Search results

The Ethiopian government is promoting large-scale agricultural investment in lowland regions of the country, claiming that the investment could improve livelihoods of the local people. The outcomes of the investment, however, have been a controversial issue in public and academic discourses. Particularly, studies that quantify the impact of such investment on the asset base of local people are extremely limited. The main purpose of this study is, therefore, to investigate the actual effect of the investment on the asset of the local people and inform policy decision.

This study employs a quasi-experimental research design and a mixed research approach. Data were collected from 342 households drawn through a systematic sampling technique and analysed by using multiple correspondence analysis and propensity score matching.

The study finds that the investment has a significant negative impact on the wealth status of affected households and deteriorated their asset base.

The results imply that inclusive and fair business models that safeguard the benefits of the investment hosting community and encourage a strong collaboration and synergy between the community and private investors are needed.

This study analyses the impact of large-scale agricultural investment on the asset of affected community based on various livelihood capital. In doing so, it significantly contributes to knowledge gap in the empirical literature. It also contributes to the ongoing academic and policy debates based on actual evidence collected from local community.

Despite intense debates about the outcomes of large-scale agricultural investment in developing countries, gender issues and employment effects of such investment on women empowerment are very thin in the literature. The main purpose of this article is, therefore, to examine the effect of women's access to income-earning jobs on their empowerment.

The authors used a quasi-experimental research design and a mixed research approach. The authors collected primary data from 65 employed and 85 unemployed women and ten key informants. Principal component analysis (PCA) and propensity score matching (PSM) techniques were used to construct indexes and assess employment effect.

The article finds that consistent with the argument of the resource in culture theory, women's employment in large-scale commercial farms does not have an effect on their empowerment level.

The result implies that the government should strengthen gender sensitization programs and facilitate the formation of well-organized and profitable alternative income generating activities for women in such ways that improve their empowerment.

This article assesses the effect of women employment on their empowerment and contributes to filling gaps in the empirical and theoretical literature. It could also contribute to academic and policy debates in the area of large-scale commercial farming based on the actual evidence.

One of the challenging factors in achieving sustainable growth is the inability of the Nigerian government to diversify the country's revenue base. This study aims to investigate the relationship between cash crop financing and agricultural performance in Nigeria.

Four crops were considered, namely, cotton, cocoa, groundnut and palm oil. The impact of cash crop finance shock on agricultural performance was investigated using the vector error correction model (VECM), while the long-run relationship was examined through the identification of long-run restrictions on the VECM.

The variance decomposition showed that financing shock is more sensitive to cause variation in aggregate employment than aggregate agricultural output in palm oil, while for cocoa, cotton and groundnut showed otherwise. The long-run structural equations exert a positive relationship between cash crop financing and agricultural performance, except for oil palm and cocoa financing that has a negative connection with agrarian employment.

The study is limited to the unavailability of data for agriculture sector capital utilisation, which was not used.

These results show that long-run benefit can be maximised by appropriate funding in cotton and groundnut production to promote sustainable growth.

The study examines the impact of cash crop financing on agricultural performance with the aim to promote sustainable growth in Nigeria using identified VECM.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on investigating labour productivity in the agricultural sector of Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries between the periods of 2010 and 2017.

The study adopted descriptive design. The sample size for this research includes 43 SSA nations. Measuring SSA nation’s agricultural productivity in this study was based on input and output factors relating to the labour resource utilisation between the periods of 2010 and 2017. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and panel regression analysis were carried out to examine labour productivity within the set periods.

The findings from the study suggest that labour productivity in the agricultural sector of SSA countries can be improved from its presently low state of productivity. The statistical analysis showed that between the periods of 2010 and 2013, only about 34.9 per cent of countries in the region were technically efficient in the utilisation of labour resources for productive use. More disturbing was that, from 2014 to 2017, labour productivity drooped to 11.6 per cent. Meanwhile, employment of labour in the agricultural sector revealed as low as 1.58 percentage to crop production index in the region. Notably, there is the potential of labour employment to derive as high as 80 per cent yield to the gross domestic product of economies in the SSA region.

Considering the strategic role of labour to the agricultural sector of SSA countries, there must be a stakeholders approach to stimulating the interest of the populace of these countries and getting them actively involved in the agricultural sector. This imply that government, investors, support agencies from developed economies and populace of the SSA nations must support the drive towards agricultural productivity of the SSA nations.

This study established a research agenda that involved a paradigm shift from the more rampant literature on foreign investments, agricultural research, rural livelihood and well-being, among others to focusing on issues that pertain to labour productivity for sustainable agricultural yields in SSA countries. Also, the methodology adopted in the study, such as application of DEA and regression analysis to panel data, shows a departure from single units of analysis adopted by existing studies.

This study aims to analyze the short-, medium- and long-term impacts of natural-resources-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) in the form of foreign multinational enterprise (MNE) land acquisitions on agricultural labor productivity in developing countries. The authors analyze if these land acquisitions disrupt fair and decent rural labor productivity or if the investments provide opportunities for improvement and growth. The influence of different country characteristics, such as economic development levels and governmental protection for the rural population, are acknowledged.

