Digital technologies have significant potential to improve efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability in the food system. A range of digital technologies are already leading to: better informed and engaged consumers and producers, smarter farms, and improved public services.
... See More + Adoption of digital technologies varies significantly across countries, with lower current adoption rates in low-income countries. Increasing adoption will require addressing supply-side factors, such as rural network coverage and availability of digital applications, and demand-side factors, including skills and knowledge, trust, affordability, and complementary investments. While digital technologies have significant potential they also pose several risks that need to be addressed including: an overconcentration of service provider market power; lack of data privacy; exclusion; and cybersecurity breaches. These risks cut across all segments of the economy, including the food system. In addition, digital technologies should not be viewed as a panacea. Other investments are needed to address the multiple constraints farmers face and to realize the potential benefits of digital technologies.
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Attention to the implications of rural outmigration is growing, but little evidence exists on its association with women in agriculture. Migration affects women’s work and empowerment mainly through the loss of migrants’ labor and through the flow of remittances.
... See More + The fact that migration may alter women’s intrahousehold decision-making processes has received limited coverage and attention. It is also important to distinguish between the various aspects of empowerment. The complex issue of rural outmigration also has implications for household food security. To address these existing knowledge gaps in a framework that combines gender, migration, and food security, this study exploits a rich, comprehensive survey that collected detailed information on all types of outmigration from rural areas in Nepal and Senegal. The objective of this study is to examine the linkages between migration and women’s work and empowerment in agriculture in Nepal and Senegal. In particular, this analysis seeks to understand: (i) how outmigration influences women’s work in agriculture; (ii) the consequences of male-dominated migration on gender roles and women’s empowerment; and (iii) whether and how outmigration impacts household food security. The study finds that male outmigration from rural, primarily agricultural areas is not linked to a decrease in women’s employment, but it is associated with significant changes in women’s roles in agriculture. The study reveals that male-dominated outmigration may not always be associated with women’s empowerment. The consequences of migration on household food security are country-specific and mediated by the receipt of remittances.
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Current levels of investment in agricultural value chains are insufficient to achieve key development goals including ending poverty and hunger, boosting shared prosperity through more and better jobs, and better stewarding the world’s natural resources by 2030.
... See More + Crowding-in private investment to help achieve these goals and optimizing the use of scarce public resources will be needed, as will the continued promotion of good governance and environmental and social sustainability. Increasing private sector investment and associated financing will require identifying and understanding market failures currently leading to the sub-optimal private provision of goods and services needed to achieve key development goals. Where the private sector is already investing in agricultural value chains, promoting responsible investment can help increase development impacts. Crowding-in more private investment requires increasing the space for private sector activity, improving the policy and regulatory environment, and considering options for using public financing to improve private incentives and to reduce transaction costs and risks, including blended finance solutions. While these actions can help induce more private investment, there is still a critical need for public resources to finance essential public goods and services such as human capital, agricultural research, and complementary public infrastructure
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Shaping the Food System to Deliver Jobs is the fourth paper in a series on The Future of Food. This paper focuses on how the food system can deliver jobs.
... See More + It provides a framework for understanding the factors determining the number and quality of jobs in the food system, including inclusion of women and youth. It highlights a set of actions that countries can adopt, adapt, and apply to their own circumstances to enhance the food system’s contribution to jobs. The food system extends beyond farm production to include food storage, processing, distribution, transport, retailing, restaurants and other services. The paper finds that the food system employs the most people in many developing countries in both self and wage employment, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In many countries the off-farm aspect of the food system accounts for a large share of the economy’s manufacturing and services sectors. While the employment share in farming tends to decline as per capita incomes rise, the share in food manufacturing and services tends to increase. Urbanization and per capita income growth offers significant new opportunities in non-cereal products and in new jobs in the food system beyond the farm.
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Despite significant progress the world continues to bear a triple burden of malnutrition. These three burdens are related, but distinctly different, problems: energy deficiencies (hunger), micronutrient deficiencies (hidden hunger), 3 and excessive net energy intake and unhealthy diets overweight/obesity).
... See More + Despite significant progress, 795 million people still are not getting the minimum dietary energy needs. The majority of these people are in Sub-Saharan Africa, in which 1 in 4 people are hungry; and in South Asia, in which 1 in 6 people are hungry. More than 2 billion people are deficient in key vitamins and minerals7 that are necessary for growth, development, and disease prevention. Globally, over 2 billion people are overweight or obese, two-thirds of whom live in developing countries. This issue clearly is not just a developed country problem. Energy and micronutrient deficiency are contributors to the 165 million children under 5 who are stunted and cannot grow to achieve their full potential. Globally, this number is equivalent to approximately 1 in 4 children under 5 years, with an even more concentrated situation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (1 in 3 children). Arguably child stunting is one of the biggest development challenges. If not addressed it will profoundly undermine our ability to end poverty and promote shared prosperity.
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This report was prepared for the “Future of Food” event held in Washington, DC, April 16, 2015. To permanently end poverty and hunger by 2030, the world needs a food system that can feed every person, every day, everywhere; that can raise real incomes of the poorest people; that can provide safe food and adequate nutrition; and that can better steward the world's natural resources.
