Project Papers and Notes

The recently introduced PROGRESA program in Mexico can be interpreted as having multiple objectives, namely, (i) the alleviation of current poverty through the transfer of cash payments to poor households, and (ii) encouraging the accumulation of ...

The aim of PROGRESA is to provide support for families living in conditions of extreme poverty in small communities in rural Mexico in order to broaden their opportunities and capabilities to attain higher levels of well-being. The Program ...

The Government of Nicaragua‘s program Red de Protección Social (RPS) represents a new approach to providing safety nets for the poorest people in society, a conditional cash-transfer program that has become an important part of poverty ...

The promise and challenges inherent in agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa prompted the conference, “Agricultural R&D: Investing in Africa’s Future—Analyzing Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities,” which was convened by the ...

Nepal is a landlocked country of 27 million people residing across a land area of more than 147,000 km2. Nepal is divided into three major geographic regions: the Terai and inner Terai; (34,000 km2); the Hills (61,000 km2); and the Mountains ...

One important goal of PROGRESA is to raise the real income of program beneficiaries. At first sight, it is reasonable to assume that any government social program that gives monetary transfers to poor families has a positive effect in raising ...

The objective of this report is to evaluate the targeting method used by PROGRESA in identifying beneficiary households. PROGRESA’s methodology consists of three stages: (1) the selection of localities; (2) the selection of beneficiary ...

The revised draft modalities text issued by the Chair of the WTO agricultural negotiating group on February 8, 2008, reflects the considerable incremental progress which has been made in elaborating, clarifying and putting into legal language the ...

Debates around Common Property Resources and Intellectual Property Rights fail to consider traditional and indigenous rights regimes that regulate plant resource exploitation, establish bundles of powers and obligations for heterogeneous groups ...

This brief is based on the results of a research project funded under the competitive grants program of the 2020 Vision Network for East Africa. A research report with the same title is available upon request.

This paper examines the performance of rural groups in Kenya and addresses the methodological issues and challenges faced in doing this, and presents the empirical evidence regarding various hypothesized explanatory factors for relative ...

The present paper analyzes the role of discourse in conflicts concerning nature conservation in tropical countries. We focus on the contested question as to whether and to which extent local communities should be allowed to live and use resources ...

This paper leverages datasets and results from two separate studies carried out across eight Kajiado group ranches and offers a unique opportunity to look at emergent pre and post subdivision trends from an interdisciplinary framework that ...

The System-wide Program for Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) sponsored a workshop on Watershed Management Institutions, March 13-16, 1999 in Managua, Nicaragua. The workshop focused on methodologies for undertaking research on ...

In this paper, we develop an empirical model of an agro-pastoral system subject to high climatic risk to test the impact of rainfall variability on livestock densities, land allocation patterns and herd mobility observed at the community level. ...

The adoption of intensified cattle-feeding techniques by smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa has been slower than anticipated. This study seeks to better define and understand the role of local collective action in conditioning the strategies that ...

The Andean highlands are home to some of the poorest rural households in South America. Native potato varieties and local knowledge for their cultivation and use are unique resources possessed by farmers in these areas. As the forces of ...

This project explored the possible role of collective action among small-scale farmers in managing and maintaining genetic resources in a center of crop diversity. It focused on the local institutions that ensure the supply of seed of diverse ...

Leaf-cutting ants (Atta. cephalotes) represents a serious problem to farmers in many parts of Latin America and accounts of ants eating up a whole cassava plot or destroying one or more fruit trees overnight are not uncommon. Ants do not respect ...

Collective action aims at the joint management of common pool resources. Agrobiodiversity at the community level is conceptualized as a collective resource requiring the management of varieties, species and their interrelations within a ...

The primary inquiry of this study is to identify and understand the underlying factors that enable smallholder farmer groups to improve their market situation. The specific objective of this paper is to examine to what extent certain group ...

Policies to devolve responsibility for natural resource management to local bodies have become widespread in the past 20 years. Although the theoretical advantages of user management have been convincing and the impetus for devolution policies ...

This paper evaluates the competition between cash crop and food crop production and its effects on income and nutrition in developing countries. Aggregate country data are used for a rough assessment of the scope and development of that ...

This report examines the competitiveness of the food processing sector in Viet Nam, focusing on four subsectors: rice milling, coffee processing, seafood processing, and fruits and vegetables. The rationale for the study is that Viet Nam, as a ...

This paper presents a detailed description of the applied methodology used to study collective action in natural resource management (NRM). Data were collected in 48 villages in northeastern Burkina Faso, at the community, institutional, ...

Although several institutional and management approaches that address the degradation of the rangelands have been tested in the dry areas of Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA), impact has been limited. Nonetheless, the development of ...

