smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

new labour at work long term unemployment and the geography of opportunity new labour has placed great faith in active labour market policies to address problems of long term unemployment and poverty this paper considers the effectiveness of welfare to work programmes in light of persistent regional employment disparities within the uk it is argued that the government has proceeded from a flawed analysis of the causes and magnitude of long term unemployment framing the issue in terms of worklessness and neglecting demand side concerns of job availability and job quality

long term unemployment the invention of hysteresis and the misdiagnosis of structural unemployment in the uk this paper investigates the empirical basis for the belief that unemployment makes people less employable and that the existence of a pool of long term unemployed people is therefore in itself a barrier to full employment drawing on data for great britain from the 1940s to the present day it shows that this idea has arisen through misinterpretations of the statistical evidence the resulting policies besides diverting resources from the demand side pro grammes appropriate to the true situation of structural unemployment appear to have created a problem of the kind they were intended to address by encouraging unemployed people to move onto sickness benefits

the economics of smallholder organic contract farming in tropical africa summary the paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming for smallholders and of adoption of organic agricultural farming methods in a tropical african context the comparison in both cases is with farming systems that are organic by default survey data from a large organic coffee contract farming scheme in uganda are reported and analyzed using a standard ols regression and a full information maximum likelihood fiml estimate of the heckman selection model the analysis finds that controlling for a range of factors there are positive revenue effects both from participation in the scheme and more modestly from applying organic farming techniques

vertical coordination financial structure and the changing theory of the firm developments for evaluating these changes including the relationships to financial structure the theoretical developments include contributions from the economics of organizations stiglitz 1991 agency relationships jensen and meckling transactions cost economics williamson 1979 1985 incomplete contracting hart 1988 asymmetric information and financial contracting 1 these theoretical developments provide rich opportunities to apply new interesting concepts toward understanding and evaluating the changing managerial and organizational environment in agriculture

job seeker s allowance jsa benefit sanctions and labour market outcomes in britain 2001 2014 the dominant view among british policy makers is that benefit sanctions for the unemployed who are claiming the job seeker s allowance jsa are effective at increasing flows from unemployment into sustainable employment this paper tests this theory using aggregate cross sectional data for great britain for the period may 2001 to december 2014 descriptive analysis found the relationship between sanctions and labour market outcomes was ambiguous while trends in labour market outcomes were highly correlated with labour market demand multivariate svar time series analysis controlling for labour market demand found evidence that changes in the threat and use of sanctions had a positive impact on flows into work in the short run but not in the long term and had no definitive impact on ilo unemployment at all interrupted time series analyses suggest we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the impact of introduction of a new jsa sanctions regime in october 2012 with higher financial penalties associated with being sanctioned had no impact on flows into work from jsa in britain intensifying the use of sanctions and introducing harsher penalties associated with being sanctioned has been largely ineffective at increasing flows from jsa into sustainable employment given the negative financial and social impacts of sanctions on those affected and the lack of evidence of a sustained positive impact on employment the basis for the new sanctions policy is unclear

food quality changes and implications evidence from the rice value chain of bangladesh summary in dhaka the share of the less expensive coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and it thus seems that the role of rice as only a cheap staple food is being redefined the increasing demand for the more expensive varieties is seemingly associated with a more important off farm food sector in particular milling retailing and branding as well as a transformed milling industry we further find that the labor rewards for growing different rice varieties are not significantly different and that farmers do not benefit directly from consumers increased willingness to pay for rice

contract farmer and poultry farm efficiency in bangladesh a data envelopment analysis the objective of this article is to determine the efficiency of the poultry farm in bangladesh and to assess the influence of contract farming system using a data envelopment analysis seventy five commercial poultry farms 25 and 50 independent and contract farms respectively were randomly selected the results reveal that efficiency scores vary across sample farms to explain some of these variations the efficiency scores were regressed on some human capital variables and farming system using a tobit model the study also estimates elasticities to provide the information on the magnitude of the influence of variables on technical efficiency te allocative efficiency ae and economic efficiency ee the results show that the contracting system is positively and significantly related to the farm s te ae and ee this is expected because under contractual agreement in order to obtain sufficient supplies of the right quality of poultry meat at the right time the company provides technical know how

