moral hazard when market insurance is provided supplementary mutual assistance between family and friends unobservable to market insurers will occur when nonmarket insurers have no better information than market insurers the mutual assistance not only crowds out market insurance but is also harmful and therefore dysfunctional alternatively when nonmarket insurers can observe each other s effort perfectly mutual assistance is beneficial these results point to the potential importance of peer monitoring mechanisms in mitigating moral hazard copyright 1991 by american economic association

biofuels and food security micro evidence from ethiopia abstract there is considerable controversy about the impact of biofuels on food security in developing countries a major concern is that biofuels reduce food security by increasing food prices in this paper we use survey evidence to assess the impact of castor production on poor and food insecure rural households in ethiopia about 1 3 of poor farmers have allocated on average 15 of their land to the production of castor beans under contract in biofuel supply chains castor production significantly improves their food security they have fewer months without food and the amount of food they consume increases castor cultivation is beneficial for participating households food security in several ways by generating cash income from castor contracts they can store food for the lean season castor beans preserve well on the field which allows sales when farmers are in need of cash or food spillover effects of castor contracts increases the productivity of food crops increased food crop productivity offsets the amount of land used for castor so that the total local food supply is not affected

nonmarket institutions for credit and risk sharing in low income countries the design credit and risk institutions in low income countries provides one of the most exciting testing grounds for theories of contracting with imperfect information and limited enforcement this paper reviews some of the recent literature with a special focus on nonmarket institutions that cope with risk and provide credit this literature attempts to bring together insights from economic theory especially information economics contract theory and mechanism design theory however it is also applied being motivated by the circumstance of the poor countries that their authors have visited and studied

asset smoothing consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints abstract a growing literature asks whether low wealth agents can accumulate assets over time or whether they are trapped in poverty this paper develops a stochastic dynamic programming model with endogenous asset price risk to explore savings and portfolio decisions in a resource poor environment characterized by risk and subsistence constraints optimal portfolio strategies are found to bifurcate despite divisible assets and fully rational agents wealthier agents acquire a higher yielding portfolio and pursue conventional consumption smoothing poorer agents acquire a less remunerative portfolio and pursue asset smoothing rather than consumption smoothing asset based risk coping thus results in positive correlation between initial wealth and portfolio rate of return

systemic risk reinsurance and the failure of crop insurance markets without affordable reinsurance private crop insurance markets are doomed to fail because systemic weather effects induce high correlation among farm level yields defeating insurer efforts to pool risks across farms using an empirical model of the u s crop insurance market we find that u s crop insurer portfolios are twenty to fifty times riskier than they would be otherwise if yields were stochastically independent across farms we also find that area yield reinsurance contracts would enable crop insurers to cover most of their systemic crop loss risk reducing their risk exposure to levels typically experienced by more conventional property liability insurers copyright 1997 oxford university press

consumption insurance an evaluation of risk bearing systems in low income economies the hypothesis of full risk sharing can be taken to data from low income countries and evaluate formal and informal financial systems in many contexts idiosyncratic risks are high so credit insurance arrangements could be beneficial statistical tests reveal that households in southern india take advantage of these possibilities villages in cote d ivoire and countries in thailand do not do as well the paper includes an empirical description of the devices used to smooth consumption and a theoretical discussion of private information and incentives on ideal operating systems the full information and mechanism design frameworks provide benchmarks for policy analysis

biofuel development in ghana policies of expansion and drivers of failure in the jatropha sector abstract biofuel development was mainly promoted in several parts of africa as an energy security or rural development strategy jatropha was the biofuel feedstock that received the most interest across africa from investors however jatropha expansion gave rise to a number of contested issues which produced conflicts winners and losers access to land was at the heart of several of these conflicts though some success stories of individual jatropha projects have been documented the overwhelming majority of these projects in africa have either collapsed or faced significant difficulties understanding the reasons behind the failure of the jatropha sector is an important gap in the academic literature while the lessons learnt from failed projects could inform future policies and practices this literature review synthesizes the key drivers of failure of the jatropha sector in ghana as identified in the literature and complemented through site visits and expert interviews it identifies a number of reasons behind the failure of individual jatropha projects such as poor business planning institutional barriers limited community participation unfair compensation practices obstacles posed by civil society and unconstructive involvement of chiefs the findings indicate the systemic nature of these problems as they often worked synergistically to catalyse the collapse of many jatropha projects in ghana re vitalising the biofuel and especially the jatropha industry is virtually impossible given the current challenges this would require a renewed political interest in ghana particularly to deal with the deficits of the land administration institutions