Decentralized approaches to development are gaining increasing prominence. Land tenure reform policy has been affected by many different types of decentralization. However, the literature on land tenure reform rarely explicitly addressed the ...

“The role of various stakeholders in the management of natural resources is not clear in the West African countries. This paper discusses the historical changes in power delegation from central origins to peripheral institutions. The ...

Este documento presenta un análisis del impacto que tiene Progresa sobre el gasto de los hogares. En particular, se enfoca en la forma en que la participación en Progresa afecta la adquisición de alimentos de los hogares pobres. El presente ...

El presente documento analiza el impacto de Progresa sobre el trabajo y la distribución del tiempo de los beneficiarios. En Progresa, la mayoría de los beneficios están relacionados con la asistencia regular de los niños a la escuela. El hecho de ...

Este informe intenta responder las siguientes preguntas: · ¿Cómo se siente la gente en las comunidades Progresa acerca del sistema de identificación de beneficiarios? ¿Se considera que es justo en cuanto a su concepto y aplicación? · ¿Cómo se ...

El objetivo de este informe es examinar el impacto de Progresa sobre la condición de la mujer, y en las relaciones al interior del hogar. El Programa proporciona apoyos en efectivo vinculados a la asistencia regular de los niños a la escuela, así ...

The role of local and external institutions in natural resource management (NRM) is gaining attention in the literature, fostering greater understanding of the relationship between collective action and poverty, collective action and equity, and ...

This paper introduces and applies an analytical framework to study how formal and informal institutions influence socio-economic change and poverty reduction in rural Cambodia, giving specific reference to property rights and collective action. ...

En el presente documento se hace un resumen sobre la evaluación del desempeño operativo de Progresa. Programas bien concebidos y diseñados, basados en un amplio conocimiento de las relaciones técnicas entre los recursos y los resultados, podrían ...

One of the major components of the PROGRESA program has been directed toward improving the nutritional status of small children in poor rural communities in Mexico. Results suggest that PROGRESA may be having fairly substantial effects on ...

Watershed projects play an increasingly important role in managing soil and water resources throughout the world. Research is needed to ensure that new projects draw upon lessons from their predecessors’ experiences. However, the technical ...

2006 年12 月，笔者被选为国际食物政策研究所（International Food Policy Research Institute, 简称IFPRI）理事会的理事2。上任伊始，就碰上IFPRI 所属 “国 际农业研究磋商组织” 3的管理机制改革。此后，理事会每次开会都要商讨改革 事宜。一遇紧急决策，还要通过国际电话会议研究。鉴于其中涉及的不少问题对 科研机构管理具有普遍意义, ...

The global agricultural economy is changing. Commodity prices are declining, and producers increasingly supply complex value chains. There is growing interest in how farmers can benefit from emerging market opportunities. Farmers are encouraged ...

This document is a summary report of the soil fertility and fertilizer value chain diagnostic work—one of eight reports across the agricultural system facilitated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and undertaken at the request of H.E. ...

The Agroforestry Tree Seeds Association of Lantapan (ATSAL) in Bukidnon province, southern Philippines was organized in 1998, facilitated by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Farmers were trained on germplasm collection, processing and ...

Forest sector governance reform is frequently promoted as a policy tool for achieving favorable livelihood outcomes in the low income tropics. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to support this claim, particularly at the household ...

Building on ongoing research, this paper aims at suggesting alternative ways to conventional IPR systems to promote local varieties and related knowledge in developing countries. Many attempts to protect genetic diversity and local knowledge ...

Floodplain wetlands are the major common pool natural resource in Bangladesh. Mostly men fish, and both men and women collect aquatic plants and snails. Case studies contrast a women-only, men-only, and mixed community based organization (CBO), ...

Changing agricultural research and extension systems mean that informal mechanisms of information diffusion are often the primary source of information about improved seed and practices for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates ...

The primary objective of this study is to analyse the impact of possible changes in EU biofuels trade policies on global agricultural production and the environmental performance of the EU biofuel policy as concretised in the RED. The study pays ...

This paper explores the determinants of group membership and social networks of rural households using a unique longitudinal data set from the rural Philippines. We investigate two types of social capital: membership in groups (production, ...

Biofortification is increasingly seen as an additional tool to combat micronutrient malnutrition. This paper presents, for the first time, evidence on the costs and potential benefits of biofortification for a large number of countries in Africa, ...

In 1998 IFPRI and its collaborators in Africa established two regional research networks, one for East Africa and one for West Africa. Unlike most research-based entities, these networks include not only researchers, but policymakers and leaders ...

References

Food security has deteriorated since 1995 and reductions in child malnutrition are proceeding too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for halving hunger by 2015. Three major challenges threaten to drastically complicate ...

Increasing human capital investments in children is considered to be among the most effective ways of alleviating poverty and encouraging growth in developing countries. One possibly important channel through which such investments may have such ...

