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Schools are a major source of food waste and an important setting for achieving dietary improvements. Few studies explore the links between food waste and nutrition. This study measured individual plate waste of about 1700 primary school children in peri-urban Viet Nam, adding to evidence on school food waste in low- and middle-income countries. We used survey data to explore whether food waste is associated with personal characteristics such as sex, knowledge and attitudes about nutritious foods. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents, food providers and children helped identify potential causes of food waste. The average student wasted 23% of the food served (approximately 85 g) during lunch, which roughly equates to 15.3 kg of food in a school year. Vegetables were wasted most: children left almost half of their portion unconsumed. Boys wasted less food than girls. Better knowledge and attitudes about fruits and vegetables are associated with less waste of these foods. A large portion was associated with a higher share of wasted food, suggesting the potential trade-off between efforts to cut food waste and efforts to increase consumption of nutritious foods. Students were dissatisfied with the quality of the dishes, especially vegetables were evaluated as undercooked, served too cold and too oily. To reduce food waste, it is critical for schools to prepare food in line with students’ preferences. Food waste reduction could be treated as an intermediate step towards ultimate policy goals such as healthier food consumption.

Micronutrient deficiency is among the most significant public health problems in Ethiopia. In this setting, food fortification has been identified as a cost-effective and sustainable strategy to deliver essential micronutrients. Safety certification and nutrition education messages can be used to nudge people to choose fortified foods. However, there is little evidence as to the effectiveness of such interventions in this context. This paper aims to fill this gap. We focus on cooking oil, as it has been identified as an ideal candidate for vitamin A fortification in Ethiopia. To study consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for safety certification and vitamin A fortification, we implemented a stated choice experiment on 996 randomly selected urban consumers to reveal preferences required to calculate WTP. To estimate the causal effect of messages on consumers’ WTP for fortification, a nutrition message on the benefits of vitamin A was provided to 518 randomly selected participants. We found that consumers valued safety certification. This finding holds for certification issued by both government and private parties, with a higher value ascribed to the former. We also found that urban consumers were willing to pay a premium for vitamin A fortification. The nutrition message increased WTP for fortification, albeit only slightly. Finally, we found that the effect of safety certification on consumers’ WTP for fortified cooking oil was higher than its effect on WTP for non-fortified oil, indicating that urban consumers value certification even more when fortification is involved.

This paper examines the learning process by which farmers come to a decision to use newly introduced seeds which were promoted through demonstration plots in midwestern and eastern regions of Uganda. Framed as social and material interactions, we investigated the learning process of the demonstration plots using data from focus group discussions, interviews and a survey amongst 983 individuals. The results reveal several constraints that impede learning, resulting in an overall low awareness and adoption of the introduced seeds. Some of the most prominent constraints resulted from the selection of location and demonstration plot host, the distance of agro-dealers, at district headquarters, limited interactions amongst farmers and irregular involvement of farmers in the demonstrations. Moreover, the prominent role of agro-dealers at field days suggests that informing farmers about where to buy seeds was considered more important than explaining farmers how to grow these seeds profitably. This commercial focus of field days and demonstrations plots had negative consequences for the social learning. This paper contributes to the learning and adoption literature by showing that interactions amongst actors can improve or reduce the balance between didactic, social and environmental learning.

Based on data from the China Household Finance Survey, this article investigates the relationship between formal sector credit constraints and rural households’ entrepreneurial performance. Using an endogenous switching regression model, we find that credit-constrained entrepreneurial households’ profits are significantly and positively affected by credit access, which is measured by total formal and informal production loans owed. With an extra RMB 10,000 in credit, constrained entrepreneurial households’ average profits would be raised from RMB 10,604 to RMB 10,732 (i.e. by 1.2%). Entrepreneurial profits of households that are not credit-constrained do not depend on loan sizes. Based on our findings, we stress the importance of the development of new-type rural financial institutions, proper compensations for expropriated land, and stimulating savings and investments in different types of assets for improving the performance of rural entrepreneurs.

