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The rapid growth in aquaculture production, globally and in Bangladesh is well documented. Over 2000–2010, per capita production of aquaculture grew 76%, while the consumer price of fish declined 45%. Previous studies have suggested pro‐poor effects of aquaculture based on fish production and consumption patterns. This study attempts to quantify the contribution of aquaculture to income growth and poverty reduction in Bangladesh, using household survey data and a microsimulation approach based on an expanded version of Deaton's concept of net benefit ratio. We estimate that aquaculture's contribution to income growth between 2000 and 2010 was 2.1%, including both price and quantity effects. This income growth was translated into poverty reduction of 1.7 percentage points. Although these estimates seem small, they represent almost 10% of the overall poverty reduction in Bangladesh during the first decade of the 21st century. Put differently, of the 18 million Bengalis who escaped poverty during 2000–2010, about 1.8 million of them managed to do so because of the rapid growth in aquaculture, which contributed to rural income while making fish more accessible to consumers.

Ethiopia has made remarkable progress in addressing food insecurity over the past two decades. Unlike many developing countries, the country has managed to improve productivity, enhance market efficiency, and introduce effective safety net programs without large scale price stabilization programs. Public food stocks play only a minor role in the current food system, but the institutions that manage food stocks and emergency relief have grown increasingly effective in addressing crises. Nonetheless, since it remains susceptible to drought, the country will continue to need well-functioning institutions to maintain or surpass the improvements in food security it has achieved over the recent years. Policy evolution, along with recent changes, is evaluated, and implications and lessons for other developing countries are discussed.

Context CVOID-19 induced significant economic and social disruptions in India. Rural households, including smallholders, were affected by loss in migrant income, livelihood and farm and non-farm incomes. During this lockdown, the Indian government enacted several emergency legislations to provide direct and indirect relief to workers and households. India’s COVID-19 social assistance package, namely, PM-GKY, announced in March 2020, was designed to provide immediate relief to the vulnerable population. The PM-GKY provided cash direct benefit transfers (DBT) and in-kind supports (IKS) through existing schemes. Objectives This study examines the impact of India’s government assistance package (known as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana or PM-GKY), announced immediately after the COVID-19 lockdown, on the procurement of agricultural inputs for the upcoming farming season. Methods The study uses a quasi-experimental method and survey data from 1,789 smallholder households in three northern Indian states (Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh). Results The result suggests that the fungibility of funds received under the government transfer package was significant in alleviating credit constraints and increasing agricultural investments in agricultural inputs. The farmers who received benefits from the PM-GKY scheme spent significantly more on the procurement of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Conclusions The disbursement of cash transfers in the three states showed that emergency relief packages had reached the vulnerable sections of Indian society. Overall, 89-94% of households benefited from direct cash transfers. Perhaps lower transaction costs, minimal leakages, and immediate delivery make a strong case for direct cash transfers. The above advantages facilitate the provision of relief to a large proportion of vulnerable sections of Indian society in a short period.

Bangladesh has a long history of catering to the consumption needs of its population through public distribution of food-grains—rice and wheat—stored across an extensive network of warehouses all over the country. This network has its roots in the Bengal famine, but now performs a variety of functions ranging from price support to providing a safety net against crises. However, the storage infrastructure is old, with many warehouses having originated some sixty years ago. The food security situation in Bangladesh has also improved remarkably from the time when this warehousing network was established. Finally, there have been remarkable improve-ments in both technology and management of grain storage that have increased overall efficiency.

Led by aquaculture, the fishery sector in Bangladesh has been remarkably successful in rapidly increasing production, reducing prices, and meeting rising domestic demand. The trend has defied many earlier predictions, and the success clearly deserves to be labeled a Blue Revolution. In the early 1990s, when the country was celebrating the success of the Green Revolution, per capita annual fish consumption was only 10 kilograms, with widespread concerns that consumption could decline even further because of rising prices (Bouis and Haddad 1992). The policy ambition was not high even in the early 2000s. In 2005 a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report argued that reaching per capita consumption of 18 kilograms per year would be a big accomplishment. The country far exceeded that target by 2010; and according to the latest estimates, per capita fish consumption in Bangladesh reached 23 kilograms per year in 2016 (BBS 2017). This book has attempted to understand the enablers, impacts, and prospects of this unprecedented growth.