Este estudio evalúa la forma en que el Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación de México, Progresa, ha afectado la tasa de asistencia de los niños mexicanos inscritos en la escuela durante el primer año de su operación 1998-1999. Las tasas de ...

In this study, we examine the implications of the May 2008 WTO draft agricultural modalities for India’s market access and domestic support policies. In the case of market access, most of India’s agricultural tariffs are of the ad ...

The May 2008 draft agricultural modalities (WTO 2008) are the result of seven years of hard negotiations. Their structure, if not every detail, seems likely to be the basis for final proposals that must either be ratified or rejected by ...

The forest management strategy of Nepal is based on people’s participation, which is known as community forestry. This approach was formally introduced in 1978 to encourage active participation of local people in forest management ...

This research is stimulated by the preliminary insight that rural households, even if they are poor and/or located in so-called subsistence-oriented regions, are dependent on a variety of farm, nonfarm, and nonagricultural income sources. The ...

Dimensions of the nature, scope, and complexity of collective action in Kenya have evolved over many years. In studying collective action, the aim is to understand why and how people participate in networks of trust. The purpose of this study was ...

The System-wide Program for Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) sponsored an International Conference on Policy and Institutional Options for the Management of Rangelands in Dry Areas, May 7-11, 2001 in Hammamet, Tunisia. The conference ...

In early 1998, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was asked to assist the PROGRESA administration to “determine if PROGRESA is functioning in practice as it is intended to by design.” This document summarizes ...

This paper characterizes and measures the contribution of social capital to the performance of 50 agroenterprises in Colombia. Using qualitative analysis we document how social capital performs a variety of functions in firms, including providing ...

This paper explores statistically the implications of the shift from communal to individualized tenure on the distribution of land and schooling between sons and daughters in matrilineal societies, based on a Sumatra case study. The inheritance ...

There has long been an active debate in Haiti - as in many other developing countries - over whether or not the customary tenure system constrains technology adoption and agricultural development, and whether cadaster and land titling should be ...

In 1987, an improved resource management system that incorporates velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens var. utilis) to address soil fertility and weed (Imperata cylindrica) infestation was introduced to the small-scale farmers in a densely populated area ...

Conventional conceptions of property rights focus on static definitions of property rights, usually as defined in statutory law. However, in practice there is co-existence and interaction between multiple legal orders such as state, customary, ...

Payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly discussed as appropriate mechanisms for matching the demand for environmental services with the incentives of land users whose actions modify the supply of those environmental services. ...

There is growing pressure for farmers in countries such as Uganda to accelerate their efforts to commercialize production in the face of increasing market competition from neighboring countries and across the world. To assist farmers, a new ...

A method of consensus building for management of wetlands and fisheries using a systematic approach to participatory planning and initially developed in Bangladesh is now being applied in both Bangladesh and the Mekong delta. The method ...

In Bangladesh, the majority of the people suffer from a lack of food security. As a short-run solution to the problem, a targeted intervention of transferring income can be an efficient way of increasing real incomes of the poor. Distributing ...

The main objectives of the Phase I Technical Report are to: i) review past performance and current status of the agricultural sector; and ii) review the impact of the Asian Development Bank’s Agricultural Sector Program of 1995-98. In ...

This draft report presents a first attempt to summarize the research findings of the Pathways from Poverty Research Program, launched in 2003 by the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division at IFPRI. This program used longitudinal data on ...

Le potentiel agricole de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) est immense. Un calcul rapide indique si les rendements des 80 millions d’hectares de terres cultivables de la RDC venaient à s’aligner sur ceux des frontières de production ...

The objectives of this workshop were to familiarize key policy makers and other stakeholders in Ethiopia with the objectives and activities of the project; review the progress and findings of the project so far; and consider key policy issues ...

Annex B: Definitions of terms In Vietnam, where regional disparities in poverty are large, information about the spatial distribution of poverty is especially important because it helps policymakers and program designers understand the ...

In early 1998, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was asked to assist the PROGRESA administration to “determine if PROGRESA is functioning in practice as it is intended to by design.” PROGRESA is one of the ...

Genetic erosion in animal genetic resources (AnGR) is of concern where livelihoods of the poor are affected and option values for society are being lost. The poor often live in marginal areas and their livestock maintain adaptive characteristics. ...

This paper presents a conceptual framework on how institutions of property rights and collective action can contribute to poverty reduction, including through external interventions and action by poor people themselves. The first part of the ...

PROGRESA is a new large-scale social program being implemented in Mexico to provide various kinds of assistance to families living in conditions of extreme poverty. The program is targeted mainly at rural communities. It aims to improve living ...

In the arid and semi- arid Indian state of Rajasthan, tanks and ponds have been a mainstay of rural communities for centuries. There are over 4600 large minor irrigation tanks, plus numerous johads, bandhs and pals (small water harvesting ...

