Transforming Agriculture in South Asia

Transforming Agriculture in South Asia PDF Author: Ashok K. Mishra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000336271
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Debates about public expenditure in the agricultural sector have reopened in many developing and emerging economies because of high budget deficits and changes in public opinion. As a result, agricultural policy in many of these countries is beginning to take a more market-oriented approach to agrarian problems, most notably through the introduction of contract farming. This book explores the policy issues around contract farming and its transformative potential and addresses the lack of empirical research on this topic by focusing on South Asia: principally India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The book first addresses the effects of contract farming (vertical coordination) on productivity, food security indicators (yield, consumption expenditures, prices), employment and input usage. Then it draws lessons from the South Asian case studies on the impact of institutional changes, like contract farming, on income and food security of smallholder households. The core of the book includes case study chapters on several commodities that are produced under contract farming, including vegetables and fisheries in Bangladesh, low-value crops in Nepal and coffee in India. Other chapters also explore contracts, storage, input usage and technical efficiency in these cases. This book serves as an essential guide to academics, researchers, students, legislative liaisons and think tank groups interested in agrarian issues, agricultural economics and agricultural policy in emerging economies and particularly in South Asia.

Agricultural development: New perspectives in a changing world

Agricultural development: New perspectives in a changing world PDF Author: Otsuka, Keijiro, ed.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN: 0896293831
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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Book Description
Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition. The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality. Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World, with its unprecedented breadth and scope, will be an indispensable resource for the next generation of policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving agriculture for global wellbeing.

Agricultural transformation in Asia

Agricultural transformation in Asia PDF Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251344981
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Over the past few decades, some countries in Asia have been more successful than others in addressing poverty and malnutrition. The key question is what policies, strategies, legislation and institutional arrangements have led to a transformed agricultural sector, effectively contributing to poverty alleviation and addressing malnutrition. The great majority of national policymakers within and outside the Asia-Pacific region are keen to understand the causes of agricultural development and transformation in successful countries in Asia. A large number of studies have been conducted and some of them link specific public policies and interventions to successful agricultural transformation. However, there seems to be lack of focus on the policy, legislative and institutional environments that have enabled or impeded agricultural transformation in Asia. National policymakers are likely to benefit significantly from adequate and convincing information on successful and relevant experiences in successful transformation. Countries are interested in what their neighbours and peers have done, and why some have achieved impressive results. The main purpose of this study is to take stock of public sector experiences in facilitating and enabling agricultural transformation in selected countries in Asia. The study focuses on key public sector interventions, in particular policies, legislation and institutional innovations, because these areas have so far not been adequately researched.

Structural transformation in Southeast Asian countries and key drivers

Structural transformation in Southeast Asian countries and key drivers PDF Author: Bathla, Seema
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 45

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Book Description
This study’s objective is to examine the factors that have driven structural transformation (ST) in the Southeast Asian (SEA) economies and the policies supporting the process. It sets the stage by evaluating the ST in each country, quantifying the contribution of “within sector” and “structural change” to overall productivity growth and estimating the turning points (TPs) to gauge the prospects of income convergence. Eight SEA countries, undergoing a steady rate of economic growth —Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand (CLMVPMIT) are chosen for analysis. We find their progress on ST to be consistent with the theory and historical patterns experienced in several developed and developing countries. However, progress is diverse across these countries and lags behind developed countries, indicating that labor is not exiting agriculture as fast as agriculture’s share of value added has been declining. The ST has decreased from 49 percent in Thailand to almost 3 percent each in Cambodia and Malaysia during 1991 to 2016. Further, the contribution of within change to productivity, which was pivotal during the 1990s in each country is rather subdued during the 2000s, thereby giving comparative primacy to structural change. A relatively higher—57 to 80 percent—contribution of structural change in Cambodia and Lao PDR, together with productivity growth, may be explained by increasing migration and trade in nonagriculture products. We also find that while Lao PDR, Thailand, and Indonesia have reached their TPs, other nations, especially the poorer ones such as Viet Nam, Myanmar, and Philippines are predicted to take at least a decade towards this goal. Empirical analysis suggests ST in CLMVPMIT is positively driven by agricultural productivity, terms of trade, and public investments in infrastructure, with little role for rural to urban migration and market integration. Large inter-sectoral productivity differentials across SEA countries, other than in Cambodia and Malaysia, necessitates to accelerate agricultural disproportionate share of the labor force in agriculture through higher productivity.

Borneo Transformed

Borneo Transformed PDF Author: Jean-Francois Bissonnette
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9971695448
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Since the 1960s, Southeast Asia's agricultural sector has experienced phenomenal growth, with increases in production linked to an energy-intensive capitalization of agriculture and the rapid development of agrifood systems and agribusiness. Agricultural intensification and territorial expansion have been key to this process, with expansion of areas under cultivation playing an unusually important role in the transformation of the countryside and livelihoods of its inhabitants. Borneo, with vast tracts of land not yet under crops, has been the epicenter of this expansion process, with rubber and oil palm acting as the spearhead. Indonesia's Kalimantan provinces and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak have all undergone major changes but the time frames have varied, as have the crops involved. Agricultural expansion in Borneo is both an economic and a political process, and it has brought about profound socio-economic transformations, including deforestation, and development of communication networks. There has also been rapid population growth, much faster than in either Indonesia or Malaysia as a whole, with attendant pressures on employment, housing and social services. Until the end of the 20th century, agricultural expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia was largely state driven, with the goal of poverty reduction. Subsequently, as in Borneo, boom crop expansion has been taken over by private corporations that are driven by profit maximization rather than poverty reduction.

Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309177766
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Increased agricultural productivity is a major stepping stone on the path out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but farmers there face tremendous challenges improving production. Poor soil, inefficient water use, and a lack of access to plant breeding resources, nutritious animal feed, high quality seed, and fuel and electricity-combined with some of the most extreme environmental conditions on Earth-have made yields in crop and animal production far lower in these regions than world averages. Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia identifies sixty emerging technologies with the potential to significantly improve agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Eighteen technologies are recommended for immediate development or further exploration. Scientists from all backgrounds have an opportunity to become involved in bringing these and other technologies to fruition. The opportunities suggested in this book offer new approaches that can synergize with each other and with many other activities to transform agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia

Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia PDF Author: Meghnad Desai
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520053694
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Economic policy analysis of the relationship between the political power of local government and productivity in the agricultural sector in South Asia - analyses the impact of social change on sugar cane agricultural production, as well as historical aspects of power structures in India; examines economic implications of local level power configurations, esp. As regards farm-level decision making; discusses determinants and varieties of rural mobilization. References, statistical tables.

Agricultural Development in South Asia

Agricultural Development in South Asia PDF Author: Jasbir Singh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 678

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Book Description
Agricultural development in South Asia (a comparative study in the green revolution experiences) is a pioneer work of its own kind and unique in nature. Its salient features are: It is a comprehensive and self-contained study covering an analysis of determinants of agriculture and agricultural attributes -- so, a cause-effect analysis. Agricultural development regions and agro-ecological regions have been delineated, and specific recommendations have been made for redressing the regionalimbalances in levels of agricultural development in the South Asian countries--so a planning-oriented study. The study is based on field truthing, personal communications, district-by-district data etc. The data have been presented in maps enlightening patterns and dynamics of agricultural inputs and outputs, and the cartographic work is of high quality. So far, no such in-depth study has been conducted, covering only the primary activity of the sub-continent and highlighting the green evolution experiences--so, a study related to the then and now as regards agricultural inputs and outputs. It will be a study of great relevance to the SAARC nations for planning purposes and making master plans for reducing regional inequalities in agricultural performance levels. Since this work is a pioneer attempt and is based on the field work and district-by district data covering the green revolution period (1967-68 to 1987-88), it is a work of its own kind and unique in nature. The greatest inequality in the use of agricultural inputs within the borders of South Asia is responsible for agricultural development differences. These range from the poverty in densely populated Bangladesh to agriculturally high-speed Punjab-Haryana region in Northwestern India. Moreover, South Asia includes the cold empties of the high Himalayan ranges where agricultural development has a special meaning. The agricultural face of South Asia has changed at a different rate because the diffusion of green revolution technology was not a universal scale. As a consequence, four levels of agricultural development were observed, such as: Very high level development with high speed change; High/medium level development with high/medium speed change; Low level development with low speed change, and Very low level development with very low speed change. Therefore, it is no longer desirable to write only a static geography of agricultural development of South Asia, and it is also equally important, above, all to examine, explain, identify and understand the recognisable ceaseless patterns of change in agricultural development levels.

Agricultural Trade in South Asia

Agricultural Trade in South Asia PDF Author: Nawal K. Paswan
Publisher: APH Publishing
ISBN: 9788176484107
Category : Agriculture and state
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description


Agricultural Transformation in Nepal

Agricultural Transformation in Nepal PDF Author: Ganesh Thapa
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813296488
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 652

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Book Description
This book addresses some key strategic questions related to agriculture in the context of major contemporary developments and emerging challenges in Nepal such as the changing role of agriculture with economic growth, structural transformation in reducing poverty, improving nutritional outcomes, and addressing the challenges of climate change. The book also suggests policy measures to improve the delivery of critical inputs and services and ensure the participation of marginal and smallholders in high-value chains. Further, it discusses how the new federal system and governance structure will affect the delivery of agricultural technology and services. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses macro-issues in the agriculture sector, while Part II focuses on agricultural productivity growth and its main drivers. The third part explores diversification in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors by farmers and other rural people for livelihood improvement, while the fourth part deals with agricultural trade and marketing issues, highlighting policy implications and recommendations in the areas of immediate focus and further research. Lastly, Part V addresses institutions and governance issues, which are vital for agricultural development. In the final chapter, the editors summarize and synthesize the book’s main findings and develop a policy agenda for addressing the many challenges faced by the agriculture sector in Nepal, so as to make it more productive, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive. The book offers a rich source of analytical information on various aspects of agricultural development in Nepal and will be of immense value to policymakers, development partners, civil society, students, and those interested in the economic and agricultural development of not only Nepal, but also other developing countries.