Robert Andrade

ANALYSIS OF DIFFUSION STRATEGIES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL FOR NEW CASSAVA VARIETIES WITH IMPROVED NUTRITIONAL QUALITY

Biofortified staple crops, amongst them cassava, are being developed to reduce problems of micronutrient malnutrition. In 2006 new cassava varieties with increased levels of provitamin A were released. For the purpose of enhancing adoption of the new cassava varieties, two strategies were used: (1) a participatory research approach and (2) public awareness raising activities. This paper attempts to evaluate the results of these two diffusion strategies. Within the first strategy, the factors found to enhance adoption rates were: awareness of the new varieties advantages, public entities as the main information sources and involvement in participatory research. Within the second strategy, trends were found between adoption rates and producer characteristics including: ownership of land, middle-level income, advanced education level and use of information media, namely the Internet. In both strategies, a lack of seeds was one of the main factors limiting the adoption process.

Returns to food and agricultural R&D investments in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1975–2014

Research-enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub-Saharan Africa’s overall economic growth prospects. Yet, investments in research and development (R&D) targeted to many national food and agricultural economies throughout Africa are fragile and faltering. To gain insight into what could be driving this trend, this article updates, summarizes and reassesses the published evidence on the returns to African agricultural R&D. Based on a compilation of 113 studies published between 1975 and 2014 spanning 25 countries, the reported internal rates of return (IRRs) to food and agricultural research conducted in or of direct consequence for sub-Saharan Africa averaged 42.3%py. In addition to the 376 IRR estimates, the corresponding 129 benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) averaged 30.1. Most (96.5%) of the returns-to-research evaluations are of publicly performed R&D, and the majority (87.6%) of the studies were published in the period 1990–2009. The large dispersion in the reported IRRs and BCRs makes it difficult to discern meaningful patterns in the evidence. Moreover, the distribution of IRRs is heavily (positively) skewed, such that the median value (35.0%py) is well below the mean, like it is for research done elsewhere in the world (mean 62.4%py; median 38.0%py). Around 78.5% of the evaluations relate to the commodity-specific consequences of agricultural research, while 5.5% report on the returns to an “all agriculture” aggregate. The weight of commodity-specific evaluation evidence is not especially congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout Africa, nor, to the best that can be determined, the commodity orientation of public African agricultural R&D.

The Shifting Structure of Agricultural R&D: Worldwide Investment Patterns and Payoffs

The future path and pace of agricultural productivity growth areinextricably intertwined with investments in food and agricultural research and development (RD (2) the shifting public shares reflect a continuing decline in the rate of growth of food and agricultural RD (3) in PPP terms, China now spends more than the United States on both public- and private-sector food and agricultural RD (4) the global share of food and agricultural RD and (5) the low-income countries are losing ground and account for an exceptionally small share of global spending. The mean and median values of the reported rates of return to food and agricultural R&D based on the IRR are high and remain so, with no signs of a diminution in the payoffs to more recent (compared with earlier) investments in R&D. But the available evidence on the returns to food and agricultural R&D is not fully representative of the institutional (i.e., public versus private), locational, or commodity orientation of the research and the agricultural sector itself.

Household survey data of adoption of improved varieties and management practices in rice production, Ecuador.

This article provides a description of an agricultural household survey data of rice growers collected in Ecuador between October 2014 and March 2015. The household survey was implemented using a structured questionnaire administered among 1028 households in the main rice production areas of Ecuador (i.e. Guayas, Los Rios, Manabi, and El Oro provinces). Information collected was provided by household heads (male or female) and included household and plot level data. The survey information includes household socio-demographic characteristics (e.g. age, education, gender, main economic activity, etc.), farm characteristics (e.g. farm land size, assets ownership, other crops planted, etc.), rice management practices (e.g. variety and input use, production costs, etc.), and rice production and utilization (e.g. yields, prices, sales, etc.). Additional socio-economic context variables were also recorded such as government subsidies to rice production, participation in rural organizations, and food security related questions. The dataset contains a total of 6288 variables among numeric, categorical and string variables. The dataset is shared publicly on the Harvard dataverse site and provide access to questionnaires, the complete data and a brief report.