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

biofuels in sub sahara africa drivers impacts and priority policy areas there has been a growing interest in jatropha and sugarcane based biofuels across sub sahara africa biofuel expansion in the region reflects policy concerns related to energy security poverty alleviation and economic development however biofuels have also been linked to numerous environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as ghg emissions water availability pollution deforestation biodiversity loss poverty alleviation energy security loss of access to land and food security to name just a few yet there is a an insufficient understanding of these impacts and their synergies in sub sahara africa and b a lack of policies that could regulate the biofuel sector and ensure its viability while at the same time preventing its negative impact the aim of this literature review is to synthesize the current knowledge about biofuel impacts in africa and to identify priority policy areas that should be targeted for enhancing biofuel sustainability in the continent the findings of this review indicate that biofuel impacts can be positive or negative depending on several factors such as the feedstock the environmental socio economic context of biofuel production and the policy instruments in place during biofuel production use and trade in most cases there are significant trade offs but at least part of the negative impacts can be mitigated through careful planning the incomplete and piecemeal understanding of these trade offs combined with agronomic institutional and market failures are currently the most important barriers for the viability and sustainability of biofuel investments in the continent

wealth risk and activity choice cattle in western tanzania abstract imperfect credit markets force households to use their savings for investment profitable activities often require lumpy investments limiting entry by poorer households resulting in increasing welfare differences in tanzania cattle are a profitable but lumpy investment and a liquid asset for consumption smoothing richer households own substantial cattle herds while poorer households specialize in low return low risk activities a dynamic programming model and simulations are presented to analyze entry into asset accumulation under income risk the evidence suggests that households with lower endowments are less likely to own cattle and returns to their endowments are lower

mutual insurance as an elusive concept in traditional rural communities during the last two decades economists have paid increasing attention to the role of informal risk sharing arrangements as a privileged way through which traditional rural communities can achieve a significant degree of protection against income fluctuations and other hazards beyond their control this article however argues that when they enter into such arrangements members of these communities are guided by a principle of balanced reciprocity they expect a return from any contribution or payment they make rather than by a true logic of mutual insurance more precisely they do not conceive of insurance as a game where there are winners and losers and where income is redistributed between lucky and unlucky individuals none the less traditional agrarian societies have proven able to develop a restricted range of sustainable forms of mutual insurance that avoid the aforementioned problem

addressing the renewable energy financing gap in africa to promote universal energy access integrated renewable energy financing in malawi abstract the sustainable energy for all initiative is a global initiative launched by the united nations secretary general in 2012 with a goal of providing universal access to modern energy services by 2030 to achieve this goal substantial financial and technological investments will be required at a rate far exceeding historical levels sub saharan africa has a 30 5 electrification rate and policy reform issues to improve electrification have been poorly implemented thereby sprinkling doubt as to whether the region would be able to achieve 100 access to electricity for all by the year 2030 sub saharan africa faces a tough challenge in order to achieve universal access to modern energy services since the region fails to attract energy sector investments there is also a general perception that the region contributes very little to global greenhouse gas emissions hence offers few opportunities to reduce these emissions consequently missing out on attracting climate finance projects a guarantee of power purchase has been shown to attract energy sector investments however guarantees of power purchases such as feed in tariffs are experiencing slow market growth in developing countries because of a range of technical regulatory and financial barriers using malawi as a case study of a developing country this review provides a perspective from a sub saharan africa least developed country as to the various electrification renewable energy deployment and climate change management challenges that still require urgent attention this study shows that despite the perceived regulatory and financial challenges malawi can integrate and use a combination of adapted price guarantee schemes cross subsidies and environmental taxes in order to support initiatives aimed at supporting the country s development of renewable energy sources and hence indirectly support the sustainable energy for all initiative