A rapid increase in aquaculture production in Bangladesh has lowered fish prices, increased protein consumption, and reduced poverty. The Making of a Blue Revolution in Bangladesh offers a valuable case study of how this transformation in the fish value chain has occurred and how it has improved the lives of both fish producers and fish consumers and considers the future potential of aquaculture in Bangladesh.

South Sudan faces serious problems of food insecurity due to low levels of domestic food production, periodic droughts, widespread poverty, and since late 2013, renewed armed conflict. This article explores market price behavior using cointegration analysis and estimates the effects of production and trade shocks through multimarket model simulations. We show that market prices in the capital city, Juba, of both maize and sorghum are cointegrated with import parity prices of these cereals sourced from Uganda, consistent with observed trade flows. Model simulations, using econometrically estimated demand parameters, suggest that private sector imports of maize and wheat would greatly mitigate the potential fall in consumption in the case of a decline in domestic cereal production. Other simulations indicate that if total imports of cereals are reduced by one-third (still more than two times the levels of food aid in 2013) because of disruptions to private market flows, domestic prices of cereals could rise by 45% or more. The article concludes that whatever measures are taken involving national food security reserves, it is crucial that government policy serves to maintain incentives for private sector imports to avoid destabilizing market supplies, domestic prices, and ultimately, food consumption of the poor.

Summary It has now become almost a stylized fact that sustained agricultural growth is central to rapid poverty reduction and economic development. Yet, world poverty is largely concentrated in the agrarian societies, which have the potential for agricultural productivity growth. This is particularly true for Sub-Saharan African countries, where the gaps between potential and actual yields remain high. Minimizing this gap through the promotion of modern inputs—such as fertilizer and modern seeds—has been at the core of almost all development strategies in Ethiopia. Among other initiatives, the country has promoted microfinance institutions and member-owned financial cooperatives to alleviate credit constraints of the smallholder farmers. This paper analyzes the impacts of these institutions. Using household survey data and a propensity-score-matching technique, we examine the effects that institutional financial services have on farmers’ adoption of agricultural technology in Ethiopia. The results suggest that access to institutional finance has a significant positive impact on both the adoption and extent of technology use. However, when impacts are disaggregated by type of financial institution and farm size, heterogeneities are observed. In particular, financial cooperatives have a greater impact on technology adoption than microfinance institutions, and the results appear to vary depending on farm size and types of inputs. The paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption of modern agricultural inputs.

Fertilizer use in Ethiopia has nearly quintupled since official elimination of direct input subsidies in the early 1990s. During this time, policies changed from liberalization, with both private and public sector participation, to a government monopoly over imports along with exclusive marketing through farmers’ cooperatives. This article presents estimates of detail costs and margins in the value chain, econometrically derived profitability and yield responses, as well as costs of the government's fertilizer promotion policies. Results suggest that (a) irrespective of the methods of calculation, fertilizer use in major cereal is profitable; (b) while there is no official subsidy program, fertilizer promotion has involved large fiscal costs—estimated at US$40 million per year since 2008; and (c) there has been a mismatch between government's policy targets and the effective fertilizer demand, resulting in large carryover stock with estimated implicit costs of US$30 million per year during 2008–2011. Areas of policy attention, value chain improvements, and ongoing efforts to improve for fertilizer use and profitability are discussed.

