This 2016 report provides an economic overview of the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system using the most recent data available. It is meant to be a multi-purpose reference document that presents: • the agriculture and agri-food system in the context of the Canadian economy and international markets; and, • a snapshot of the composition and performance of the agriculture and agri-food system as it evolves in response to challenges, opportunities and market developments. The report begins with a special feature section on natural resource use and the environment.
Land tenure security is crucial for women's empowerment and a prerequisite for building secure and resilient communities. Tenure is affected by many and often contradictory sets of rules, laws, customs, traditions, and perceptions. For most rural women, land tenure is complicated, with access and ownership often layered with barriers present in their daily realities: discriminatory social dynamics and strata, unresponsive legal systems, lack of economic opportunities, and lack of voice in decision making.
Supermarkets and high-value exports are currently gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on farming efficiency have hardly been studied. Using a survey of Kenyan vegetable growers and a stochastic frontier approach, we show that participation in supermarket channels increases mean technical efficiency by 19%. This gain is bigger at lower levels of efficiency, suggesting the potential for positive income distribution effects.
It is now widely acknowledged that biotechnology will have significant implications for development. While biotechnology’s potential for low income economies is still the subject of controversy, this paper argues that it is precisely in these countries that food and agriculture related biotechnology could efficiently contribute to the achievement of development objectives. To date, however, biotechnological advances have been realized predominantly in industrialized countries.
Most micro-level studies on the impact of agricultural technologies build on cross-section data, which can lead to unreliable impact estimates. Here, we use panel data covering two time periods to estimate the impact of tissue culture (TC) banana technology in the Kenyan small farm sector. TC banana is an interesting case, because previous impact studies showed mixed results. We combine propensity score matching with a difference-in-difference estimator to control for selection bias and account for temporal impact variability.
This paper considers genetically modified (GM) seed adoption decisions by farmers in a developing country under two alternative information regimes (with and without perfect information regarding production conditions) that allows the monopolist producer of GM seeds to either practice perfect discrimination or uniform pricing. Under each regime we analyze two scenarios: when the government can and cannot credibly commit to the announced form of welfare enhancing intervention in the domestic seed market.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of food insecurity as coercive tool or a weapon during conflict, providing a case study on Gaza. The authors aim at proving that Food insecurity in Gaza is not merely a product of conflict, but rather a systematic policy of control. The paper includes the presentation of community-based innovations that were created in the extremely intricate case of Gaza, in order to retain certain economic and political agency over food and farming systems.
The overall objective of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS) is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia (GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the contribution of the agriculture sector to the Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the strong relationship between growth in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction, future efforts in Liberia need to focus on productivity enhancing measures with a pro-poor focus that increase incomes.
The overall objective of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS) is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia (GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the contribution of the agriculture sector to the Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the strong relationship between growth in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction, future efforts in Liberia need to focus on productivity enhancing measures with a pro-poor focus that increase incomes.
The overall objective of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS) is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia (GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the contribution of the agriculture sector to the Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the strong relationship between growth in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction, future efforts in Liberia need to focus on productivity enhancing measures with a pro-poor focus that increase incomes.