Africa's Rising Demand for Wheat: Trends,Drivers, and Policy Implications

This article analyses trends in wheat consumption and imports in sub‐Saharan Africa since 1980, and estimates the economic and demographic determinants of this rising demand for wheat. Results point to rising incomes, growing populations, and increasing women's labour‐force participation as key drivers. Urban wheat‐expenditure shares generally exceed rural ones and SSA's demand is met largely by imports and partly through domestic production on large‐scale farms. Rising demand may therefore entail few farm–non‐farm synergies and minimal prospects to spur broad‐based economic development. The article concludes by discussing policy options for African countries to meet their staple food needs while also promoting pro‐poor agricultural growth.     

Demand Constraints on Agricultural Growth in East and Southern Africa: A General Equilibrium Analysis

This article analyses demand constraints on agricultural growth in seven countries of East and Southern Africa using an applied general equilibrium framework. It finds that both traditional and non‐traditional export crops have limited potential to raise incomes because of demand constraints (for traditional exports) or a relatively small base (for non‐traditional exports). The best prospects for agriculture‐led growth remain in the food sector, where domestic demand represents a large and growing market. Improvements in market efficiency and simultaneous growth in the livestock sectors can help spur demand further and avert falls in prices. Achieving rapid gains in farm incomes, however, also requires investment in rural infrastructure to reduce marketing costs, and demand‐ enhancing growth in the non‐agricultural sector to spur demand.     

Why Agriculture Remains a Viable Means of Poverty Reduction in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Case of Ethiopia

Although there is much empirical evidence of the importance of agricultureled economic growth, there is a renewed emphasis in development circles on the industrial sector as the main driver of growth, even for the low‐income countries of sub‐Saharan Africa. This article applies a simplified model of agricultural growth linkages to illustrate the importance of agricultural growth for increasing employment and accelerating poverty reduction in Ethiopia. Achieving rapid agricultural growth, however, will require the engagement of small commercial farmers, large enough to adopt new technologies and produce significant marketed surpluses, but small and numerous enough to have spending patterns that drive a large, vibrant rural non‐farm sector.     

A Comparative Analysis of the Use of Microfinance and Formal and Informal Credit by Farmers in Less Developed Areas of Rural China

Based on household survey data, this article shows that farmers' demand for credit in poor areas of rural China has increased significantly in recent years, and credits from various sources are used differently in production and consumption. For example, microfinance is used primarily in livestock and non‐agricultural investments, formal credit is often used in crop production, and informal credit is largely used to meet farmers' consumption requirements. Developing a complementary system with various financial channels in rural China, particularly for non‐governmental microfinance, is crucial for meeting farmers' rising demand for credit in both production and consumption.     

Income Diversity,Technology Choice and Agricultural Research Policy in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article makes an initial analysis of the implications of income diversification for technical change and agricultural research policy in Africa, leading to two insights. First, that the dilution effect of income diversification means that, as the proportion of non‐farm income increases, so must the expected gains from adopting a new agricultural technology. Second, that diversified producers will face disproportionately large transactions costs associated with information acquisition to inform technology choice decisions. Two hypotheses about how diversified producers are likely to react are then explored. Both point to the conclusion that income diversification among the poor is likely to constrain significantly the direct poverty impacts of agricultural research. The policy implications of these findings are then considered.     

Rural accessibility problems and human resource development: Case study from Nigeria

This paper focuses on rural transport as a crucial factor in rural development. It examines the problems posed by poor transportation and the extent to which these constitute constraints to the mobilization of human resources for rural development. Using Kwara State. Nigeria, as a case study, the study shows the poor nature of rural transport network and its effect on the evacuation of agricultural products from the farm centres to markets. This accessibility problem was found to have negative effects on the farmers who are not in the least motivated to increase the acreage cultivated.     