rice farmers preferences for fairtrade contracting in benin evidence from a discrete choice experiment abstract private standards such as fairtrade have emerged as a response to consumer civil society and corporate concerns about the production conditions of imported food many studies have investigated the welfare implications of smallholder participation in fairtrade schemes and consumers willingness to pay for fairtrade and other labelled products on the other hand no study has yet investigated farmers preferences for fairtrade and other private standards such insights would be valuable to improve the efficiency of certification schemes and ensure that they are tailored to farmers needs using a choice experiment this study investigates the preferences of smallholder rice farmers in benin for fairtrade and organic standards and compares the value of three types of contracts domestic fairtrade and fairtrade organic the results indicate that farmers positively value contracts but prefer domestic over fairtrade contracts because the former involve fewer requirements at current market prices farmers are willing to accept a fairtrade contract that includes fertiliser and child labour restrictions and a social premium but they are not willing to accept a fairtrade organic contract that completely prohibits chemical input use the results imply that adding organic requirements to fairtrade contracts may undermine the adoption and spread of fairtrade certification in the beninese rice sector

small farmers and big retail trade offs of supplying supermarkets in nicaragua summary in nicaragua and elsewhere in central america small scale farmers are weighing the risks of entering into contracts with supermarket chains we use unique data from cooperatives supplying supermarkets to study the effect of supply agreements on producers mean output prices and price stability we find that prices paid by the domestic retail chain approximate the traditional market in mean and variance while mean prices paid by walmart are significantly lower than the traditional market however the walmart contract is found to systematically reduce price volatility we find some evidence however that farmers may be paying too much for this contractual insurance against price variation

an analysis of contract farming in east java bali and lombok indonesia this article examines the emergence and benefits of contract farming in east java bali and lombok indonesia after a general review of contract farming in these regions three contracts for seed corn in east java seed rice in bali and broilers in lombok are described and analyzed using key informant interviews and household survey data a review of the contracts suggest that there is a wide array of contract types and this is related to the technical requirements of production and the associated costs probit analysis is used to identify factors contributing to smallholder participation in farm contracts and a two stage estimation process used to measure the effects of farm contracts on gross margins and labor use results indicate participation in contracts is influenced by farm size and other factors such as smallholder s age education and participation in farm groups contracts increased returns to capital for the seed corn and broiler contracts but not for the seed rice contract all three contracts influenced the types of labor used however none of them influenced total farm employment

the transition to modern agriculture contract farming in developing economies recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture in this article we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in bo

incomplete contracts and the theory of the firm what have we learned over the past 25 years incomplete contracts and the theory of the firm what have we learned over the past 25 years

the economics of new labour policy and performance this paper reviews the foundations of new labour s economic policies and the performance of the economy since 1997 it argues that new labour s policies have evolved from thatcherism and that it has largely embraced the tenets of neo liberalism new labour has rejected most aspects of keynesianism and its policies have eschewed the use of active demand management policies but it has been the high levels of demand in particular consumption expenditure that have driven economic growth in the uk and which have ensured that as yet new labour has not faced the problems of dealing with a major economic downturn

developing agricultural markets in sub saharan africa organic cocoa in rural uganda abstract this article investigates the process of development in a traditional african export market focusing on a contract farming scheme for organic cocoa in rural uganda based on a repeated household survey we measure the impact of the scheme on the income of participants and the economic mechanisms behind these effects we find substantial benefits from the scheme driven primarily by the establishment of credible incentives for farmers to adopt technologies which improve cocoa quality there is also evidence of broader trends of market deepening and increased productivity probably due to positive spillovers

contract farming in staple food chains the case of rice in benin abstract in this paper we analyze the impact of smallholder participation in a contract farming scheme in the rice sector in benin we use data from a cross sectional farm household survey and different propensity score matching estimations to reveal how participation in a contract farming scheme affects smallholder rice production we find that contract farming results in expansion of the rice area intensification of rice production increased commercialization of rice and higher farm gate prices and ultimately contributes to rice output growth and increased income our findings imply that contract farming can contribute to upgrading the rice supply chain and the development of the rice sector in benin promoting and supporting the spread of contract farming schemes in the sector might be an effective way to contribute to reaching the government goals of expanding rice production to become self sufficient and improving rice quality to compete with imported rice while there is a large empirical literature on contract farming in high value and commodity export sectors studies on contract farming in staple food sectors are very scarce our results document that contract farming for staple food crops can be sustainable and benefit smallholder farmers which is against theoretical expectations that contracting for staple food crops is not feasible because of contract enforcement problems that stem from a low value of produce low storage and transport costs and a larger number of buyers in the chain our study contributes to understanding the role that contract farming might play in the much needed upgrading of domestic and staple food crop sectors in developing countries