Using case materials from four major cereal growing countries in Asia (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan), the article analyzes key aspects of agricultural input policies in Asia. Results suggest that Asian policies differ from the current wave of African input subsidy programs in three important ways: (i) instead of focusing mostly on seed and chemical fertilizer, input promotion in Asia involved a package approach involving investments in agricultural RD (ii) farmers in three of four countries paid higher prices (net taxed) for fertilizer during the height of the green revolution, suggesting that it was the profitability, not the subsidy, that was central to increasing fertilizer use; and (iii) Asian countries did not target input subsidies, but given leakage and diversion estimates of targeted programs, it is unclear whether targeting would have been more cost-effective. Both continents have two challenges in common: degradation of soil health and increasingly larger shares of public spending on input subsidies. The first challenge calls for paying attentions to improving fertilizer use efficiency, which is an achievable target, with high pay off in the long run. The other challenge is now a historical fact—that is, once introduced, subsidies are hard to eliminate, even if they no longer contribute to agricultural productivity growth.

Input subsidy programs have once again become a major plank of agricultural development strategies in Africa. Ten African governments spend roughly US$1 billion annually on input subsidy programs (ISPs), amounting to 28.6% of their public expenditures on agriculture. This article reviews the microlevel evidence on ISPs undertaken since the mid 2000s. We examine the characteristics of subsidy beneficiaries, crop response rates to fertilizer application and their influence on the performance of subsidy programs, the impacts of subsidy programs on national fertilizer use and the development of commercial input distribution systems, and finally the impact of ISPs on food price levels and poverty rates. The weight of the evidence indicates that the costs of the programs generally outweigh their benefits. Findings from other developing areas with a higher proportion of crop area under irrigation and with lower fertilizer prices—factors that should provide higher returns to fertilizer subsidies than in Africa—indicate that at least a partial reallocation of expenditures from fertilizer subsidies to R&D and infrastructure would provide higher returns to agricultural growth and poverty reduction. However, because ISPs enable governments to demonstrate tangible support to constituents, they are likely to remain on the African landscape for the foreseeable future. Hence, the study identifies ways in which benefits can be enhanced through changes in implementation modalities and complementary investments within a holistic agricultural intensification strategy. Among the most important of these are efforts to reduce the crowding out of commercial fertilizer distribution systems and programs to improve soil fertility to enable farmers to use fertilizer more efficiently. The challenges associated with achieving these gains are likely to be formidable.

South Sudan faces serious problems of food insecurity due to low per capita levels of domestic food production, periodic droughts, widespread poverty, political unrest, and since late 2013, renewed armed conflict. Agricultural productivity is low, and the country is highly dependent on private-sector imports of cereals (maize, sorghum, wheat, and rice) from Uganda to supply domestic markets. National household survey data indicate substantial diversity in consumption of cereals across households, and our econometric estimates suggest highly price- and income-inelastic demand for the two major cereals, sorghum and maize. Drawing on a review of international experience and the constraints facing South Sudan, we conclude that a national food security reserve (NFSR) system with a small national food security stock is feasible for South Sudan. Cereal stocks would be kept mainly for targeted safety nets and emergency distribution, and market interventions would be limited in scope, in keeping with a long-run goal of market development. Nonetheless, even with a functioning NFSR, promotion of private-sector domestic and import trade will remain crucial for ensuring adequate supplies of grain and food security

Cereal production and marketing is the single largest sub-sector within Ethiopia’s agriculture. It dominates in terms of its share in rural employment, agricultural land use, and calorie intake, as well as its contribution to national income. The sub-sector accounts for roughly 60 percent of rural employments, about 73 percent of total cultivated land, more than 40 percent of a typical household’s food expenditure, and more than 60 percent of total caloric intake of a typical household in the country.1 The contribution of cereals to national income is also large: according to available estimates, cereals’ contribution to agricultural value added is 65 percent (Diao et al. 2007), which translates to about 30 percent of GDP.2. Thus, it is no surprise that, despite differing political ideologies, all agricultural production and marketing policies since the 1960s have had a focus on the cereals sub-sector. Since 1991, strategies for both growth and poverty reduction have placed a heavy emphasis on cereal production and marketing. The Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy, the Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Plan (SDPRP), and the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) all highlight the importance of cereals in Ethiopia’s overall economic development. The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) instituted the Participatory Demonstration and Extension Training System (PADETS), in the mid-1990s with the specific purpose of increasing cereal production through demonstration of seed-fertilizer technology. As part of these strategies, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has undertaken substantial market reforms, accelerated investments in road and communication networks, and initiated programs to increase cereal production through large-scale demonstrations of the benefits of modern seeds and greater fertilizer use. The structure of Ethiopian cereal markets has undergone massive changes since the 1960s due to dramatic shifts in government agricultural production and market policies, vast improvements in marketing infrastructure, and major increases in domestic production. This paper documents these experiences. It begins by giving a historical overview of policies that have directly or indirectly affected cereal production and marketing.