is there a viable market for area based crop insurance the performance of area yield insurance and farm level multiple peril crop insurance is analyzed for cotton and soybean production in georgia and south carolina the analysis improves on many previous studies by utilizing actual farm level yield data and by comparing the two types of insurance products not only for actuarially fair premium rates but also for actual unsubsidized and subsidized premium rates results suggest that even in heterogeneous production regions area yield insurance may be a viable alternative to farm level insurance when premium rates for farm level insurance contain large positive wedges

a role for capital markets in natural disasters a piece of the food security puzzle abstract natural disaster can create significant shocks in food supplies for small country states these events are very disruptive to the development process market based means for managing natural disaster risk are emerging for example despite the failure of government subsidized crop insurance around the world it is now possible to create index based contracts that would trigger when events that create serious crop failure problems occur this paper investigates the logic for such contracts and some basic designs using measures of rainfall

potential impacts of biofuel development on food security in botswana a contribution to energy policy abstract biofuel development continues to be a critical development strategy in africa because it promises to be an important part of the emerging bio economy however there is a growing concern that the pattern of biofuel development is not always consistent with the principles of sustainable development this paper assesses the potential of the impacts of biofuel development on food security in botswana drawing on informal and semi structured interviews the paper concludes that there is potential for the development of biofuels in botswana without adverse effects on food security due mainly to availability of idle land which accounted for 72 of agricultural land in the eastern part of the country in 2008 it is suggested that farmers could be incentivized to produce energy crops and more food from such land although it is hypothesized that the implementation of biofuel development programmes in other countries had an impact on local commodity prices during the period 2005 2008 in botswana it is argued that local biofuel production may not necessarily lead to a substantial increase in commodity food prices because land availability is not a major issue the paper makes policy recommendations for sustainable biofuel development in botswana

income diversification poverty traps and policy shocks in cote d ivoire and kenya abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural africa in cote d ivoire households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on farm and non farm opportunities due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation by contrast food for work transfers to households in kenya significantly reduced liquidity constraints enabling project participants to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non farm activities and higher return agricultural production patterns jointly these two shocks underscore the importance of liquidity market access and skill constraints to skilled non farm income sources to dynamic poverty traps in rural africa

risk financial markets and human capital in a developing country this paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation we examine how child school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural india to pinpoint market imperfections we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic as well as to anticipated and unanticipated income shocks our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self insurance but one which does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average

differential risk exposure and stochastic poverty traps among east african pastoralists in the pastoraland agropastoralsystems of east africa s arid and semi arid lands asal climatic shocks price volatility disease outbreaks and widespread violence beget frequent disruption of already fragile livelihoods last year s drought dramatically demonstrates that intense suffering recurs regularly in the asal in spite of significant humanitarian aid flows this article explores why that might be we draw on preliminary results of an ongoing quarterly survey in six sites in northern kenya seventeen years herd history data collected from boran pastoralists in southern ethiopia desta five years seasonaldata on land use and herd management decisions among gabra pastoralists in northern kenya mcpeak 2000a b and three years transactions level data on livestock markets in northern kenya barrett et al in the interest of brevity we present only a synthesis of findings from these and related studies that suggest how differences in pastoralists ubiquitous risk exposure create and sustain structuralpoverty traps from which many asal pastoralists are having a difficult time escaping

space for innovation for sustainable community based biofuel production and use lessons learned for policy from nhambita community mozambique abstract this paper provides insights and recommendations for policy on the opportunities and constrains that influence the space for innovation for sustainable community based biofuel production and use promoted by the mozambican government nhambita community established jatropha trials in 2005 initial results were promising but crop failure and the absence of organized markets led to scepticism amongst farmers we start from the idea that the promotion of community based biofuel production and use requires taking interactions between social cultural biophysical economic political and legal subsystems across different scales and levels of analysis through time into account our analysis demonstrates that heterogeneous farming strategies and their synergies at community level should be carefully assessed furthermore national and international political and legal developments such as the development of biofuel sustainability criteria influence the local space in which community based biofuel developments take place we conclude that ex ante integrated assessment and creating an enabling environment can enhance space for sustainable community based biofuel production and use it may provide insights into the opportunities and constraints for different types of smallholders and promote the development of adequate policy mechanisms to prevent biofuels from becoming a threat rather than an opportunity for smallholders