farmer participation in supermarket channels production technology and efficiency the case of vegetables in kenya supermarkets are gaining ground in agrifood systems of many developing countries while recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector impacts on productivity and efficiency have hardly been studied we use a meta frontier approach and combine this with propensity score matching to estimate treatment effects among vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels increases farm productivity in terms of meta technology ratios by 45 we also find positive and significant impacts on technical efficiency and scale efficiency supermarket expansion therefore presents opportunities for agricultural growth in the small farm sector which is crucial for poverty reduction in africa copyright 2012 oxford university press

the effects of governance modes on the energy matrix of andean countries this article addresses the consequences of different modes of energy governance on the energy matrix energy governance is understood as a regulation system of the energy related interplays between the state the society and the economy the energy matrix is a useful instrument for comparative policy analysis since it informs us about production and consumption trends by sources and sectors our central argument is that energy governance follows two different patterns one hierarchical and the other cooperative that are not necessarily determined by the initial factors allocation and produce different effects on the energy matrix hierarchical governance is based on centralized decision making and state centered development while co governance is based on decentralized decision making and market oriented development to develop this argument we compare the energy matrix from the five andean countries venezuela colombia ecuador peru and bolivia

modeling technology adoption in developing countries an analysis of technology adoption decisions by poor farmers is provided some possible empirical models for studying technology adoption are reviewed the issue of theoretical consistency is dealt with in terms of the costs of such consistency measured in data needs and model complexity and the benefits measured in terms of understanding the micro economic foundations of adoption

impact of contract farming on income linking small farmers packers and supermarkets in china summary this study compares contract and non contract growers of apples and green onions in shandong province china in order to explore the constraints on participation and the impact of contract farming on income we find little evidence that firms prefer to work with larger farms though all farms in the area are quite small using a heckman selection correction model we find that contract farming raises income even after controlling for observable and unobservable household characteristics these results suggest that contract farming can help raise small farm income though questions remain regarding the number of farmers that can be brought into such schemes 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

comparing contracts an evaluation of contract farming schemes in africa abstract the sufferings of so many small farmers in africa who produce on contract have been well recorded and analyzed yet it seems that such production will continue to expand can governments and nongovernment organizations ngos take any action to reduce the suffering we examine our own experience of contract farming in nigeria and south africa in the context of earlier research and draw attention to important issues which have received little attention in the literature notably staffing of schemes farmers previous experience with multinational national companies mncs water control and labor issues we make recommendations toward codes of practice which could be issued to companies regulators and small farmers

the geographical concentration of labour market disadvantage this paper argues that british welfare to work policies are inadequate given the geographical concentration of worklessness in northern regions and in cities and former coalfields while unemployment has been converging geographically inactivity has not all the welfare to work target groups youth unemployed long term unemployed lone parents the long term sick and partners of the unemployed have closely similar geographical distributions official arguments that there are adequate job vacancies everywhere are shown to be flawed the geography of worklessness is largely explained by the weakness of adjustment through migration and commuting to the loss of jobs in manufacturing and mining the cities being particularly affected by urban rural manufacturing shift policy needs to promote more relevant employment in high unemployment areas through increased spending on derelict land reclamation transport and other infrastructure the case for more supportive policies towards manufacturing should also be considered

limitations of contract farming as a pro poor strategy the case of maize outgrower schemes in upper west ghana summary contract farming cf arrangements have the potential to address market failures and improve technology adoption productivity and welfare in ghana government and donors use cf as a strategy for increasing adoption of new agricultural technologies and developing value chains yet to date there has not been a rigorous assessment of these cf schemes the focus in this paper is on different maize based cf schemes in the poorest and most remote region in ghana it assesses the profitability and potential impact of these cf schemes utilizing a unique plot level dataset that covers two periods of data and two maize plots scheme and non scheme per household and employing matching techniques and an instrumental variable approach to address selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity across farmers these are complemented by a community level survey in depth interviews with scheme operators and a series of key informant interviews results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases in addition a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to cf participation have high profits maize cf schemes also enabled market coordination and consistent supply of quality maize to downstream industries however on average the impact of the cf schemes on profitability is negative even when input diversion is accounted for yield increases are not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and the cost of capital under the schemes despite higher yields the costs to produce one metric tonne of maize under cf schemes are higher than on maize farms without cf schemes twice that of several countries in africa and more than seven times higher than that of major maize exporting countries the united states brazil and argentina sustainability of these cf schemes will largely depend on developing and promoting much improved varieties and technologies that boost yields in order to compensate for the high input and credit costs

