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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

Lina Alaaeldin Abdelfattah

Lina Alaaeldin Abdelfattah is a Senior Research Associate in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Cairo. Her research interests include applied economic development, trade, and spatial economics, with a focus on topics relevant to social protection, food, nutrition, and agriculture in the Middle East and Africa. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Journal Article

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

2024Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David
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Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

Outsource agricultural service enterprises emerged a century ago in high-income countries and in the past several decades in developing regions. We contribute by analyzing and illustrating the emergence of these services from the perspective of phases of the Product Cycle. These services help farmers adapt to international and domestic agrifood value chains: (1) in the commoditization phase, e.g., with rice combine harvesting services in China and Myanmar for domestic and export markets; (2) in the early product differentiation phase into quality traits, e.g., with horticultural services to Ethiopian and Indonesian farmers for urban wholesale markets; (3) in the advanced product differentiation phase into environmental traits, e.g., with A-Z services to help French farmers grow eco-labeled vegetables for supermarkets. These services addressed farmers’ shortfalls in information, skills, labor, and equipment. The services are supplied by medium/large farmers with excess capacity say of a combine; by wholesalers who want to reduce search costs and risks; by input “agro-dealers”; and by agribusinesses servicing their outgrowers. In new cases shown in France, outsource firms partner with farm input companies such as Bayer or with robot/drone companies. Governments have – and can do much more to – support the emergence of these services such as in developing regions today through: (1) promotion of a business ecosystem, based on policies of investment in hard and soft infrastructure, favoring the coadaptation of these firms with farmers’ needs; (2) policies facilitating access, such as through import liberalization, of equipment and seeds and chemicals.

Year published

2024

Authors

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David

Citation

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; et al. 2024. Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective. Food Policy 127(August 2024): 102711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102711

Country/Region

China; Myanmar; Ethiopia; France; Indonesia

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Eastern Africa; Europe; Adaptation; Value Chains; Agrifood Systems; Farmers; Rice; Vegetables

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Journal Article

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Brief

Synopsis: Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

2016Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Synopsis: Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Due to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, many more farmers are now living in rural hinterlands in relatively close proximity to cities. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. In particular, we analyze data from teff farmers in major teff producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers located closer to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. This urban proximity has a strong and significant effect on these aspects of teff production, possibly related to the use of more formal factor markets, lower transaction costs in crop production and marketing, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find a strong and positive relationship between rural population density increases and agricultural transformation – increased population density seems to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries

Year published

2016

Authors

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. 2016. Synopsis: Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia. ESSP II Research Note 58. Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI).

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Urban Areas; Agricultural Transformation; Intensification; Productivity; Rural Urban Migration

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Secondary towns, agricultural prices, and intensification: Evidence from Ethiopia

2017Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Secondary towns, agricultural prices, and intensification: Evidence from Ethiopia

Urbanization is happening fast in the developing world and especially so in sub-Saharan Africa where growth rates of cities are among the highest in the world. While cities and, in particular, secondary towns, where most of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa resides, affect agricultural practices in their rural hinterlands, this relationship is not well understood. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual model to analyze how farmers’ proximity to cities of different sizes affects agricultural prices and intensification of farming. We then test these predictions using large-scale survey data from producers of teff, a major staple crop in Ethiopia, relying on unique data on transport costs and road networks and implementing an array of econometric models. We find that agricultural price behavior and intensification is determined by proximity to a city and the type of city. While proximity to cities has a strong positive effect on agricultural output prices and on uptake of modern inputs and yields on farms, the effects on prices and intensification measures are lower for farmers in the rural hinterlands of secondary towns compared to primate cities.

Year published

2017

Authors

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan. 2017. Secondary towns, agricultural prices, and intensification: Evidence from Ethiopia. ESSP Working Paper 102. Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI).

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Intensive Farming; Urban Population; Inputs; Eragrostis Tef; Urbanization; Agricultural Prices; Intensification; Developing Countries; Towns; Yields

Language

English

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Domestic versus export-led agricultural transformation: Evidence from Uganda’s dairy value chain

2019Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Domestic versus export-led agricultural transformation: Evidence from Uganda’s dairy value chain

Driven by increased demand from both local and export markets and facilitated by far-reaching liberalization and privatization policies, the dairy sub-sector in Uganda has undergone significant changes in the last decade. With a comparative advantage in milk production, the southwest of Uganda has started to attract considerable Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in processing capacity, mainly targeting the export market. As a result, processing capacity increased five-fold and dairy became Uganda’s third most important export product, coming from negligible amounts a decade earlier. In this study, we use observational data collected at different nodes within the value chain to compare the structure of the chain and the roles and economic activities of different actors between export-led value chains and value chains that cater for the local market. Doing so allows us to identify the technological and institutional innovations that both result from the emergence of export-led dairy value chains and at the same time drive further upgrading. Our analysis underscores the importance of milk collection centers, which often take the form of farmer cooperatives, in providing many of the support services that enable other actors in the value chain to produce sufficient milk, and maintain milk sanitation levels necessary for an export sector to emerge.