Taking a food systems approach is a promising strategy for improving diets. Implementing such an approach would require the use of a comprehensive set of metrics to characterize food systems, set meaningful goals, track food system performance, and evaluate the impacts of food system interventions. Food system metrics are also useful to structure debates and communicate to policy makers and the general public. This paper provides an updated analytical framework of food systems and uses this to identify systematically relevant metrics and indicators based on data availability in low and middle income countries. We conclude that public data are relatively well available for food system drivers and outcomes, but not for all of the food system activities. With only minor additional investments, existing surveys could be extended to cover a large part of the required additional data. For some indicators, however, targeted data collection efforts are needed. As the list of indicators partly overlaps with the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs), part of the collected data could serve not only to describe and monitor food systems, but also to track progress towards attaining the SDGs.

As many African countries promote commercial agricultural production, it is important to understand how this strategy influences the intra-household balance of power. Commercial crops are traditionally considered the domain of men, and women empowerment may suffer. We use a quasi-experimental design to address the relation between commercial production and women’s voice within the household in rural Uganda. We compare empowerment in households in an area targeted by a large program stimulating rice as a non-traditional cash crop with similar households elsewhere using double robust regression methods. We conclude that the commercialisation program had a significant negative effect on women empowerment in production and women’s control over income, while men’s empowerment in those domains increased. We find only weak effects for social empowerment. Based on these results, we recommend that policies and programs to stimulate commercial agricultural production among smallholder include a strong gender component.

Diets in Mexico, like many countries, have changed dramatically in recent decades, with increased consumption of processed foods being a major factor. Research suggests that unhealthy diets in low-income communities reflect limited access to healthy foods, combined with high costs and limited knowledge. Weak demand signals from these communities likely disincentivise the food industry from delivering healthier, often costlier, options. This paper explores the potential to market healthy processed foods to these areas. We elicited willingness to pay (WTP) for healthier but relatively more expensive processed foods in low-income communities of Mexico City. We implemented a BDM mechanism to elicit WTP, with half of the participants randomly receiving information regarding nutritional content and health benefits. Results suggested that WTP was considerable among low-income groups but higher among higher-income groups within these communities. While, in general, providing nutrition and health information did not influence WTP, it was effective for those with strong preferences for the processed food category used in the study. WTP was highest among females and younger consumers, those who had a small family and children below 12 years in the household.

There is an increasing interest in using insights from behavioural economics and psychology to influence people's decisions. However, little is known as to how to leverage these insights to inform educational campaigns in the context of nutrition-sensitive agriculture. We help to fill this void by investigating the effect of framed messages (gain vs loss) in stimulating demand for nutritionally enhanced crops. We conducted a field experiment with 648 farmers and found the following key results. First, nutrition education stimulates demand for nutritionally enhanced crops among smallholder farmers. Without nutrition education, farmers are less likely to switch from producing conventional maize to nutritionally enhanced maize. Second, gain-framed messages are slightly more effective: they result in a higher willingness to pay for nutritionally enhanced maize than loss-framed messages. Third, motivational orientations and risk perceptions of individuals moderate the effect of the framed messages.

The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people's reactions were projected to have caused job losses among women, a decline in women's empowerment and reduced women's diet diversity. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult female respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, contrary to expectations we find that more women found than lost jobs, and women's diet diversity increased over the year partly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not find evidence of a decline in women's involvement in food purchase decisions, nor women's autonomy over use of household income. The change in women's outside employment is neither statistically related to changes in women's involvement in food purchase decisions, changes women's autonomy over use of household income, nor changes in women's diet diversity. Change in women's involvement in food purchase decisions is positively related with change in women's diet diversity and change in women's autonomy over income use is negatively related with change in women's diet diversity.

With increased burden of malnutrition on global health, there is a need to set clear and transparent priorities for action in food systems at a global and local level. While priority settings methods are available for several adjacent domains, such as nutrition and health policies, setting priorities for food system research has not been documented and streamlined. The challenges involve food systems' multisector, multi-stakeholder and multi-outcome nature. Where data exists, it is not easy to aggregate data from across food system dimensions and stakeholders to make an informed analysis of the overall picture of the food system, as well as current and potential food system trade-offs to inform research and policy. Once research priorities are set, they risk staying on paper and never make their ways to concrete outputs and outcomes. In this paper, we documented and assessed the inclusive process of setting research priorities for a local food system, taking Vietnamese food systems as a case study. From this exercise, we examined how priority setting for food systems research could learn from and improve upon earlier priority setting research practices in other domains. We discussed the lessons for research and policies in local food systems, such as the need for a concrete follow-up plan accompanying the priority setting process.