The livestock is an important sub-sector within Ethiopia’s economy in terms of its contributions to both agricultural value-added and national GDP. Between 1995/96 and 2005/06, the livestock sub-sector’s share averaged 24 percent of agricultural GDP and 11 percent of national GDP, with the highest shares recorded at 27 percent and 13 percent, respectively, at its peak (NBE 2005/06). The contribution of livestock and livestock product exports to foreign exchange earnings is also large. The annual average revenue from livestock and livestock product exports was estimated to be 13 percent of the annual national foreign exchange earnings during the period 2000/01 to 2007/08 (NBE 2007/08). Given the large porous border, a large amount of cross-border exports also go un-recorded. Therefore, the official estimates of foreign exchange earnings do not necessarily reflect the actual volume of exports.At the household level, livestock plays a critical economic and social role in the lives of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and smallholder farm households. Livestock fulfills an important function in coping with shocks, accumulating wealth, and serving as a store of value in the absence of formal financial institutions and other missing markets. In the case of smallholder mixed farming systems, livestock provides nutritious food, additional emergency and cash income, transportation, farm outputs and inputs, and fuels for cooking food. In the case of pastoralists, livestock represents a sole means to support and sustain their livelihoods. Furthermore, available research suggests that with economic growth, consumption patterns tend to change towards high value and high protein foods, such as those derived from livestock (Delgado et al. 1999). This implies that, given the economic growth in Ethiopia and the region, the market demand for livestock and livestock products is likely to continue growing in the future. The government recognizes the importance of livestock in poverty alleviation and has increased its emphasis on modernizing and commercializing the livestock sub-sector in recent years (SPS-LMM 2008).Focusing on four key livestock classes—cattle, sheep, goats, and chicken—this chapter undertakes three tasks: (1) it provides a characterization of the livestock subsector, (2) it assesses livestock and livestock product value chains based on primary data, and (3) analyzes the trends in marketing and trade of live animals and animal products. Carrying out these tasks relies on the critical review of existing literature and policy documents, as well as extensive use of both secondary and primary data, including household and traders’ surveys. The paper is organized following the sequence of these major tasks and concludes with a summary and policy implications.

Agrarian communities dependent on rainfall are vulnerable to production shortfalls due to drought and other climatic shocks. The human suffering caused by such shocks is often amplified due to deficiencies in market fundamentals, such as roads, information, and risk management institutions. This has been the case in Ethiopia for several centuries, dating back to medieval chronicles of the ninth century (Pankhurst 1985; von Braun, Teklu, and Webb 1998), when droughts caused widespread food insecurities and, in extreme cases, famine.

Since the publication of the World Development Report 2008, two related strands of research have emerged—one on the validity of smallholder-led development strategy and the other on agricultural intensification under population pressure. The former casts doubt about the role of agriculture in economic development in smallholders dominated countries and the later provides evidence that are contrary to earlier findings on induced innovation theory. Using a unique panel dataset, we examine whether these arguments are valid for Bangladesh—a densely populated country that has experienced significant growth in recent decades. The results suggest that (1) agriculture as a source of income declined significantly over the past two decades; (2) the operated farm size stopped declining in the late 1980s; and (3) that population density relates positively with a host of agricultural intensifications indicators with no evidence of threshold. Historical data on real prices, domestic surpluses, and other macroeconomic variables lend further support to these results. Thus, the paper concludes that small-holding was not a deterrent to structural changes in Bangladesh thus far and that agricultural intensification continued amid intense population pressure.

