Welfare dynamics in rural Kenya and Madagascar

Barrett, Chris; Marenya, Paswel; McPeak, John G.; Minten, Bart; Murithi, Festus; Oluoch‐Kosura, Willis; Place, Frank; Randrianarisoa, Jean Claude; Rasambainarivo, Jhon; Wangila, Justine

doi:10.1080/00220380500405394

Cited by 267 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This means prioritizing investments in programs targeted at poor or vulnerable households, such as transfers of cash, vouchers, food, or other goods, as suggested by poverty dynamics research in the region (Barrett et al 2006;Kristjanson et al 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are food insecure smallholder households making changes in their farming practices? Evidence from East Africa

et al. 2012

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We explore the relationship between farming practice changes made by households coping with the huge demographic, economic, and ecological changes they have seen in the last 10 years and household food security. We examine whether households that have been introducing new practices, such as improved management of crops, soil, land, water, and livestock (e.g. cover crops, microcatchments, ridges, rotations, improved pastures, and trees) and new technologies (e.g. improved seeds, shorter-cycle and drought-tolerant varieties) are more likely to be food secure than less innovative farming households. Using data from a baseline household survey carried out in five sites and 700 households in four countries of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia) across a range of agricultural systems and environments, this study contributes to the evidence base of what smallholders are doing to adapt to changing circumstances, including a changing climate. Lessons from both similarities and differences across sites are drawn. This unique baseline study provides a wide range of indicators of activities and behaviors that will be monitored over time. We found that many households are already adapting to changing circumstances, and their changes tend to be marginal rather than transformational in nature, with relatively little uptake of existing improved soil, water and land management practices. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of food deficit months and innovation, i.e. the least food secure households are making few farming practice changes. This has very different policy and investment implications depending on assumptions made as to the direction of causality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are food insecure smallholder households making changes in their farming practices? Evidence from East Africa

et al. 2012

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“…N and P when applied together resulted in higher BCRs and the highest net benefits on all conversions, suggesting that soil fertility improvement strategies should strive to encompass both nutrients. Despite BCRs41 and positive net benefits of P and N and P fertilizer application, high fertilizer rates may not be affordable or may be too risky for many small farmers, and hence efforts to overcome fertility depletion in these systems are likely hampered by the high cost of fertilizer (Sanchez, 2002) relative to the average income of farmers in this region, which for 2003 was reported as 23 Kenya shillings per day (Barrett et al, 2006).…”

Section: Srmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutrient constraints to tropical agroecosystem productivity in long‐term degrading soils

Ngoze

Riha

Lehmann

et al. 2008

Global Change Biology

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Soil degradation is one of the most serious threats to sustainable crop production in many tropical agroecosystems where extensification rather than intensification of agriculture has occurred. In the highlands of western Kenya, we investigated soil nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) constraints to maize productivity across a cultivation chronosequence in which land-use history ranged from recent conversion from primary forest to 100 years in continuous cropping. Nutrient treatments included a range of N and P fertilizer rates applied separately and in combination. Maize productivity without fertilizer was used as a proxy measure for indigenous soil fertility (ISF). Soil pools of mineral nitrogen, strongly bound P and plant-available P decreased by 82%, 31% and 36%, and P adsorption capacity increased by 51% after 100 years of continuous cultivation. For the long rainy season (LR), grain yield without fertilizer declined rapidly as cultivation age increased from 0 to 25 years and then gradually declined to a yield of 1.6 Mg ha À1 , which was maintained as time under cultivation increased from 60 to 100 years. LR grain yield in the old conversions was only 24% of the average young conversion grain yield (6.4 Mg ha À1 ). Application of either N or P alone significantly increased grain yield in both the LR and short rainy (SR) seasons, but only application of 120 kg N ha À1 on the old conversion increased yield by 41 Mg ha À1 . In both SR and LR, there was a greater average yield increment response to N and P when applied together (ranging from 1 to 3.8 Mg ha À1 for the LR), with the greatest responses on the old conversions. The benefit-cost ratio (BCR) for applying 120 kg N ha À1 alone was o1 except on the old conversions, while BCRs were41 for applying 25 kg P ha À1 alone at all levels of conversion for both seasons. Application of both N (120 kg N ha À1 ) and P (25 kg P ha À1 ) on the old conversions resulted in the greatest BCRs. This study clearly indicates that maize productivity responses to N and P fertilizer are significantly affected by the age of cultivation and its influence on ISF, but that loss of productivity can be restored rapidly when these limiting nutrients are applied. Management strategies should consider ISF and economic factors to determine optimal N and P input requirements for achieving and sustaining profitable crop production on degraded soils.

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“…Given meager rainfall and infrastructure, the pastoralist populations who inhabit these areas rely heavily on extensive livestock grazing for their livelihood. Recent economic research, building on extensive prior ethnographic work, finds that east African pastoralists operate in an environment characterized by multiple herd size equilibria characteristic of poverty traps (Lybbert et al 2004, Barrett et al 2006. The prominent role that covariate climate risk plays in driving pastoral poverty traps (Santos and Barrett 2007) and growing concern that droughts are driving growing numbers of pastoralists into destitution (Sandford 2006, Little et al 2008, naturally motivated the recent development of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) against catastrophic herd loss in the northern Kenyan ASAL (Chantarat et al 2009a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Performance of Index Based Livestock Insurance: Ex Ante Assessment in the Presence of a Poverty Trap

et al. 2009

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This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a new index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product designed to compensate for area average predicted livestock mortality loss in northern Kenya, where previous work has established the presence of poverty traps. We simulate household-specific wealth dynamics based on a model parameterized using rich panel and experimental data from the region. The simulations allow us to investigate patterns of willingness to pay for asset index insurance that is imperfectly correlated with individuals' loss experience. The bifurcated livestock dynamics associated with the poverty trap gives rise to insurance valuation that is highly nonlinear in individual herd size. Willingness to pay among vulnerable groups who most need insurance are, on average, lower than commercially viable rates but subsidization of IBLI premiums appears to offer more cost-effective poverty reduction than direct transfers to the poor.

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Welfare dynamics in rural Kenya and Madagascar

Cited by 267 publications

References 31 publications

Are food insecure smallholder households making changes in their farming practices? Evidence from East Africa

Are food insecure smallholder households making changes in their farming practices? Evidence from East Africa

Nutrient constraints to tropical agroecosystem productivity in long‐term degrading soils

The Performance of Index Based Livestock Insurance: Ex Ante Assessment in the Presence of a Poverty Trap

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