Schools are an attractive entry point to improve children’s diets, as their eating habits can be shaped during childhood and the information disseminated from school can reach adults through children. We implemented a cluster-randomized trial in 12 schools in peri-urban Viet Nam to assess if two school-based interventions increased knowledge of healthy diets among children and their parents, as well as children’s consumption of healthy foods. First, children were given lessons about food before school lunch and encouraged to share the lessons with their parents. Second, children were provided with healthy snacks to reinforce messages about healthy eating. We found that in the short term, the nutrition lessons raised the knowledge index score of the children by 0.35 standard deviation. After six months, this intervention lost its effectiveness, emphasizing the need for linkage between knowledge and practice. By itself, free access to fruit at school increased the children’s daily fruit consumption by half a portion, but not at the expense of home fruit consumption. Access to healthy foods at school can therefore be an effective measure to raise children’s healthy consumption. Child-parent communication was not a reliable channel for knowledge dissemination in our setting.

There is limited evidence on food environment in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and the application of food environment frameworks and associated metrics in such settings. Our study examines how food environment varies across an urban-peri-urban-rural gradient from three sites in North Viet Nam and its relationship with child undernutrition status and household consumption of processed food. By comparing three food environments, we present a picture of the food environment in a typical emerging economy with specific features such as non-market food sources (own production and food transfers) and dominance of the informal retail sector. We combined quantitative data (static geospatial data at neighborhood level and household survey) and qualitative data (in-depth interviews with shoppers). We found that across the three study sites, traditional open and street markets remain the most important outlets for respondents. Contrary to the common concern that urban households are the major consumers of processed foods, peri-urban and rural areas on average had higher consumption of ultra-processed foods than in urban areas. The low price levels of processed foods and the presence of processed foods even among the traditional convenience stores, those in closest proximity to the rural households, offer potential explanations of this result. Regarding undernutrition, low retail diversity and a household’s dependence on own production have important implications for the high prevalence of child undernutrition in rural areas. Our findings add to the current discussion on the critical role of the food environment on nutrition, such as the potential link between economic marginalization and access to food, and the role of food supply channels in consumption of processed foods.

This paper studies the association between nutrition knowledge and consumer dietary behavior using large survey data from 996 respondents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find that health was the most important factor in individuals’ food choice. However, most consumers were found to have imperfect understanding of the link between food and health. Especially, the causes and consequences of obesity were poorly understood. A considerable proportion of respondents also endorsed harmful food taboos. We found that nutrition knowledge was positively associated with more diversified diets and healthy eating attitudes and practices. Individuals with higher levels of nutrition knowledge were also more likely to reject harmful food taboos.

Background While great strides have been achieved in fighting malaria through the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) strategy, the recent world malaria report shows an increase in malaria-related deaths compared to previous years. Malaria control tools are efficacious and effective in preventing the disease; however, the human behaviour aspect of the intervention strategies is weak due to heavy reliance on positive human health behaviour. The challenge lies in adoption of control interventions by the target population which, to an extent, may include access to prevention and treatment tools. We present a qualitative assessment of the use of the Health Animator (HA) model for Information, Education and Communication (IEC) to improve adoption and use of malaria control by promoting positive health behaviours. Results We conducted 3 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and 23 individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) with HAs. Each FGD consisted of 8 participants. Data was analysed using QSR International NVivo 10 software. There are four main themes emerging regarding HA experiences. The perceptions include; collaborative work experience, personal motivation and growth, community participation with health animation and challenges with implementation. Results suggest that HAs were pleased with the training as they gained new information regarding malaria, which affected their use of malaria control interventions within their families. Knowledge was well assimilated from the trainings and influenced personal growth in becoming a community leader. Support from the leadership within the village and the health system was important in legitimising the main messages. The community responded positively to the workshops valued the information imparted. The voluntary nature of the work in a poverty-stricken community affected sustainability. Conclusions There is need to empower communities with strategies within their reach. Functioning traditional social support structures are a crucial element in sustainability. Voluntarism is also key for sustainability, especially for rural and remote communities with limited sources of income.