globalization privatization and vertical coordination in food value chains in developing and transition countries food and agricultural commodity value chains in developing and transition countries have undergone tremendous changes in the past decades companies and property rights have been privatized markets liberalized and economies integrated into global food systems the liberalization and privatization initially caused the collapse of state controlled vertical coordination more recently private vertical coordination systems have emerged and are growing rapidly as a response to consumer demand for food quality and safety on the one hand and the farms production constraints caused by factor market imperfections in this article we 1 demonstrate the importance of these changes 2 discuss the implications for efficiency and equity and 3 provide empirical evidence on the effects in several developing and transition countries

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

ecuador s energy policy mix development versus conservation and nationalism with chinese loans abstract ecuador s energy policy faces a complex variety of political and economic objectives that are difficult to reconcile in a consistent manner ecuador is a small oil producer and exporter with significant renewable mainly hydropower resources hosting some of the richest biodiversity areas in the world part of which are inhabited by so far indigenous un contacted people being a developing country tensions arise between conservation aims and development imperatives as well as between resource nationalism and much needed foreign financing however the really limiting factor for the country s energy development seems to be its constraints in financing the government s development and redistributive policies resorting to chinese loans for oil may be part of the solution in the short term but it does not substitute for a more consistent energy policy ecuador s case illustrates the dilemmas of energy policy in natural resource rich developing countries when confronted with diverging political economy social environmental and macro financial goals

walk the talk private sustainability standards in the ugandan coffee sector abstractwe investigate the welfare and productivity implications of private sustainability standards in the coffee sector in uganda we use cross sectional household survey data and an instrumental variable method with instruments that pass weak identification and over identification restrictions we find that triple utz rainforest alliance 4c certification increases income and land and labour productivity and reduces poverty double fairtrade organic certification is found to be associated with higher producer prices but results in lower land and labour productivity and thereby fails to increase producer income and contribute to poverty reduction we conclude that private sustainability standards do not always live up the expectations they create towards consumers

wages for wives renegotiating gender and production relations in contract farming in the dominican republic abstract this study analyzes the intersection of gender and production relations in small scale contracting in nontraditional agriculture the case of the processing tomato industry in the dominican republic exemplifies patterns found throughout the region building on a critique of unitary household models i analyze the gendered relations mobilizing resources for contract farming as appears common contracting has heightened demand for women s farm labor contracting has simultaneously provided women with openings for contesting the appropriation of their unpaid labor and many women are claiming payment for work in contract farming this case demonstrates the importance of gender issues in informing contract farming debates and policy interventions

profits from participation in high value agriculture evidence of heterogeneous benefits in contract farming schemes in southern india abstract this paper assesses the variable impact of participation in high value agriculture through contract farming arrangements in southern india using survey data for 474 farmers in four commodity sectors gherkins papaya marigold and broiler an endogenous switching model is used to estimate net profits from participation findings suggest that average treatments effect vary widely across contract commodities papaya and broiler contracting offer clear net gains for participants whereas marigold contracting leaves participants worse off for gherkins while contracting holds net gains for participating farmers overall this is true of contracts with some firms but not others the standard deviations of point estimates of treatment effects are quite large indicating variability in profit gains even within the same commodity sectors thus notwithstanding the sign of average treatment effects contract farming arrangements have diverse impacts on income for individual farmers and these could have implications for sustained participation of farmers in high value agriculture

why do small scale producers choose to produce under contract lessons from nontraditional vegetable exports from zimbabwe summary this article explores the motivations behind the decision of small scale producers to grow nontraditional vegetables under contract for export based on a survey of small scale producers in zimbabwe four factors are identified as motivating contracting namely market uncertainty indirect benefits e g knowledge acquisition income benefits and intangible benefits respondents are clustered according to the relative importance of these factors in their contracting decision four clusters are identified and related to the characteristics of these farmers including size of the farm amount of land devoted to export crops access to alternative markets and the proportion of family income derived from export crops the results suggest that there are systematic differences between farmers in their decisions to contract which needs to be recognized in contract design and management 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