Through a survey of approximately 1300 farmers, millers and traders, this study undertook an in-depth investigation of the rice marketing system in the midst of its transition from a centrally planned to a market-based economy. Its findings ...

“This paper assesses how the PROGRESA Program has affected the school enrollment of Mexican youth in the first 15 months of its operation. PROGRESA provides poor mothers in poor rural communities with education grants, if their children ...

Agriculture is a core driver of Ethiopia’s economy, supporting 85 percent of the population’s livelihoods and accounting for 46 percent of gross domestic product and 80 percent of export value. Given the significant current and future role of the ...

This study examines the role of groups and networks in helping poor Filipinos manage their exposure to risks and cope with shocks. It brings together two strands of literature that examine how social capital affects economic variables and ...

Demand for social protection programs within more empowered segments of the poor population in African societies will be on the rise due to the historically high levels of poverty, faster economic growth, rapid urbanization, and increasingly ...

Structural adjustment, when it reduces barriers to trade and increases incentives for market production, may broadly stimulate agricultural commercialization. In this working paper, the actual effects of adjustment for production, input ...

A broad survey of expert opinions in was conducted July 2000 to February 2001, with over 1500 questionnaires mailed to experts within and outside Africa on nominations of African agricultural success stories and the rationale for selection of ...

The objective of this report is to conduct a re-evaluation of the targeting methods used by PROGRESA in light of the revisions adopted by the PROGRESA administration regarding how households are selected as eligible for PROGRESA benefits. Soon ...

This policy brief summarizes interim findings of part three of a three-part quantitative and qualitative research study into the dynamics of poverty, which was collaboratively undertaken by researchers of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, the ...

Research and policy on property rights, collective action and watershed management requires good understanding of ecological and socio-political processes at different social-spatial scales. On-farm soil erosion is a plot or farm-level problem ...

Overview of ESSP The Ethiopia Strategy Support Program, the first major IFPRI country strategy support program managed by the Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD), has been undertaken in close collaboration with the Ethiopian ...

This report presents an examination of the impact of PROGRESA on household expenditures. In particular, we focus on how participation in PROGRESA affects the acquisition of food by poor households. This analysis has been based largely on the ...

The purpose of this study is to assess how the PROGRESA Program (Education, Health, and Food Program of Mexico) has affected the schooling of Mexican youth. PROGRESA is designed to increase school enrollment among youth in poor families in poor ...

This report analyzes the impact of PROGRESA on work and time allocation of its beneficiaries. In PROGRESA, the majority of benefits are linked to children’s school attendance. The fact that benefits are conditioned to children’s ...

At its inception, Bangladesh faced a serious foreign and domestic resource imbalance. To overcome the foreign exchange cri sis and to promote rapid industrialization, the country opted to pursue a strategy that placed heavy emphasis on saving ...

Collective action in agriculture and natural resource management is all too often perceived of in terms of the mere number of participants, with little consideration given to who participates, why, and the outcomes of inequitable participation. ...

The relation between rice prices and wage rates, particularly wage rates of unskilled laborers, is of immense practical relevance to the food policy debates of Bangladesh. The ultrapoor in Bangladesh earn most of their income from wages, and they ...

Climate change and land degradation are major threats to the survival and livelihoods of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Major new opportunities exist to help improve the livelihoods of African smallholder farmers, pastoralists, ...

Suggest and evaluate ways to improve agricultural economics training capacity in the region. The main objective of the stakeholder workshop was to discuss the consultants’ report and to pave the way forward. In addition, a number of ...

The major economic activity for pastoralists is animal husbandry. The harsh environment in which herders raise their livestock requires constant mobility to regulate resource utilisation via a common property regime. In contrast to the mobile way ...

Arid shrub-lands in Syria and elsewhere in West Asia and North Africa are widely thought degraded. Characteristic of these areas is a preponderance of unpalatable shrubs or a lack of overall ground cover with a rise in the associated risks of ...

Social capital is a resource, a propensity for mutually beneficial collective action that communities possess to different extents. Communities with high levels of social capital are able to act together collectively for achieving diverse common ...

Many watershed development projects around the world have performed poorly because they failed to take into account the needs, constraints, and practices of local people. Participatory watershed management-in which users help to define problems, ...

The study of collective action requires an understanding of the individual incentives and of the institutional constraints that guide people in making choices about cooperating or defecting on the group facing the dilemma. The use of local ...

Brief prepared for the USAID meeting on Women in Science: Meeting the Challenge. Lessons for Agricultural Sciences in Africa, Washington, D.C., June 21, 2006.

一、农业温室气体减排问题的提出 第15 届联合国气候变化大会2将于今年12 月在丹麦首都哥本哈根举行，届时 与会各国首脑将就2012 ...