This study examines whether membership in a savings and credit society (SACP) reduces vulnerability to poverty, using a representative survey from the National Savings and Financial Services Bank. The sample of households includes those that are and are not members of a SACP during 2004−2007. This evidence indicates that membership improves income; furthermore, membership decreases the variance in annual household per capita income. Both effects reduce the probability that somebody becomes poor. Finally, the results offer support for the proposition that households that join a SACP have better abilities to smooth consumption in the face of adverse shocks, and thus are less susceptible to shocks, than do households that are not members.

Most forested areas in South East Asia are located in mountainous areas, where they are reservoirs of biodiversity and have important watershed regulating functions. However, the continuing provision of these environmental services may be jeopardized by land use changes. To re-establish natural or productive forests, programs are being proposed in which participating farmers can set aside some of their cultivated sloping land and receive payment for maintaining the newly forested land. This paper compares two types of payments for ecosystems services (or PES)-type programs designed to favor reforestation by farming households: “Payments for forests” (PFF) and “Terraces for forests” (TFF). Both programs involve setting aside sloping land for reforestation but differ in the type and amount of compensation offered. PFF offers annual payments per area of retired land. TFF offers to cover the cost of converting a certain amount of a farm's sloping land into terraces, combined with annual payments per unit area of retired land. The main objective of the paper is to compare the two types of programs in terms of cost-efficiency – can we get the same amount of forest at lower cost? – and equity – will the poorest farmers participate? Using mathematical programming, we developed a set of farm models corresponding to typical farms in a mountainous district in Northern Vietnam. We simulated participation rates of different types of farms in the two types of PES programs. For each PES, we assessed the amount of land converted into forest, the cost of the program, and its impacts on land use and household revenues, at individual farm and village level. Results of our simulations showed that increasing access to irrigated terraces as a way of compensating for converting land to forest increased the participation of the poorest farmers and was more cost efficient than pure cash payments. This suggests that existing PFF programs are biased against the smallest landholders in the region whereas they could be transformed into win–win programs likely to increase forested areas and reduce inequalities among farm households. Our paper demonstrates that PES schemes, when fine-tuned to the South East Asian context, could not only be used to restore ecosystem services, but also to alleviate poverty.

By using stochastic frontier analysis, this article examines the technical efficiency of different types of microfinance institutions in Latin America. In particular, it tests whether differences in technical efficiency, both intra- and interfirm, can be explained by differences in ownership. With a focus on non-governmental organizations, cooperatives and credit unions, non-bank financial intermediaries, and banks, the data set contains 1681 observations from a panel of 315 institutions operating in 18 Latin American countries. The results show that non-governmental organizations and cooperatives have much lower interfirm and intrafirm technical efficiencies than non-bank financial intermediaries and banks, which indicates the importance of ownership type for technical efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper uses a system of labour supply equations and data from Burkina Faso collected in 2003 to test the conditions underlying two different migratory movements: continental and intercontinental migration. We provide theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence that heterogeneity in migration is related to heterogeneity in rural households. We find that comparatively asset-poor households embark on continental migration, whereas intercontinental migration takes place in comparatively wealthy households in response to opportunities for accumulation of wealth in Europe. We also find that access to religion-specific migrant networks plays a positive and negative role in explaining, respectively, intercontinental and continental migration

This article investigates the extent to which public and private transfers affected poverty and inequality in Vietnam in the mid-2000s. It finds that the impact of public transfers on poverty was negligible, due to the low coverage of the poor and the relatively small amounts transferred. Moreover, the effect of the receipt of transfers on expenditures was small: recipients decreased the labour supply and only a limited amount of the extra income went to current consumption. Domestic private transfers were somewhat more successful in reducing poverty. With most public and private transfers going to non-poor households, inequality was only marginally affected