fair trade and free entry can a disequilibrium market serve as a development tool abstract the fair trade ft coffee initiative attempts to channel charity from consumers to poor producers via increased prices we show that the rules of the ft system permit this rent to be eliminated due to free entry and costly excess certification of output using data from an association of coffee cooperatives in central america we verify that expected producer benefits are close to 0 when we take into account the output that is certified but not sold as ft our results illustrate how free entry undermines the attempt at extending charity via a price distortion in an otherwise competitive market

buen vivir vs development ii the limits of neo extractivism like the entire andean region ecuador has an economic structure that is dependent on primary exports during the last boom in commodity prices the neo extractivist development strategy generated economic growth and simultaneously reduced inequality however this bonanza was not used to advance in economic diversification or for transition towards buen vivir sumak kawsay good living as postulated in the constitution and the national development plans we establish that neo extractivism is not compatible with buen vivir analysing three concrete aspects to this end the failure to fulfill the rights of nature and ecological sustainability the lack of advances in transforming the productive matrix insufficient results in matters of redistributive social policies

liberalization endogenous institutions and growth a comparative analysis of agricultural reforms in africa asia and europe thirty years ago a vast share of low and middle income countries was heavily state controlled the liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s had greatly different effects on growth in countries in africa asia and europe a comparative framework is used to document these differences and a model is developed to formally analyze how liberalization affects production and income distribution when the institutions that govern production and exchange are also affected hypotheses are derived for how endogenous institutional adjustments affect the growth response to liberalization these insights motivate a series of explanations for the differences in performance across regions and commodities following liberalization

the social performance and distributional consequences of contract farming an equilibrium analysis of the arachide de bouche program in senegal abstract this paper is an empirical analysis of the impact of a contract farming program in senegal we examine the access of poorer community members to contracts and the effect of the program on the income of participants the program performs very well on both counts participants and nonparticipants are indistinguishable by wealth measures and farmers increase their income substantially by participating in the program we attribute the former to the program s mobilization of local information through its use of village intermediaries permitting the substitution of social collateral for physical collateral and making the program more accessible to the poor

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

energy policy in the caribbean green economy context and the institutional analysis and design iad framework as a proposed tool for its development abstract market integration efforts of caribbean small island developing states have become transposed on the growing paradigm shift towards green economy pathways central to this is the challenge of implementing caribbean energy policy in a manner that is aligned with green economy ideals and face the realities of regional indebtedness and environmental impacts here we analyze the current state of the caribbean energy policy development arena and propose that the currently weak policy and institutional design regime might potentially benefit from the application of the institutional analysis and design iad model especially within the operational context of the green economy it allows us to identify current policy dilemmas bottlenecks and discrepancies and to disentangle some of them while offering up a way forward with others we do not so much offer distinct recommendations but focus more on delineating how to clear the pathway for sound policy intervention and outcomes by doing so we set forth a challenging agenda for future policy analysis research that will advance caribbean energy policy in more robust ways

smallholder participation in contract farming comparative evidence from five countries summary supermarkets specialized wholesalers processors and agro exporters are transforming the marketing channels into which smallholder farmers sell produce in low income economies we develop a conceptual framework with which to study contracting between smallholders and a commodity processing firm we then synthesize results from empirical studies of contract farming arrangements in five countries ghana india madagascar mozambique and nicaragua the resulting meta narrative documents patterns of participation the welfare gains associated with participation reasons for nonparticipation the significant extent of contract noncompliance and the considerable dynamism of these value chains as farmers and firms enter and exit frequently

ecuador s yasuni itt initiative the old and new values of petroleum abstract this article examines the financial mechanism currently known as the yasuni itt initiative by which ecuador would be compensated for not exploiting the reserves of heavy crude lying underneath the yasuni national park a biosphere reserve for humanity located in the amazon region an analysis of the ways in which the proposal is being debated is offered to illustrate the unique problems posed by the incorporation of natural capital in economic decisions a focus on the creative measurements and calculations offered by a range of social actors highlights the relevance of morally framed evaluations in defining the future economic use of the park i show how an anthropological perspective may complement ecological economics and various political and economic approaches to development policy and enrich our understanding of the specific challenges posed by the design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in latin american countries poor in financial capital but rich in biological diversity