Rural Agricultural Change and Fertility Transition in Nepal

Using longitudinal panel data from the Western Chitwan Valley of Nepal, this study examines the impact of the use of modern farm technologies on fertility transition—specifically, the number of births in a farm household. Previous explanations for the slow pace of fertility transition in rural agricultural settings often argued that the demand for farm labor is the primary driver of high fertility. If this argument holds true, the use of modern farm technologies that are designed to carry out labor‐intensive farm activities ought to substitute for farm labor and discourage births in farm families. However, little empirical evidence is available on the potential influence of the use of modern farm technologies on the fertility transition. To fill this gap, the panel data examined in this study provide an unusual opportunity to test this long‐standing, but unexplored, argument. The results demonstrate that the use of modern farm technologies, particularly the use of a tractor and other modern farm implements, reduce subsequent births in farm households. This offers important insight for understanding the fertility transition in Nepal, a setting that is experiencing high population growth and rapidly changing farming practices.     

Have cash transfers succeeded in reaching the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean?

We present original estimates of the quality of targeting of conditional cash transfer (CCT) and non‐contributory pension (NCP) programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our contribution is novel because we use both national and international poverty lines; provide differentiated estimates for urban and rural areas; and compare the CCT and NCP programmes. We show that leakage to the non‐poor coexists with pervasive under‐coverage of all poor, including the extreme poor. On average, the CCTs cover only 50.5% of the extreme poor in households with children under 18 years of age. Similarly, the NCPs cover only 50.9% of the extreme poor in households with elderly members who do not receive a contributory pension. At the same time, 40.4% of CCT beneficiaries and 50.1% of NCP beneficiaries are not poor, highlighting the potential need for re‐targeting and re‐certification. In most countries, re‐targeting could produce a substantial double benefit in terms of poverty reduction and fiscal savings.     

Agrarian Transformation and Rural Diversity in Globalizing East Asia

Abstract: In East Asia the rural society is not a society based upon agricultural industry anymore and the peasant society with its long history has been disappearing. The occupation and income sources of rural inhabitants have diversified and among them those who specialized in farming are the minority. There is a shortage of rural labor, which used to be abundant in the past, and presently it is not as easy to hire the farm workers. The reason for the diversification of the rural occupations is, to put it simply, because people cannot live merely on farm income. Indeed the farm operation costs have become more expensive due to labor saving techniques, but the livelihood costs have become more expensive due the new uniform lifestyle standards from globalization. Electric machines and education are the typical of these increased costs. The background of this rural change is industrialization and urbanization in the context of globalization and its strong impact is penetrating into the rural society through the regional urban center as the relay point of the global mechanism. This change is different based upon the location of each rural society. Generally, rural societies around a big urban center enjoy opportunities for the younger generation, but remote areas have serious problems with few employment opportunities and a smaller youth population. To reproduce and sustain the regional society as a whole, it is necessary to attract younger people and make them stay. We should plan to develop a variety of industries and the resultant diversified work opportunities in the broader region beyond the narrowly demarcated village and community. Subsistence and commercial agriculture might merely be a part of such diversity.     

Does the sectoral composition of growth affect child stunting reductions?

This article uses a natural experiment based on random and exogenous variations in temperature to examine whether the sectoral composition of growth has an effect on child stunting reductions. Agricultural growth is central to food security strategies in developing countries, as it is often considered the most effective way to fight (child) undernutrition. The evidence base to support the putative superior role of agricultural growth is, however, relatively weak, possibly because studies have ignored growth faltering. Accounting for the latter, we find that while both agricultural and non‐agricultural growth decrease stunting, agricultural growth is significantly superior to non‐agricultural growth in this regard. The estimated impacts are large, in that a 10% increase in agricultural GDP per capita reduces child stunting by 9.6% (as opposed to 8.4% for non‐agricultural).     

Metropolitan Proximity and U.S. Agricultural Productivity, 1978–1997*

Abstract Metropolitan encroachment into surrounding countrysides has had noticeable consequences on American agriculture. This research examines gross farm sales in five categories of crops and five categories of livestock and poultry by county proximity to metropolitan areas. A seven‐category classification of counties was derived from the 1983 and 1993 Economic Research Service/Beale rural‐urban codes and used in the analysis. Our findings showed a significant metropolitan influence on agricultural sales of crop and livestock commodities, particularly those commodities that can be intensively produced on few numbers of acres. Some of this influence is attributed to the rapid growth of the urban areas during the past quarter century. Our results challenge widely‐held traditional perceptions about the spatial organization of agricultural production in the United States.     