Smallholder rice farming is characterized by low returns and substantial environmental impact. Conversion to organic management and linking farmers to fair trade markets could offer an alternative. Engaging in certified cash-crop value chains could thereby provide an entry path to simultaneously reduce poverty and improve environmental sustainability. Based on comprehensive data from a representative sample of approximately 80 organic and 80 conventional farms in northern India, we compared yield and profitability of the main rotation crops over a period of five years. Contrary to the widespread belief that yields in organic farming are inevitably lower, our study shows that organic farmers achieved the same yields in cereals and pulses as conventional farmers, with considerably lower external inputs. Due to 45% lower production costs and higher sales prices, organic basmati cultivation was 105% more profitable than cultivating ordinary rice under conventional management. However, since holdings are small and the share of agricultural income of total household income is declining, conversion to organic basmati farming alone will not provide households a sufficiently attractive perspective into the future. We propose that future efforts to enhance the long-term viability of rice-based organic farming systems in this region focus on diversification involving higher value crops, Sustainability, 10 (12), ISSN:2071-1050

Studies portraying and quantifying supermarket clientele based on country-wide survey data are scarce in development economics literature. This article studies the choice of outlet of Nicaraguan consumers in 1998 and 2001 when supermarkets started to emerge and gain in importance. It applies comparative statistics and a multinomial logit model to countrywide data on 4,000 households. The results show an emerging supermarket sector with a slowly growing clientele, especially among the better endowed and more highly educated families. Small grocery shops or pulperias and the daily and weekly markets continue to serve most clients.

Decisions and policies that have implications on allocation of resources are made at different levels. Goals at different scales may be conflicting and decisions at one scale have consequences for those at other scales. Performing analyses at more than one scale is, therefore necessary in analysing future options for resource use. This paper illustrates the use of a multi-scale method enabling assessment of multi-purpose natural resource management options. Three examples of analyses that it allows are presented for Ilocos Norte province in the Philippines, at the farm household, municipal (Batac municipality) and provincial levels. Results show that: (1) Differences in resource endowments of farm households strongly affect the potential adoption rates of five well-defined alternative technologies. (2) Limited markets, inadequate infrastructure and resource endowments of farm households have large effects on resource use and goal achievement in the municipality. Not including these factors in a resource use analysis results in a so-called aggregation bias. As these are significant, ignoring them may result in misleading simulation results and policy conclusions. The aggregation bias resulting from assuming spatially fixed input and output prices is significant for Batac, which has poor farm-to-market roads. This suggests large potential benefits from improving infrastructure. The factors investigated suggest that aggregate income in the municipality is most strongly affected by the size of the market for some vegetables. (3) The differences in resource allocations resulting from prioritizing objectives at different levels reveal potential conflicts. The municipal income was highest with crops which pose more risk to farmers; our farm household analysis shows that farmers tend not to select too much of these crops. Similarly, the provincial income is highest when resources in the province are allocated such that more of the staple crop rice and less of the highly profitable cash crops are cultivated in Batac, resulting in lower income for the municipality. It is anticipated that the presented multi-scale approach will provide valuable information for joint-learning, policy discussions and decision-making regarding agricultural land use.

Economic growth in China’s agricultural sector lags behind growth in industry and services, creating an ever widening rural–urban income gap. Development of the non-agricultural sectors offers new opportunities for farmers in China’s more advanced provinces such as Zhejiang. Increased income in the urban sector creates markets for new products, and migrating farmers rent their land to those staying. Until now, the prevailing rice-based systems have been managed mainly using manual labour and animal traction, but the larger farms resulting from migration may facilitate, or even require mechanization. In this study, we use a simulation model of the farm household to analyse the effects of increasing farm size and the transition from rice to vegetable production, while also studying the effects of mechanization. Our results show that at the present scale of farming, the dual government objectives of increasing rural incomes and increasing rice production are clearly conflicting. Farmers can generate incomes comparable to non-farm wages, but only when they switch completely to production of more remunerative crops, such as vegetables. At larger farm sizes, however, labour constraints inhibit farmers from specialization in non-rice crops, and rising per capita incomes and increasing rice production go hand in hand. Mechanization is necessary to allow substantial increases in farm size.

