Derek Eaton

Opportunities for managing solid waste flows in the peri-urban interface of Bamako and Ouagadougou

This paper examines the links between solid urban waste management and peri-urban agriculture in Bamako and Ouagadougou. Staple crop farmers in the vicinity of both cities value urban waste as a source of organic matter and are prepared to pay for it. Cultivation on degraded soils has even been revived in some cases thanks to this readily available resource. However, uncertain land tenure means that farmers have little incentive to ensure the safe disposal of dangerous elements in solid waste. Current plans would eliminate this recycling practice and promote largescale composting, but the cost for farmers will be too high, leaving them with an incentive to make their own illicit arrangements for acquiring waste material. Furthermore, small enterprises and associations that have come to play a complementary and innovative role in waste management would be forced out. The key challenges for policy are to build on economic and institutional reality and to regard urban waste not as a dangerous nuisance but as a source of nutrients for agriculture. Opportunities exist to deliver waste that has been sorted, though not composted, to peri-urban farmers.

Rural Livelihoods: Interplay Between Farm Activities, Non-farm Activities and the Resource Base

A concentration of poor in rural areas has resulted in a research and policy focus on agricultural technologies and (poor) households impact on soil productivity. But farm households do not live of farming alone, non-farm activities play a principal role even in remote areas. With a unique household-level dataset covering seven regions in Africa and two in Asia we analyze (1) the importance of non-farm income in different geographical zones; (2) the role of geographical factors in determining access to non-farm employment; (3) the role of non-farm income in external input use and soil nitrogen balances. Distinguishing geographical zones based on the distance to urban areas we find the share of non-farm income increasing from 12 percent in the remote areas to 35 percent in peri-urban areas. Geographical location is found to explain a major part of the variation in individual non-farm participation, besides characteristics like education and gender. At household level we find non-farm income not playing a role of significance in explaining external input use, inorganic fertilizer use nor changes in the nitrogen balance. Households thus appear not to invest non-farm income in agriculture. This limits the contribution of non-farm income to reducing widespread soil nutrient depletion witnessed in Africa.

Monitoring nutrient flows and economic performance in African farming systems: the NUTMON approach and its applicability to peri-urban agriculture.

In this chapter the different phases of the NUTMON methodology to analyse nutrient flows and balances for farming systems are described as well as the possibilities of application of the methodology in the context of peri-urban agriculture. The farm diagnosis tool NUTShell was used to link nutrient flows with economic flows.

Trade and Intellectual Property Rights in the Agricultural Seed Sector

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has continued to be fiercely debated between North and South, particularly with respect to its provisions for the agricultural sector. Article 27.3(b) of the TRIPS Agreement requires WTO member countries to offer some form of intellectual property protection for new plant varieties, either in the form of patents (common in the U.S.) or plant breeder’s rights (PBR). This paper analyses the effects of the introduction of PBRs in almost 70 importing countries on the value of exports of agricultural seeds and planting material from 10 exporting EU countries, including all principal traditional exporters of seeds, as well as the US. A fixed effects quantile regression model, based on the general specification for the gravity model for international trade, is estimated using panel data covering 19 years (1989-2007) of export flows in order to assess the effect of International Convention on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) membership on seed imports. Basing inference on the panel bootstrap, we find no significant effect from UPOV membership on seed imports.

The case for differentiated appropriability in intellectual property rights for plant varieties.

This chapter adapts an existing model of innovation in the plant breeding sector to demonstrate that common standards are not optimum from a global welfare point of view. Policy issues relating to Plant Variety Protection from an economic perspective are reviewed, with particular emphasis on the TRIP Agreement of the World Trade Organization. A variant of a model of innovation is described, and this allows the comparison between markets with different purchasing power. The model is calibrated and applied in hypothetical simulations involving uniform versus varying suitability between markets

Policy Response to Technological Developments: The Case of GURTs

Abstract Technological developments may require a policy response when the potential effects of such technology contribute to unwanted or unpredictable changes. The introduction of genetic modification triggered policy makers to design a framework for risk assessment and release procedures that may be linked to conventional variety release systems (Traynor & Komen, this volume). Often, technological change reaches the policy level only when problems appear after introduction. In some cases, however, discussions can start even before the technology is ready for the market. A good example of the latter is the Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT), which triggered a very intense debate because of its possible use in the production of ‘sterile seeds.’ This application was dubbed “terminator technology” in the popular press. GURT is thus an interesting case to analyse the link between technology and policy development. This paper heavily draws upon a study that was prepared by FAO (Visser et al., 2001). This case illustrates that a wide range of concerns and options are linked with one technological development, and that arguments arise from different policy fields. Analysis thus needs a thorough understanding of the individual opportunities and concerns as well as the linked arguments. GURT has received an extremely bad name in the international public debate. Very few, however, have seriously thought about possible policy responses and the tools that are available to the policy makers to implement their decisions. This paper intends to clarify both the complexity of such technological developments and it gives some suggestions about dealing with different concerns in the GURTs case.