finding missing markets and a disturbing epilogue evidence from an export crop adoption and marketing intervention in kenya in much of the developing world many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options that appear to be more profitable thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing this paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted by drumnet in kenya that attempts to help farmers adopt and market export crops drumnet provides smallholder farmers with information about how to switch to export crops makes in kind loans for the purchase of the agricultural inputs and provides marketing services by facilitating the transaction with exporters the experimental evaluation design randomly assigns pre existing farmer self help groups to one of three groups 1 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services 2 a treatment group that receives all drumnet services except credit or 3 a control group after one year drumnet services led to an increase in production of export oriented crops and lower marketing costs this translated into household income gains for new adopters however one year after the study ended the exporter refused to continue buying the cash crops from the farmers because the conditions of the farms did not satisfy european export requirements drumnet collapsed in this region as farmers were forced to sell to middlemen and defaulted on their loans the risk of such events may explain at least partly why many seemingly more profitable export crops are not adopted

contracting out solutions political economy of contract farming in the indian punjab abstract this paper examines the rationale practice and problems of contract farming in vegetable crops in the agriculturally developed indian punjab which has faced the problem of sustainability of growth since the early 1980s it is found that agribusiness firms deal with relatively large producers and their contracts which are biased against the farmer perpetuate the existing problems of the farm sector such as high chemical input intensity and social differentiation contracting has however led to higher farm incomes and more employment for labor there seems to be an inherent contradiction in the objectives of the contracting parties and those of the local economy

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

supermarkets farm household income and poverty insights from kenya summary the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries may have important implications for poverty and rural development while previous studies have compared farm profits between participants and non participants in supermarket channels wider income effects have hardly been analyzed moreover most existing studies do not account for structural differences between the two groups we address these issues by using endogenous switching regression and building on a survey of vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with a 48 gain in average household income which also contributes to poverty reduction to realize these benefits on a larger scale will require institutional support

energy conservation and sustainable economic growth the case of latin america and the caribbean this study examines the causal relationships among energy consumption economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in twenty countries from latin america and the caribbean region the methodology includes the use of phillips and perron pp tests a cointegration model with vector error correction modeling vecm and vector autoregression var with granger causality the study concludes that of the twenty countries analyzed only in four of them will it be possible to implement energy conservation polices without affecting their economic growth four others are not able to consider an energy conservation policy with economic growth and the other twelve should focus on their economic growth before adopting any conservation policies energy efficiency was found in this region especially in the countries which have both cointegration and short term equilibrium

spillovers from high value agriculture for exports on land use in developing countries evidence from madagascar high value agriculture for exports is increasingly important in developing countries in a case study of contract farming for exports of vegetables from madagascar strong spillover effects of these trade opportunities on land use are found to exist using a matched plot sampling design the productivity of rice the main domestically consumed staple is shown to be two thirds higher on fields that were contracted during the off season for the production of vegetables this increase in yields is linked to an increase of soil fertility due to the application of fertilizer and compost which farmers did not use prior to the contracts although agricultural output goes up significantly labor productivity stays the same suggesting that there is greater labor absorption on existing land and the diffusion of this type of technology at a larger scale throughout madagascar would be expected to substantially decrease incentives to deforest by increasing wages and to boost productivity of existing lands relative to newly deforested ones

the commodification of nature and socio environmental resistance in ecuador an inventory of accumulation by dispossession cases 1980 2013 abstract this article aims to advance understanding of the relationship between social metabolism the commodification of nature local regime changes and patterns of resistance to accumulation by environmental dispossession during the most recent phase of global capitalism ecuador is a resource rich periphery country that has moved after 2007 from a neoliberal to a post neoliberal policy regime by analyzing 64 socio environmental resistance cases in the period 1980 2013 we focus on the continuities and changes in the relationship between environmental dispossession and resistance under the two regimes we find that while resistance to agri food projects has diminished having enjoyed some success under during the post neoliberal regime resistance to infrastructure and mineral extraction projects has remained steady with the impacts from environmental dispossession remaining much like those observed before 2007 at the same time major social investments financed through natural resource extraction and export combined with the introduction of constraints on the media and public assembly have created a political climate in which the resistance observed during the neo liberal period is now a socially deviant behavior