... See More + Urgently, we need a food system that is more resilient and that shifts from being a major contributor to climate change to being part of the solution. All these aspects are closely interlinked, calling for a more comprehensive approach to delivering a healthier and more prosperous future. This document lays out key elements of an action agenda for the global food system called for by the Sustainable Development Goals of ending poverty and hunger by 2030. It builds on lessons learned, recognizing the need for broad partnerships and multisectoral approaches to achieve these goals. It calls on key partners, coalitions, and alliances to come together to help shape the evolution of the global food system to permanently end poverty and hunger by 2030. We need to accelerate progress on raising incomes of the poor,on a differentiated approach to address andend hunger, and on ensuring a more sustainable path for the food system. The three core elements of the agenda are aligned around(i) ensuring a more climate-smart agriculture,(ii) improving nutritional outcomes, and(iii) strengthening value chains and improving market access. Within these groupings, a combination of policies, investments, knowledge, partnerships, South-South learning, and political will and leadership will be needed.
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Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of nonsystematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product.
... See More + Demand is significantly price sensitive, but widespread take-up would not be achieved even if the product offered a payout ratio comparable to US insurance contracts. The authors present evidence suggesting that lack of trust, liquidity constraints, and limited salience are significant non-price frictions that constrain demand. The authors suggest possible contract design improvements to mitigate these frictions.
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Transmission of international food prices to domestic prices is essential to pursue comparative-advantage-based, sustainable agricultural production, and to ensure domestic production responds to global food scarcity or surplus.
... See More + (i) International prices are opportunity costs for most price-taking developing countries and are crucial in determining an efficient distribution of domestic resources. When the long-term trend of international prices is transmitted slowly and imperfectly to domestic markets, consumers and producers make decisions based on prices that do not represent their real social costs and benefits. There is strong empirical evidence from both developing and developed countries that any large, sustained deviation of domestic prices from world prices in either direction leads to substantially sub-optimal outcomes and slows the rate of economic growth; and (ii) as international food prices reflect global scarcity or surplus, their transmission to domestic prices can help improved the global responsiveness of the food system to shocks. The recent increase in the volatility of international food prices is, therefore, a big concern. These volatile and unpredictable prices may undermine incentives for farmers to respond to high price levels with the critical increase in production needed to bring food prices down. In practical terms, farmers decide what to plant and countries deciding when to import face uncertainty in the likely distribution of world food prices and greater consequences when using past price levels and distributions to guide current decisions. This uncertainty keeps food prices high for a longer period, leading to fundamental food security risks for consumers and governments. To achieve more efficient domestic price formation, policy actions need to focus on (i) strengthening the integration of local markets with international markets (through investments in infrastructure and market-oriented policies), especially local markets that are more volatile than international markets, (ii) reducing global food price volatility, including through more discipline on trade policy, and (iii) strengthening safety nets to rapidly and cost-effectively protect the poor and vulnerable from the food price spikes.
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Lack of food has been the source of many past and recent conflicts. Food insecurity has clearly been a factor behind outbreaks of social unrest or worse, yet conflict also has induced notable instances of food insecurity.
... See More + Conflict often involves competition over control of the factors of food production, primarily land and water. Having more people to feed, more pressure on land and water, more variable climates, and greater price volatility tends to increase stress; it also raises the risk of civil unrest or worse conflict. Countries under the greatest stress often have the least capability to respond. It is critical to break the vicious circle of conflict and food insecurity, especially in rural areas that tend to be poorer and more dependent on agriculture for both food and livelihoods. Food aid is the typical instrument used to limit immediate food insecurity impacts of conflict, and continues to alleviate even greater harm to innocent people in many situations of conflict. Done right, food aid can also assist in better transition to longer-term agricultural productivity growth and local market development. However, it is not likely to be possible to significantly reduce conflict in fragile and poor countries on a sustained basis without significant new investment and partnerships in key areas of agriculture and rural development.
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Take-up of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India decreases with basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, increases with household wealth, and decreases with binding credit constraints.
... See More + These results are consistent with the predictions of a simple neoclassical model with borrowing constraints. Other patterns are less consistent with the benchmark model. For example, participation in village networks and measures of familiarity with the insurance vendor are strongly correlated with insurance take-up decisions, and risk-averse households are less, not more, likely to purchase insurance. These results may reflect household uncertainty about the product, given their limited experience with it.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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Agriculture is a vital development tool for achieving the Millennium Development Goal that calls for halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
... See More + That is the overall message of this year's World Development Report (WDR), the 30th in the series. Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture for development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. The report highlights two major regional challenges. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. Agricultural productivity growth is vital for stimulating growth in other parts of the economy. But accelerated growth requires a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming combined with more effective support to the millions coping as subsistence farmers, many of them in remote areas. Recent improved performance holds promise, and this report identifies many emerging successes that can be scaled up. In Asia, overcoming widespread poverty requires confronting widening rural-urban income disparities. Asia's fast-growing economies remain home to over 600 million rural people living in extreme poverty, and despite massive rural-urban migration, rural poverty will remain dominant for several more decades. For this reason, the WDR focuses on ways to generate rural jobs by diversifying into labor intensive, high value agriculture linked to a dynamic rural, non-farm sector. In all regions, with rising land and water scarcity and the added pressures of a globalizing world, the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of natural resources. With the right incentives and investments, agriculture's environmental footprint can be lightened and environmental services harnessed to protect watersheds and biodiversity.
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