This study examines the impact of loan officer characteristics on repayment rates of microfinance borrowers in Mexico applying multilevel analyses, with special attention to the impact of the gender of the loan officer on default rates. The results strongly suggest that loan officers play a crucial role in improving repayment rates in microfinance and that male loan officers are better able to induce borrowers to repay than female loan officers. This may be because men exert authority over women and face fewer problems working late, travelling through unsafe places, and combining a position as counsellor with enforcing repayment.

In China, fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas. Along with population and economic growth, excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation. Burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor, forest-rich regions, and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices. To this end, a nonseparable household model, reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households, is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor, forest-rich region in Jiangxi Province, Southeast China. Innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non-forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions.

This paper investigates the possibility of using public works to stimulate farmers' fertiliser use in India's SAT. Inadequate replenishment of removed nutrients and organic matter has reduced fertility and increased erosion rates. Fertiliser use, along with other complementary measures, can help reverse this process, which ultimately leads to poverty, hunger, and further environmental degradation. In a high-risk environment like India's SAT, there may be a strong relation between off-farm income and smallholder fertiliser use. Farmers can use the main source of off-farm income, wage income, to manage risk as well as to finance inputs. Consequently, the introduction of public works programmes in areas with high dry-season unemployment may affect fertiliser use. This study confirms the relevance of risk for decisions regarding fertiliser use in two Indian villages. Nevertheless, governments cannot use employment policies to stimulate fertiliser use. Public works even decrease fertiliser use in the survey setting.

We experimentally study aid distribution and cooperation in a field lab in rural Nicaragua. In the first stage of the experimental game, participants contribute to a collective effort that determines the amount of aid given to the group, which is distributed among the players in a second stage. We find that in a treatment where a group representative, selected as the highest contributor, distributes aid, contributions are higher compared to a treatment where aid is equally distributed. The higher amounts of aid attracted, however, benefit representatives only. At the same time, representatives do care about fairness. They give higher aid shares to players with low endowments and lower shares to low contributors. Moreover, representatives with lower relative wealth or who contribute relatively more, keep higher aid shares. With our experimental game simulating community-based development (CBD) schemes, we discuss the implications of our results for elite capture in such schemes.

International audience; Governments around the world have embraced trade liberalisation as a means of enhancing efficiency to realise economic growth and alleviate poverty. Likewise, the Mexican government implemented neoliberal policy reforms, the NAFTA in particular, to stimulate sustainable development. Using the Mexican maize sector as illustration, this paper describes the adaptation process of smallholders to market changes shaped by these reforms. Going beyond the aggregated level, we have investigated smallholders' livelihood strategies. Contrary to what economic models estimated, our data suggests that farmers intensified the cultivation of maize rather than switch to sectors in which Mexico has a comparative advantage.

This paper uses a unique representative household budget survey from the Asian Development Bank to analyze the impact of international migration and remittances on crop income of rural farmers in the Kyrgyz Republic. Unlike other studies we allow the impact of remittances to be different for farmers with different land size and test whether reduced labor availability is more relevant for permanent than for seasonal migrants. We find that losing family members has a significant negative effect on crop income, but only for permanent migrants. Remittances partially compensate for this, but their positive impact decreases with farm size.

This paper uses a representative household-budget survey from the Asian Development Bank to analyse the determinants of international labour migration, distinguishing between seasonal and permanent (long-term) moves and comparing them with determinants of rural local income-generating activities in the Kyrgyz Republic. It has been found that both permanent migration and local nonfarm-wages employment substitute agricultural activities and attract the most educated rural individuals. The difference is that the permanent migration option is unattainable for individuals from poor households with small land holdings. They tend to engage in local nonfarm activities, while those who are educated and have resources to finance the cost of migration choose to leave the country for long periods of time. In contrast to permanent migration, seasonal migration does not require the possession of either higher or vocational education, which can make it potentially less harmful for local development in terms of brain drain.