Off‐farm Work among Rural Households: A Case Study in the Brazilian Amazon

This article analyzes off‐farm work among subsistence‐level farmers in the Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon. We build on the literature on rural livelihoods in the Global South by exploring how the opportunity to work off the farm is embedded in social relationships. We additionally differentiate our analysis by type of off‐farm work, and examine how other characteristics such as human capital, the available labor supply, and access to infrastructure vary by work outcome. In general, the factors that contribute to more secure, relatively higher‐paying work differ from those important in understanding patterns of lower‐paying, daily wage work. We find that on‐farm social capital, measured as the presence of a co‐resident on the property who works off the farm, increases an individual's probability of working off the farm, but has a stronger effect for lower‐wage work. We also find that the farm owner's relationship to households on the farm property plays a significant role in predicting patterns of off‐farm work. These findings suggest that social capital plays an important role in providing access to employment and therefore to cash income, but that farm‐level social capital does not necessarily provide pathways to stable or high‐paying jobs outside agriculture.     

关于上海松江区发展家庭农场的思考

上海松江区改革农村土地管理制度,规范农村承包地流转,创新农业经营主体,培育、发展家庭农场,取得了明显成效。松江家庭农场经营模式为上海乃至全国发展家庭农场提供的启示是：顺应形势发展,为家庭农场成长创造良好的外部环境;培养职业农民,为家庭农场发展提供坚实的人力保障;加强扶持服务,为家庭农场发展提供有力的政策支持。推广松江家庭农场模式,要注意把握好3方面的问题,即：家庭农场经营规模＂度＂的问题;土地如何＂流转＂的问题;政策措施＂扶持＂的问题。     

Crafting Mass Dairy Production: Immigration and Community in Rural America

In many parts of rural America, agrofood producers compete for a larger share of global markets by mechanizing, deskilling, and flexibly relocating to reduce labor costs. They recruit new immigrant workers but sow transience rather than sustainable rural growth. The industrialization of U.S. dairy farming appears to be aligned with these processes, and yet the large‐scale dairy farmers who have replaced small craft producers face a paradox: The more they rationalize production on their farms, the more vulnerable their herds become to stress and illness, compromising production. Focusing on three competing dairies in Kansas, I examine how farmers variously organize work among immigrant employees to promote herd health while expanding their operations. Evidence from 22 months of ethnographic research and repeated interviews with farm owners, managers, employees, and extension agents suggests that enhancing production requires promoting employee citizenship at work—especially among immigrant employees possessing the fewest citizenship rights outside of work. In contrast to the high labor turnover endemic to other forms of industrialized food production, the distinctive human‐animal relations central to dairying encourage farm owners and employees to cooperate, with promising results for farms and rural communities.     

Breaking New Ground: Diverse Routes to College in Rural America*

Abstract Rural communities pose a challenge to status attainment models that explain children's educational attainment primarily in terms of the parents' education and professional status. Alongside the rural professional class are farmers of similar social status but with less education and other families that lack the status and resources of both professional‐class and farm families. The prolonged agricultural crisis in the American Midwest has turned rural youths toward college and has raised questions about the educational value of resources provided by farm parents and other rural parents. We classified youths from the Iowa Youth and Families Project into three SES groups: professional‐managerial, farm, and lower‐status. We compared these groups on resource levels and on the extent to which the resources predicted enrollment in a four‐year college one year after high school. Findings indicated three distinct routes to four‐year college. Professional‐managerial youths tended to follow the traditional path from parents' educational and other resources and support to their own academic involvement and aspirations for higher education. Successful farm youths, in lieu of parental educational advantages, drew on parents' community ties. Resourceful lower‐status youths, in the absence of family background advantages, generated educational attainment through early educational ambition and varied community and school involvements. Even relatively low levels of involvement were valuable to these youths' educational attainment.     