Year published

2019

Authors

Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Van Campenhout, Bjorn; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. 2019. Domestic versus export-led agricultural transformation: Evidence from Uganda’s dairy value chain. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1883. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Country/Region

Uganda

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Milk Production; Innovation; Supply Chains; Technological Changes; Exports; Technology; Capacity Development; Agriculture; Trade; Privatization; Export Policies; Foreign Investment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

2018Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Temru; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Year published

2018

Authors

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Temru; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Tamru; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia. World Development 105(May): 383-399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.10.032

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Agricultural Products; Eragrostis Tef; Urbanization; Capacity Development; Agricultural Transformation; Farm Inputs; Intensification; Productivity; Innovation Adoption; Towns; Rural-urban Food Supply Chain

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

2016Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Due to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, many more farmers are now living in rural hinterlands in relatively close proximity to cities where many provide food to urban residents. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. In particular, we analyze data from teff producing farmers in major producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers located closer to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, and because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. This urban proximity has a strong and significant effect on these aspects of teff production, possibly related to the use of more formal factor markets, lower transaction costs in crop production and marketing, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find a strong and positive relationship between rural population density increases and agricultural transformation – increased population density seems to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries.

Year published

2016

Authors

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. 2016. Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia. ESSP II Working Paper 91. Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI).

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Urban Areas; Agricultural Transformation; Intensification; Productivity; Rural Urban Migration

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Big cities, small towns, and poor farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia

2018Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Temru; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Big cities, small towns, and poor farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia

Urbanization is happening fast in the developing world and especially so in sub-Saharan Africa where growth rates of cities are among the highest in the world. While cities and, in particular, secondary towns, where most of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa resides, affect agricultural practices in their rural hinterlands, this relationship is not well understood. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual model to analyze how farmers’ proximity to cities of different sizes affects agricultural prices and intensification of farming. We then test these predictions using large-scale survey data from producers of teff, a major staple crop in Ethiopia, relying on unique data on transport costs and road networks and implementing an array of econometric models. We find that agricultural price behavior and intensification is determined by proximity to a city and the type of city.

Year published

2018

Authors

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Temru; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Beyene, Seneshaw Temru; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. 2018. Big cities, small towns, and poor farmers: Evidence from Ethiopia. World Development 106(June 2018): 393-406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.03.006

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Intensive Farming; Urbanization; Agricultural Prices; Intensification; Econometric Models; Towns; Production Location

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Trade, value chains, and rent distribution with foreign exchange controls: Coffee exports in Ethiopia

2019Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Trade, value chains, and rent distribution with foreign exchange controls: Coffee exports in Ethiopia

Exchange rate policies can have important implications on incentives for export agriculture. However, their effects are often not well understood. We study the issue of foreign exchange controls and pricing in the value chain for Ethiopia’s coffee – its most important export crop. Relying on unique pricing and cost data, we find that coffee exporters are willing to incur losses during exporting by offering high prices for coffee locally in order to access scarce foreign exchange. The losses in export markets are then more than recovered in importing, indicating rents – import parity prices are significantly lower than the prices charged for imported goods, so that profits on imports are much higher than the losses incurred in exporting. We further show that the high coffee wholesale prices are transmitted to farmers, so that they benefit from the rents downstream. These results suggest that a better exchange rate alignment to reduce the overvaluation of the local currency in this case would have a lower impact on export crop producer prices than typically is anticipated.

Year published

2019

Authors

Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Tamru, Seneshaw; Minten, Bart; and Swinnen, Johan. 2019. Trade, value chains, and rent distribution with foreign exchange controls: Coffee exports in Ethiopia. ESSP Working Paper 136. Washington, DC; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Policy Studies Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Imports; Supply Chains; Exports; Trade; Coffee; Food Prices; Exchange Rate; Prices

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Famine in Gaza, questions for research and preventive action

2024Vos, Rob; Elouafi, Ismahane; Swinnen, Johan
Details

Famine in Gaza, questions for research and preventive action

The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unprecedented in terms of the share of the population experiencing acute food insecurity and famine and the speed of the onset of the crisis. Research can help understand and anticipate the long-term impacts of the conflict on people and livelihoods, design more effective humanitarian support systems and identify options for creating resilient post-conflict livelihoods.

Year published

2024

Authors

Vos, Rob; Elouafi, Ismahane; Swinnen, Johan

Citation

Vos, Rob; Elouafi, Ismahane; and Swinnen, Johan. 2024. Famine in Gaza, questions for research and preventive action. Nature Food 5: 346-348. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00990-3

Keywords

Palestine, State of; Asia; Conflicts; Food Security; Famine; Livelihoods; Resilience; Humanitarian Organizations

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Market power and the volatility of markups in the food value chain: The role of Italian cooperatives

2021Lee, Hyejin; Swinnen, Johan; Van Cayseele, Patrick
Details

Market power and the volatility of markups in the food value chain: The role of Italian cooperatives

Agricultural cooperatives have often been promoted as a way to increase their market power and to obtain stability of profit against uncertainty. This paper estimates the firm-level markups and markup volatility to identify the countervailing market power of cooperatives in the Italian fruits and vegetable sector and the dairy sector. We use the firm-level data of Italian firms for the period 2007-2014. We find that, overall, there is a tradeoff in cooperatives’ role between obtaining market power and stability. Farmer cooperatives in both sectors gain stability in their markups but their markups are lower, on average, than those for non-cooperatives. For processor cooperatives, the fruits and vegetable sector obtains more market power. This appears to arise from the product differentiation strategy of the processors cooperative.

Year published

2021

Authors

Lee, Hyejin; Swinnen, Johan; Van Cayseele, Patrick

Citation

Lee, Hyejin; Swinnen, Johan; and Van Cayseele, Patrick. 2021. Market power and the volatility of markups in the food value chain: The role of Italian cooperatives. LICOS Discussion Paper Series 424/2021. Leuven, Belgium: LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance. https://feb.kuleuven.be/drc/licos/publications/dp/dp424

Country/Region

Italy

Keywords

Europe; Southern Europe; Value Chains; Volatility; Market Capacity; Cooperatives; Agricultural Cooperatives; Prices

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Record type

Working Paper

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