Books

× Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.

× A key tenet of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) is that agricultural practices, interventions, and policies can be better configured both to maximize health and nutrition benefits and to reduce health risks. This is particularly true regarding aflatoxins and other mycotoxins, an important food safety health risk with significant implications for developing countries. Aflatoxin exposure is particularly problematic in low-income populations in the tropics that consume relatively large quantities of staples, particularly maize and groundnuts. The best documented health impact of chronic exposure to aflatoxins is liver cancer. It is estimated that 26,000 Africans living south of the Sahara die annually of liver cancer associated with aflatoxin exposure. Broader health effects such as immune suppression with higher rates of illness and child stunting have also been associated with aflatoxin exposure. The presence of aflatoxins can also limit the growth of commercial markets and trade. As but one example, aflatoxin contamination has sharply limited the quantities of maize that the World Food Programme has been able to purchase locally in Africa since 2007.

× This book examines the potential of agriculture to contribute to national growth and poverty reduction. It also evaluates the financial costs of accelerating agricultural growth. The analysis is based on ten country case studies that apply similar economywide approaches to linking growth, poverty, and investment. The findings indicate that, in most African countries, improving agriculture’s performance is essential to achieving pro-poor growth. They also point to export agriculture having high growth potential and becoming a prominent part of agricultural strategies. The research shows that broad-based growth will be difficult to achieve without expanding staple-foodcrop production and livestock production, since only they have the scale and linkages to poor households needed to reduce national poverty within a reasonable period of time. Finally, the case studies confirm the need for greater investment in agriculture. However, the efficiency of agricultural investments will have to improve if development targets are to remain attainable.

× The impact of agricultural research on food production and economic growth in developing countries is well established, but there is still considerable debate about the extent to which these productivity increases have been translated into reductions in poverty. This volume provides evidence from a range of case studies on the impact of different types of agricultural research and technologies on the livelihoods of poor people. The studies go beyond conventional analyses of the direct effects on poor producers, to include broader societal impacts on consumers, including the urban poor in India and China. The studies also look beyond economic measures of poverty to consider the distribution of gains by wealth or poverty status and by gender.

× Researchers and policy analysts increasingly need concise, comprehensive information on all aspects of complex research issues. IFPRI’s Research at a Glance series has been designed to meet this need. This volume contains the fourth of a series of IFPRI briefs on genetic resource policies. The first set, published in January 2003 and containing Briefs 1 through 6, focuses on intellectual property rights issues; the second set, published in December 2003 and containing Briefs 7 through 12, focuses on issues related to ex situ genebanks and their collections, while the third set, published in November 2005 and containing Briefs 13 through 18, focuses on on-farm genetic resources. This fourth set presents synopses of two case studies about the potential for pro-poor crop biotechnologies. These briefs present syntheses of research conducted by IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division along with multiple collaborators.

× Land degradation is a severe problem in the densely populated highlands of East Africa and elsewhere on the African continent. Soil erosion resulting from cultivation on steeply sloping terrain, mining of soil fertility due to continuous cultivation with limited application of inorganic or organic sources of soil nutrients, and deforestation and overgrazing of rangelands are among the key factors causing low agricultural productivity, widespread poverty, and food insecurity in the region. Finding ways to achieve more sustainable and productive land management is an urgent need, requiring policy, institutional, and technological strategies that are well targeted to the heterogeneous landscapes and diverse bio-physical and socioeconomic contexts found in the East African highlands. This volume helps to address this information need. The book is based on papers originally presented at the conference “Policies for Sustainable Land Management in the East African Highlands,” held at the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa in April 2002. That conference was sponsored by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI); the World Agroforestry Centre (formerly ICRAF); the East and Central Africa Program for Agricultural Policy Analysis (ECAPAPA); the African Highlands Initiative (AHI); the Soil, Water and Nutrient Management Program (SWNM) of the CGIAR; the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA); and the Regional Land Management Unit (RELMA) of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The material focuses on land management issues in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, which include most of the people and area of the East African highlands.

× The research had the following objectives: • To better understand how environmental risk affects the use and management of resources under various property rights regimes • To identify circumstances under which different pathways of change in land use and property rights are followed • To identify how policy and other external interventions can help communities achieve desirable pathways and mitigate negative impacts of undesirable pathways

× Genetically modified (GM) food crops have inspired increasing controversy over the past decade. By the mid-1990s they were widely grown in the U.S., Canada, and Argentina, but precautionary regulations continue to limit their use elsewhere. The restrictive policies of Europe and Japan toward GM crops have been much discussed. Less attention has been paid to the policies affecting the adoption of GM crops in the developing world, where their potential impact on the availability and quality of food is even greater. In this book Robert L. Paarlberg looks at the policy choices regarding GM food made by four important developing countries: Kenya, Brazil, India, and China. Of these, so far only China has approved the planting of GM crops. Paarlberg identifies five policy areas in which governments of developing countries can either support or discourage GM crops: intellectual property rights, biosafety, trade, food safety, and public research and investment. He notes that highly cautious biosafety policies have so far been the key reason that Kenya, Brazil, and India have hesitated to plant GM crops. These cautious policies have been strongly reinforced by international market forces and international diplomatic and NGO pressures. China has been less cautious toward GM crops, in part because there is less opportunity in China for international organizations or independent critics of GM crops to challenge official policy.

× Why should there be a book about the commercialization of subsistence agriculture, economic development, and nutrition? There are two compelling reasons. First, concerns and suspicions about adverse effects on the poor of commercialization of subsistence agriculture persist and influence policy of developing countries and of donor agencies. Second, in rural areas of low-income countries, nutritional welfare is determined by many complex factors whose relationships to agricultural commercialization and economic development need to be traced in order to design optimal rural growth policies that benefit the poor. In view of the challenges of rapid urbanization and the chances of commercialization, the question is not if subsistence agriculture should be overcome, but how. Thus, the purpose of this book is to clarify concepts, add comprehensive factual information, and assist policy and program analysts in identifying potentials and risks of promoting commercialization of agriculture for poverty alleviation.