This paper assesses the impact of hurricane Mitch on livelihood strategies of rural households in Nicaragua. Through destruction or distress sales of productive assets, a hurricane or another natural hazard could induce people with relatively remunerative livelihoods to choose more defensive strategies which allow them to survive, but at a permanently lower welfare level than before. Using panel data from before and after hurricane Mitch, we find that livelihood strategies can be grouped into three welfare categories. Annual farming and farm employment generate low incomes, whereas nonfarm wage employment and livestock farming result in relatively high incomes. Perennial farming, nonfarm self-employment and annual cropping with nonfarm employment take an intermediate position. High welfare strategies were associated with high levels of capital, and the number of people involved was very similar between different years, suggesting that households following low-welfare strategies were trapped in poverty. However, many households moved actively between strategies of different welfare levels. This indicates that there was no absolute poverty threshold, but also that being able to initiate a relatively profitable livelihood strategy was no guarantee that this strategy could be maintained. There is no evidence that hurricane Mitch affected livelihood strategy transitions: livelihood mobility was similar for households inside and outside Mitch-affected areas.

This article provides an in-depth regional analysis of the rural nonfarm economy in Kyrgyzstan based on three household budget surveys for 2003, 2005 and 2006. Regression analysis reveals that the share of time spent in the commercial rural nonfarm economy was larger in districts with low agricultural potential, indicating that the rural poor are pushed into accessible but not necessarily very profitable nonfarm activities. This ‘push’ scenario is probably strengthened by the low commercialisation and unfinished institutional reforms in the agricultural sector. Only in a few land-rich districts and in a district with a famous resort was labour ‘pulled’ into a profitable rural nonfarm economy stimulated by agricultural development and other local ‘motors’ of growth.

Currently, in many of the highly productive lowland areas of East and South-east Asia a trend to further intensification and diversification of agricultural land use can be observed. Growing economies and urbanization also increase the claims on land and water by non-agricultural uses. As a result, decisions related to the management and planning of scarce resources become increasingly complex. Technological innovations at the field/farm level are necessary but not sufficient – changes in resource use at regional scale will also be essential. To support decision-making in such situations, we advocate a multi-scale modelling approach embedded in a sound participatory process. To this end, the Integrated Resource Management and Land use Analysis (IRMLA) Project is developing an analytical framework and methods for resource use analysis and planning, for four sites in Asia. In the envisaged multi-scale approach, integration of results from field, farm, district and provincial level analysis is based on interactive multiple goal linear programming (IMGLP), farm household modelling (FHM), production ecological concepts and participatory techniques. The approach comprises the following steps: (i) inventory/quantification of current land use systems, resource availability, management practices and policy views, (ii) analysis of alternative, innovative land use systems/technologies, (iii) exploration of the opportunities and limitations to change resource use at regional scale under alternative future scenarios, (iv) modelling decision behaviour of farmers and identification of feasible policy interventions, and (v) synthesis of results from farm to regional level for negotiation of the most promising options by a stakeholder platform. In the current paper, the operationalisation of dual-scale analysis is illustrated by the outputs (development scenarios, promising policy measures and innovative production systems) from various component models for the case study Ilocos Norte, Philippines. An approach is discussed for the integration of results from the different model components at two different decision making levels (farm and province).

Both, poverty reduction and preservation of biodiversity are high on the global agenda on sustainable development. The relationships between poverty, biodiversity of agro-ecosystems and agricultural development are complex and poorly understood. In this paper, we present an integrated framework for analysis of agricultural development and natural resource management options at agro-ecosystem level, using Pujiang county, in Zhejiang province, China as a case study area to perform the analysis. A regional linear programming (LP) model is applied, maximizing regional economic surplus, given production and labour market conditions in Pujiang. We use the model to examine the consequences for a set of regional poverty and biodiversity indicators, of four so-called poverty reduction strategies, i.e., (i) intensification of production, (ii) diversification towards livestock production, (iii) land expansion, and (iv) an exit from agriculture. The analysis indicates that diversification is the most promising poverty reduction strategy, but requires efficient use of animal manure in cropping systems to avoid environmental problems. Improved nutrient management in cropping systems is effective in reducing the regional nitrogen surplus, but less effective in increasing per capita income. The exit strategy is effective in reducing poverty and achieving biodiversity goals, but may have important social consequences that are not addressed in this study. Further reduction in rural poverty is hampered by labour constraints during the harvesting period in high value crops such as vegetables and fruits, which calls for research and development in the field of agricultural mechanization.