Keeping the Farm in the Family Name: Patrimonial Narratives and Negotiations among German‐Heritage Farmers

Sociologists tend to view rural culture as an inertial force, committing members to past cultural patterns which, in turn, inform their present courses of action. By emphasizing such cultural stasis, we obscure how members of cultural enclaves negotiate, recommit to, or revise certain cultural traditions. This article explores how rural culture is in dialogue with changing external contexts. Drawing on interviews I conducted among a small group of German‐heritage farmers in southern Wisconsin, I find that farmers select legal arrangements, entrepreneurial actions, and traditional male succession in order to fulfill the “yeoman” goal of keeping the farm in the family name. I explore how the narratives farmers develop about the cultural priority of transferring the home‐farm to a new generation allow sociological insight into their creative negotiations between cultural traditions and a greatly altered context of agricultural production. I argue that this dialogue between a historically persistent cultural tradition and very present pressures of agricultural production makes a significant contribution to the dynamics of modern rural life.     

Farm women in Canada,New Zealand and Australia redefine their rurality

This paper focuses on rural women's networks in Ontario, New Zealand and Australia. It investigates three issues: the social contexts in which farm women in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have developed new networks since the late 1970s; the responses of farm women in each country to the changes in the agricultural industry in the last two decades; and the way farm women's organisations are responding to contemporary changes in rural society. In the concluding section, the farm women's movement is interpreted in terms of agency and structure. It is suggested that the establishment of organisations that can speak for farm women at government levels has countered their deep sense of marginalisation and alienation within their industry. In keeping with the dynamic nature of contemporary society, farm women's organisations will need to be flexible and adaptable in order to facilitate quick responses to rapidly evolving economic an social issues.     

Economywide Impact of Maize Export Bans on Agricultural Growth and Household Welfare in Tanzania: A Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model Analysis

Export bans have been frequently used by developing countries in recent years in an attempt to ensure domestic food supplies and insulate domestic market prices from international price hikes. This article uses Tanzania to examine the impact of export bans using a computable general equilibrium model. We find that banning cross‐border maize exports has very little effect on the national food price index and that the benefits from lower maize prices are captured primarily by urban households, while maize producer prices decrease significantly. The export ban further decreases the wage rate for low‐skilled labour and the returns to land, while returns to non‐agricultural capital and wage rates for skilled labour increase, further hurting poor rural households and thus increasing poverty for the country as a whole.     

Whither the lender of last resort?: The rise and fall of public farm credit in Australia and New Zealand

Public farm financial institutions were established in 20th Century Australia and New Zealand to facilitate agricultural and rural economic development. This arrangement reflected agriculture's economic importance, and rural society's political importance to both countries until the early 1980s. With both countries’ adoption of monetarist principles (including financial deregulation and the drive for smaller government) from the mid-1980s these public farm credit providers were seen to distort the allocation of farm credit and to be an inefficient use of public resources. Deregulation would, according to its many proponents, remove these distortions and create a free market for farm credit which would deliver the most appropriate loan packages for both countries’ farm sectors. The extensive literature on the New Zealand experience of farm sector restructuring and primary research into the South Australian farm crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s show that the commercialisation and/or abolition of public farm credit providers in both countries has fundamentally restructured the farm credit market but failed to address many farm families’ demand for concessional, long-term finance. The research also demonstrates the continuing need for local and regional case studies of the impacts of and responses to major institutional restructuring that are both theoretically informed and scale sensitive as a means to building a genuinely international literature on contemporary rural and agrarian change.     

Young people and the division of labour in farming families

The family farm has been identified as the main unit of agricultural production in Britain and it has been widely studied as an economic unit in agricultural research. However, it is also a social unit: one with a division of labour based upon gender and generation. Here we will consider a relatively unexplored area of agricultural production: the contribution of children to the family farm, based upon a quantitative survey of young people in a rural area and detailed qualitative interviews. The approach is to look at the farm family in terms of a ‘household work strategy’ although in the paper we argue that this should take into account the importance of moral obligation and patriarchal ideology. The importance of gender and generation are explored as intersecting factors in the division of labour.