The study analyzes 570 land acquisitions across 90 countries between 2000 and 2015 via a generalized least squares regression. It distinguishes short- and long-term implications and the moderating role of a country’s economic development level and government effectiveness in implementing government protection.

The results suggest that natural resource-seeking FDI harms agricultural labor productivity in the short term. However, this impact turns positive in the long term as labor markets adjust to the initial disruptions that result from land acquisitions. A country’s economic development level mitigates the negative short-term impacts, indicating the possibility of finding alternative job opportunities in economically stronger countries. Government effectiveness does have no influence, presumably as the rural population in which the investment is partaking is in many developing countries, not the focus of governmental protectionism.

The findings provide interesting insights into the impact of MNEs on developing countries and particularly their rural areas that are heavily dependent on natural resources. The authors identify implications on employment opportunities in the agricultural sector in these countries, which are negative in the short term but turn positive in the long term.

Moreover, the findings also have utility for policymakers. The sale of land to foreign MNEs is not a passive process – indeed, developing country governments have an active hand in constructing purchase contracts. Local governments could organize multistakeholder partnerships between MNEs, domestic businesses and communities to promote cooperation for access to technology and innovation and capacity-building to support employment opportunities.

The authors urge MNE managers to establish new partnerships to ease transitions and mitigate the negative impacts of land acquisitions on agricultural employment opportunities in the short term. These partnerships could emphasize worker retraining and skills upgrading for MNE-owned land, developing new financing schemes and sharing of technology and market opportunities for surrounding small-holder farmers (World Bank, 2018). MNE managers could also adopt wildlife-friendly farming and agroecological intensification practices to mitigate the negative impacts on local ecosystems and biodiversity (Tscharntke et al., 2012).

The authors contribute to the debate on the positive and negative impact of FDI on developing countries, particularly considering temporality and the rural environment in which the FDI is partaking.

World agriculture faces enormous challenges in the coming decades. To feed the world adequately in 2050, agricultural production in developing economies will need to nearly double. Incremental production will mainly come from increases in yields or cropping intensities. This chapter focuses on the potential of genetically modified (GM) crops to contribute to agricultural productivity growth and poverty reduction in developing economies. On the basis of a comprehensive literature review of the most recent literature, we aim to shed light on (a) whether GM crops benefit farmers in developing economies and (b) whether GM crops that are currently in the research pipeline address future challenges for agriculture. The first part of the chapter reviews farm-level impacts of GM crops in developing economies. The second part discusses the GM crop research pipeline. GM crop markets are expected to grow in the future but not to change dramatically. We conclude that GM crops benefited farmers, including resource-poor farmers, in developing economies, but benefits are location- and individual-specific. Addressing such complexities will be required to unlock technology potentials.

The study aims to analyse the role of finance in the agro-industrialisation nexus in Nigeria using annual data on manufacturing value added, agricultural value added and volume of finance availed to the agricultural sector from 1981 to 2015.

To establish the presence of a long-run relationship, the error correction model and bounds cointegration techniques are employed. Likewise, the model is augmented to test whether the associated relationship between industrial output and agricultural output depends on access to finance by farmers with the inclusion of an interaction term.

Some salient contributions to the literature are as follows: agriculture and finance are strong and positive predictors of industrialisation in the long run; in the short run, past realisations of industrial output and finance have significant asymmetric effects on industrial output; the explanatory power of agriculture decreases with the growth of the financial system; and the long-run results validate the role of finance in the agro-industrialisation nexus.

Given these findings, achieving growth in the agricultural sector that will induce desired industrialisation should be prioritised by the government through agencies such as the central bank, financial intermediaries and other stakeholders with a view to making agricultural financing a major concern for sustainable domestic consumption and industrial growth.

The purpose of this paper evaluates the effects of the Great Western Development (GWD) policy on agricultural intensification, land use, agricultural production and rural poverty in western China.

The authors collect county-level data on land use, input application, grain crop production, income, poverty and geophysical characteristics for 1996–2005 and use a quasi-natural experimental design of difference-in-differences (DD) in the empirical analysis.

Results suggest that the GWD policy significantly increased the grain crop production in western China. This increase resulted from higher yield, with increased fertilizer use and agricultural electricity consumption per hectare, and more land allocated to grow grain crops. The policy also increased land-use concentration, reduced crop diversity and alleviated rural poverty in western China.

This paper makes three contributions. First, the authors add to the growing literature on the GWD policy by evaluating its effects on farm household decisions and exploring the mechanisms and broad socioeconomic impacts in western China. Second, the authors take advantage of a quasi-natural experimental design to improve the identification strategy where input use, land allocation, production and off-farm labor participation are all endogenous in a farm household. Third, the authors explore a long list of variables within one integrated dataset to present a comprehensive picture of the impact of the GWD policy.