Fertilizer use in Ethiopia has almost quintupled since the official elimination of input subsidy programs. Yet, application rates remain far below recommended level and, given limited scope for area expansion, fertilizer promotion continues to be the central focus for enhancing agricultural productivity. Unlike many other developing countries, Ethiopia has moved from partial liberalization in 1990s to government monopoly control over imports, with exclusive marketing through farmers’ organizations, since 2008. In 2010, the government embarked on a new policy initiative, the Growth and Transformation Program, which sets annual production targets for cereals by regions. In line with the objectives of this program, government increased fertilizer imports from 440 thousand tons in 2008 to about 890 thousand in 2012. However, fertilizer availability (import plus change in stocks) far exceeded total consumption resulting in large carryover stocks reaching almost half a million tons — worth roughly US$350 million — sitting in the cooperative warehouses throughout the country in 2012. This is the context in which the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency requested IFPRI to undertake a study analyzing policies, the value chain constraints, profitability of fertilizer, and opportunities for further expansion of fertilizer use. The study involved interviewing a large number of stakeholders in fertilizer value chain, collection of data on costs and margins from the key actors in the value chain, as well as household survey data. In this paper, we present the key findings from that study. In particular, the paper presents estimates of detail costs and margins in the value chain, econometrically derived profitability and yield responses, and the costs of government’s fertilizer promotion policies. Based the estimates of the costs and margins in the fertilizer value chain, the study argues that the current value chain will not be sustainable unless the scale of operation, as well institutional capacity, of the primary cooperatives goes up. The estimates of profitability suggest that fertilizer use in major cereals is profitable, irrespective of the method of calculation/estimation, implying that recent challenge with carryover stock reflects the institutional and value chain constraints. With regards of program costs, this study finds that while there is no official subsidy program, fertilizer promotion has involved large fiscal costs — estimated at US$40 million per year since 2008. Finally, for further expansion of fertilizer use, the study makes two recommendations: (a) allowing private sector to participate in the domestic markets alongside cooperatives; and (b) paying more attention to other cereals — such as barley and sorghum — where fertilizer use is close to zero.

The perception of Ethiopia projected in the media is often one of chronic poverty and hunger, but this bleak assessment does not accurately reflect most of the country today. Ethiopia encompasses a wide variety of agroecologies and peoples. Its agriculture sector, economy, and food security status are equally complex. In fact, since 2001 the per capita income in certain rural areas has risen by more than 50 percent, and crop yields and availability have also increased. Higher investments in roads and mobile phone technology have led to improved infrastructure and thereby greater access to markets, commodities, services, and information. In Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges, Paul Dorosh and Shahidur Rashid, along with other experts, tell the story of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation. The book is designed to provide empirical evidence to shed light on the complexities of agricultural and food policy in today's Ethiopia, highlight major policies and interventions of the past decade, and provide insights into building resilience to natural disasters and food crises. It examines the key issues, constraints, and opportunities that are likely to shape a food-secure future in Ethiopia, focusing on land quality, crop production, adoption of high-quality seed and fertilizer, and household income. Students, researchers, policy analysts, and decisionmakers will find this book a useful overview of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation as well as a resource for major food policy issues in Ethiopia. Contributors: Dawit Alemu, Guush Berhane, Jordan Chamberlin, Sarah Coll-Black, Paul Dorosh, Berhanu Gebremedhin, Sinafikeh Asrat Gemessa, Daniel O. Gilligan, John Graham, Kibrom Tafere Hirfrfot, John Hoddinott, Adam Kennedy, Neha Kumar, Mehrab Malek, Linden McBride, Dawit Kelemework Mekonnen, Asfaw Negassa, Shahidur Rashid, Emily Schmidt, David Spielman, Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, Seneshaw Tamiru, James Thurlow, William Wiseman.