biofuel developments in mozambique update and analysis of policy potential and reality abstract climate change rising oil prices and concerns about future energy supplies have contributed to a growing interest in using biomass for energy purposes several studies have highlighted the biophysical potential of biofuel production on the african continent and analysts see mozambique as one of the most promising african countries favorable growing conditions and the availability of land water and labor are mentioned as major drivers behind this potential moreover the potential of biofuel production to generate socio economic benefits is reflected in the government s policy objectives for the development of the sector such as reducing fuel import dependency and creating rural employment this article provides an overview of biofuel developments in mozambique and explores to what extent reality matches the suggested potential in the country we conclude that biofuel developments mainly take place in areas near good infrastructure processing and storage facilities where there is skilled labor available and access to services and goods moreover our analysis shows the need to timely harmonize current trends in biofuel developments with the government s policy objectives as the majority of existing and planned projects are not focusing on remote rural areas and in absence of domestic markets principally target external markets

shocks and their consequences across and within households in rural zimbabwe abstract increasing attention is now being paid to poverty dynamics in developing countries this work links the extent to which households smooth consumption or smooth assets given income shocks the empirical evidence on the churning of households in and out of poverty and the possibility that temporary shocks can have permanent consequences using longitudinal data from rural zimbabwe this paper extends the discussion of these issues by disaggregating the impact of shocks by levels of asset holdings by disaggregating the impact of shocks on individual level welfare and by assessing the extent to which such shocks have permanent consequences by doing so it assesses the validity of distinguishing between asset and consumption smoothing and provides insights into whether poverty dynamics assessed at the household level provide an adequate picture of dynamics at the individual level

biofuel production and its impact on food security in low and middle income countries implications for the post 2015 sustainable development goals abstract the post 2015 sustainable development goals sdgs aim to strengthen the achievements of the millennium development goals mdgs there are 17 sdgs the first two tackle ending poverty and hunger as well as food insecurity under nutrition and sustainable agriculture to address these goals requires eradicating chronic hunger this paper examines challenges associated with biofuel production and how they relate to sdgs and their targets we mainly focus on challenges associated with biofuel production not adequately addressed in the sdgs it draws from a range of peer reviewed and grey literature to advance the understanding of how biofuel production will impact the post 2015 development agenda the findings suggest that increasing use of food crops to produce biofuels in the united states european union japan and brazil has been one important element in explaining the steady rise in staple food prices since 2000 while this is a potential threat to food and nutrition security in low and middle income countries biofuel production also offers significant opportunities in low income countries there are several challenges to the development and harnessing of biofuels these include 1 the interaction between biofuel production and climate change 2 biofuel production and foreignisation of land 3 food wastage 4 poor governance and limited production capacity 5 biofuel production within a weak and fragmented policy framework 6 biofuel production land tenure and socio economic impacts 7 biofuel production and conflicts and 8 biofuel production and deforestation for the post 2015 sustainable development agenda to have an impact strong actions are required to protect rural communities as well as nurture the biofuels industry this should be matched by commensurate investments in food and nutrition security and transparent public private partnerships this calls for strong and pro poor policies on feedstock farming processing and trading such policies must address the rhetoric of stakeholder participation in land use management

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

integrated assessment of sustainability trade offs and pathways for global bioenergy production framing a novel hybrid approach abstract current controversies and debates on bioenergy production in the areas of greenhouse gases emission reduction food and energy security social exclusion and welfare erosion and ecosystem deterioration attest to the challenges which the bioenergy sector has to overcome to achieve its global production potentials because it is yet an evolving sector the sustainability of bioenergy production in different regions is very elusive experiences show that bioenergy policies in one region can have impacts not only on its own but also on other regions social economic and ecological sustainability it is thus important to assess development pathways for bioenergy to exploit the potential benefits and forestall any unnecessary costs this paper frames a novel hybrid approach for assessing bioenergy potentials for regions with diverging economic social and ecological systems the approach is based on a conceptual framework that takes into account trade offs decisions on sustainability goals and production options in the assessment of bioenergy pathways it combines different empirical techniques for the systematic investigation of trade offs and pathways including fuzzy logic conjoint logit and path analyses to show the relevance and utility of these techniques for the integrated assessment of trade offs and pathways in bioenergy development we illustrated their application using results and data from previous related studies

