Improving Africa's Roads: Modelling Infrastructure Investment and Its Effect on Sectoral Production Behaviour

Schürenberg‐Frosch, Hannah

doi:10.1111/dpr.12058

Cited by 11 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Burke et al (2020) provide some evidence to link recent improvements in output marketing channels with the expansion of medium- and large-scale farmers in Zambia. Such effects may also result from improvements in rural infrastructure (Minten and Kyle, 1999; Schürenberg-Frosch, 2014). Increasing urban demand for food may also contribute to rising food prices, with positive direct effects for net sellers of food (and possibly also positive welfare impacts on poor net consumers, through unskilled rural labour market effects; Headey and Martin, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land and technology requirements for economically prosperous smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania

Harris,

Mausch,

Chamberlin

2024

Outlook Agric

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Making a living from a small farm is difficult in sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we quantify how difficult, using a simple, robust, relation between per capita daily income from farming (FPDI), land per capita and whole-farm net profitability per hectare. This relation allows the calculation of the land area required to generate various levels of household income as a function of farm performance. We use nationally representative household data for Tanzania to investigate the range of whole-farm profitability and to estimate an upper limit for it. For 6818 cases where households with land reported figures for gross crop and livestock revenues and for costs in any of the three years 2009, 2011 or 2013, actual median whole-farm net profitability was only $454/ha/y even without including the opportunity cost of family labour. When those were considered, median net profitability was negative $238/ha/y, i.e. a net loss. The maximum whole-farm profitability achieved was $4485/ha/y without family labour costs and $2742/ha/y with it. We evaluated actual and potential farm performance for their ability to generate a range of values of FPDI up to $10 per person per day. Most farms are not very profitable, particularly when household labour costs are considered, and few would be considered economically prosperous. Our analysis underscores the fact that improving their operations or adopting new technologies alone is unlikely to lift many smallholder farmers out of poverty in developing countries, given typical farm size distributions and reasonable assumptions about the realized economic returns to adoption of currently available agricultural technologies. While continued agricultural R&D investments are certainly worthwhile, such efforts alone will be insufficient to meaningfully address welfare needs of the world's rural poor. This suggests that agricultural development programs should expand their attention to incorporate off-farm and non-farm components of the rural economy.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land and technology requirements for economically prosperous smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania

Harris,

Mausch,

Chamberlin

2024

Outlook Agric

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Given the figures presented above, a budget equal to 2% of GDP could expand rural road density by 11.5%. An estimate of rural infrastructure‐marketing margins link for African countries (Schürenberg‐Frosch, 2014) shows an elasticity of 0.19 for the agricultural sector and 0.15 for the non‐agricultural sector. These elasticity values suggest that the new investment could reduce trade and transport margins in the agricultural sector by 2.2% (= 11.5%*0.19) and in the non‐agricultural sector by 1.7% (= 11.5%*0.15).…”

Section: Methods Of Analysis Data Simulations and Model Closuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public spending on agricultural productivity and rural commercialization: A comparison of impacts using an economy‐wide approach

Aragie

Balié

2020

Development Policy Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Motivation: Many developing countries have identified a set of strategic objectives and a longlist of investment areas to promote agricultural production and ensure food security. However, most of these countries lack the financial and technical capacity to execute all of the strategic objectives and investment areas, calling for a robust comparison of their effects. Purpose: Taking the case of Ethiopia as an example, this study employs an economy-wide model and assesses the relative efficiency of alternative investment options on agricultural performance and household welfare. These agricultural investment policies are evaluated under three alternative funding modalities: budget reallocation, donor financing and tax revenue. Approach and methods: To account for the linkage, and direct and indirect impacts of alternative public expenditure policies, this study adapts an economy-wide general equilibrium model for Ethiopia calibrated to a well disaggregated social accounting matrix representing the economic structure in 2010. Findings: Results show that the public expenditure options examined could cause significantly different production and welfare responses. Productivity-enhancing interventions such as input subsidy and irrigation development have superior output and welfare consequences, while policies aimed at smallholder commercialization such as infrastructural development aimed at cutting marketing margins have the least effect, suggesting a need to first prioritize relaxing supply constraints. This ranking of the agricultural policies is robust to the investment financing modalities considered. We, however, observe that financing these projects through income tax could be detrimental to the welfare of urban households. Policy implications: Results show that in a supply-constrained economy like that of Ethiopia, governments should focus on agricultural production and productivity-enhancing interventions (at least in the short run). Reallocation of public funds towards the policies examined should be a principal funding source as this results in superior outcomes. On the other hand, governments should avoid using income tax as a source of finance since this can be highly detrimental to the welfare of urban households.

show abstract

Promoting Economically Equitable Rural Road Development: Case Study Among Chinese Provinces

Jones

2018

Transp. in Dev. Econ.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Improving Africa's Roads: Modelling Infrastructure Investment and Its Effect on Sectoral Production Behaviour

Cited by 11 publications

References 25 publications

Land and technology requirements for economically prosperous smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania

Land and technology requirements for economically prosperous smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania

Public spending on agricultural productivity and rural commercialization: A comparison of impacts using an economy‐wide approach

Promoting Economically Equitable Rural Road Development: Case Study Among Chinese Provinces

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About