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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.

Ahmed Akhter

researcher spotlight

Akhter Ahmed

Akhter Ahmed is a Senior Research Fellow in the IFPRI’s Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit and Country Representative for IFPRI Bangladesh. He has worked on strategies for agricultural and rural development, social protection, and women’s empowerment to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and undernutrition in developing countries including Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Malawi, the Philippines, and Turkey.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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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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experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Eduardo Maruyama

Research Coordinator

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Bio

Eduardo Maruyama is a Research Coordinator in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. He first joined IFPRI as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Currently, he works on improving market access for smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa through rural producer organizations (RPOs) as well as analyzing how valuable information flows from children to their parents and its potential as a policy tool in Peru. His past work focused on risk-coping strategies of the poor in developing countries and on combining economic theory, applied econometrics, and spatial analysis to develop typologies of rural communities for policy formulation. Before joining IFPRI, Eduardo worked as a Professor of Economics at the Universidad del Pacifico Graduate School and as an Assistant Researcher in the Grupo de Analisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE) in Peru. Eduardo was also a Fulbright Scholar. He earned a PhD in Economics in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Languages spoken: English, Spanish

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Publications

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Is it a myth? Market power among intermediaries in agri-food value chains

2024de Brauw, Alan; Maruyama, Eduardo; Wagner, Julia
Details

Is it a myth? Market power among intermediaries in agri-food value chains

A common narrative about agri-food value chains (AVCs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is that smallholders are paid substantially less for their agricultural products relative to the prices consumers pay for them. Some of that difference can be attributed to market channels—even in competitive and efficient agricultural markets, there are costs involved as agricultural products move from producers to consumers, including expenses for transportation, collection and aggregation, grading, processing, distribution, packaging, and retailing.

Year published

2024

Authors

de Brauw, Alan; Maruyama, Eduardo; Wagner, Julia

Citation

de Brauw, Alan; Maruyama, Eduardo; and Wagner, Julia. 2024. Is it a myth? Market power among intermediaries in agri-food value chains. CGIAR Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets Background Paper. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/168165

Keywords

Markets; Agrifood Systems; Value Chains; Agricultural Value Chains

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study

2024Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi
Details

Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study

Smallholder farmers must invest in agricultural inputs (i.e., seeds, chemicals, equipment, land, and labor) during the planting season before earning income from the sale of agricultural produce after harvest. Credit can help relax liquidity constraints. In rural Nigeria, access to credit is limited, especially formal credit from financial institutions. Less than a third of households in rural Nigeria report using credit and only two percent of rural households borrowed credit from formal financial institutions (EFInA 2020). The rest is borrowed informally from friends, family, or local money lenders. Credit can take many different forms. For example, credit can take the form of a cash loan, where funds are provided to a borrower to make an investment of any kind. Another common form of credit is when specific goods, for instance agricultural inputs, are provided in advance to a payment. In both cases, the borrower must pay back both the loan amount, and any interest incurred from the loan. We partnered with Crop2Cash, a digital financial technology startup company operating in Nigeria, to test take-up for these two forms of credit.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; and Olanrewaju, Opeyemi. 2024. Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study. Rethinking Food Markets Initiative Project Note September 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152224

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Southern Africa; Western Africa; Smallholders; Farm Inputs; Income; Agriculture; Credit; Loans

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Bundling cash loans with agricultural input loans for farmers in Nigeria: A pilot study

2023Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi
Details

Bundling cash loans with agricultural input loans for farmers in Nigeria: A pilot study

Credit allows borrowers to access funds required to make an investment before returns materialize. For smallholder farmers, who must invest in agricultural inputs (i.e., seeds, chemicals, equipment, land, and labor) during the planting season before earning income from the sale of agricultural produce after har vest, credit helps alleviate liquidity constraints and promotes the ability of local agricultural production to support nutrition and food security. In rural Nigeria, access to credit—especially formal credit from finan cial institutions—is limited. Data collected in 2020 show that less than a third of households in rural Ni geria report using credit in the previous 12 months and only two percent of rural households borrowed credit from a financial institution. The rest is borrowed informally from friends, family, or local money lenders. In the absence of credit, smallholder farmers must cover the costs of agricultural production with their own funds that they have available during the planting season. This constrains agricultural production and contributes, in part, to the large gaps in agricultural productivity between high-income and low-in come countries around the world.

Year published

2023

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Balana, Bedru; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Maruyama, Eduardo; and Olanrewaju, Opeyemi. 2023. Bundling cash loans with agricultural input loans for farmers in Nigeria: A pilot study. Rethinking Food Markets Initiative Project Note December 2023. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137032.

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Income; Investment; Capacity Development; Farm Inputs; Smallholders; Nutrition; Food Security; Credit; Investments

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137032 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Brief

Events

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)
IFPRI at External Event

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August 17 to 31, 2021

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

Virtual Event: AUG 17, 2021 – 08:00 AM to AUG 31, 2021 08:00 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 31st Conference of Agriculture Economists organized by the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).