biofuels development in sub saharan africa are the policies conducive this paper analyses national regional and international biofuels policies and strategies to assess whether these policies promote or undermine the development of biofuels sector in africa despite having a huge comparative advantage in land labour and good climatic conditions favourable for the growing of energy crops few countries in sub saharan africa have included biofuels strategies in their energy or national development policies further results show that while developed countries commit huge financial resources for research technology development and the provision of tax incentives to both producers and consumers there is little government support for promoting biofuels in africa although the consequences of biofuels on food supply remain uncertain the mandatory blending of biofuels with fossil fuels by industrialized countries will create demand for land in africa for the growing of energy crops for biofuels this paper urgently calls upon national governments in sub saharan africa to develop appropriate strategies and regulatory frameworks to harness the potential economic opportunities from biofuels sector development while protecting the environment and rural communities from the adverse effects of land alienation from the mainstream agriculture towards the growing of energy crops for biofuels at the expense of traditional food crops

the geographic and sectoral patterns of large scale farmland investments in sub saharan africa following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s sub saharan africa has become one of the largest recipients for large scale farmland investments while much has been written on the phenomenon scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers employing strict data quality requirements this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub saharan africa findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform moreover the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives

insurability and moral hazard in agricultural insurance markets pareto optimal and constrained pareto optimal all risk insurance contracts are studied conditions required for emergence of competitive insurance markets are isolated and discussed full insurance contracts are shown to be dominated by contracts involving coinsurance and deductibles if insurers are pseudo risk averse the effect of moral hazard on all risk agricultural insurance indemnity schedules is examined results for indemnity schedules under moral hazard and constant absolute risk aversion show that providing farmers with the incentives to take appropriate actions may imply lower deductibles in the presence of moral hazard than in the absence of moral hazard

rural credit markets and institutions in developing countries lessons for policy analysis from practice and modern theory this article presents evidence of the failure of government intervention in rural credit markets of ldcs in the past three decades it then shows how lessons for policy analysis can be drawn from modern theory particularly those theories focussing on credit rationing in competitive markets and interlinking of credit contracts with labor and land contracts the article outlines the policy implications of these theories and finds them insufficient to account for the empirical evidence it contends that a more systematic and rigorous analysis of institutions and institutional environments is essential for understanding and implementing effective policy reforms of rural credit markets it presents suggestions for undertaking such an analysis

equilibrium credit rationing of small farm agriculture it is often argued that externally imposed contractual restrictions lead to inequitable credit rationing this paper argues that unrestricted laissez faire markets may also inequitably ration credit a formal model which grants borrowers autonomy in credit application and use demonstrates that adverse incentive and selection effects may cause banks to endogenously impose interest rate restrictions and ration small farms out of the credit market consequently liberalization of financial markets may be insufficient to guarantee small farms access to credit

a review of social sustainability considerations among eu approved voluntary schemes for biofuels with implications for rural livelihoods the rapid expansion of biofuel production and consumption has raised concerns over the social and environmental sustainability of biofuel feedstock production processing and trade the european union eu has thus balanced its commitment to biofuels as one option for meeting its renewable energy targets with sustainability criteria for economic operators supplying biofuels to member states seven voluntary eu sustainability schemes were approved in july 2011 as a means to verify compliance while mandated sustainability criteria have a strong environmental focus a number of these voluntary schemes have social sustainability as a significant component of the requirements put forward for achieving certification as several of these voluntary schemes are incipient thereby limiting evidence on their effectiveness in practice this analysis is based on a comparative analysis of the substantive content or scope of these schemes and the likely procedural effectiveness of the same findings show that while some schemes have considerable coverage of social sustainability concerns poor coverage of some critical issues the presence of schemes lacking any social sustainability requirements and gaps in procedural rules are likely to undermine the likelihood that social sustainability is achieved through these schemes or the eu sustainability policies lending credibility to them