Earlier studies suggest that once population growth and market integration reach a certain critical level, traditional practices of work sharing tend to degenerate or disappear altogether. Work sharing has, however, survived to date in small-scale fisheries in Kerala, India. Artisanal fishermen strongly favor the system, for ethical reasons as well as for their personal benefit. Besides, boat owners appear not to be hindered by the system. Contrary to observations in crop production, work sharing has not inhibited the introduction of modern technologies like motorization.

Secure land rights are generally acknowledged as a major incentive to increase agricultural yields and farm investments. In practice, however, tenure policies easily fail due to the persistence of a large number of market imperfections. This chapter provides a review of the literature on the role of land rights in farm household resource allocation decisions, and the dynamic effects of improved land property or transfer rights on labour use, input applications and capital investments. Special attention is given to the importance of land rights for enhancing (non)attached investments in sustainable production systems and the incentives for increasing labour and material input use as components of more sustainable land management practices. Different aspects of land rights are discussed in order to provide insight in the dynamics of rural land markets under multiple market imperfections. Basic components for a generic modelling framework that addresses the impact of tenure status on access to credit and farmers’ willingness to invest are presented. Empirical results derived from studies that assess the implications of land rights for fixed investment, material input use and labour use still provide rather mixed evidence. Differences in modelling approaches and empirical settings prove to be of fundamental importance for the understanding of the implications of land rights for resource management practices.

In this thesis, I show that social capital has an important role in the evaluation of development initiatives targeting agricultural innovation. Social capital and agricultural innovation are naturally linked from an innovation system perspective in which innovations result from the integration of knowledge from various actors and stakeholders. In chapter 1, I identify the three research questions upon which this thesis is based. First, how are social capital and agricultural innovation related? Second, can development initiatives increase agricultural innovation by building social capital? Third, does the initial level of social capital increase the success of these development initiatives in enhancing agricultural innovation? These question mainly relate to the increasing number of policies, programs and project that include beneficiaries in the design, management and decision making process. In chapter 2, I elaborate on the main concepts underlying this thesis including social capital, how it relates to development initiatives in the agricultural sector, and how it can be measured. I broadly define social capital as the participation of individuals in formal and informal networks, the norms that define these networks and the trust these individuals have within and outside these networks. Participation in networks is structural social capital, whereas norms and trust within and between these networks is cognitive social capital. I distinguish four dimensions of social capital: structural bonding, structural bridging, cognitive bonding and cognitive bridging. In this thesis bonding and bridging social capital is akin to social capital inside and outside the village. Agricultural innovation is defined in terms of improved land and crop management practices, an important area of agricultural innovation for small scale producers. In chapter 3 till 7, I empirically investigate the relationships between social capital, agricultural innovation and two types of development initiatives. The first initiative is the implementation of agricultural research through the Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) approach. IAR4D was adopted by the Sub Saharan African Challenge Program (SSA CP) and implemented in eight different countries. The core of this approach is the development of Innovation Platforms (IPs), which can be described as an informal coalition and alliance of conventional agricultural research and development actors. Using the semi experimental data collected in this context, I could investigate the important role of social capital in different contexts. The second type of initiative is implementation of sustainable certification schemes through group-based experimental learning approaches. I investigate four sustainable coffee projects in Vietnam, of which two adopted the interactive Farmer Field School training approach. The data of these four projects allow me to verify some of the conclusions in a different context and for a different development initiative. In chapter 3, I use baseline data from the IAR4D initiative to explore the association between different forms of social capital and uptake of various agricultural innovations, for a sample of 2500 households in seven countries in SSA. I find that structural bridging social capital is associated with more extensive adoption of agricultural innovations. This result is true for the pooled model as well as for four of the seven country models. This form of social capital captures agriculture-related links creating access to knowledge and resources and is considered an important dimension of economic development. I find a negative association between cognitive bonding social capital and the innovation index. This finding could represent a potentially harmful side of social capital in terms of agricultural innovation. In chapter 4, I investigate the impact of IAR4D on social capital. I narrow my focus on the border region between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. Because the SSA CP data set consist of randomized data of participating and non-participating villages, before and two years after implementation, I can investigate the impact of the program. Many participatory projects in rural Africa are efforts to enhance development indirectly by promoting cooperation in formal or informal networks, and by encouraging trust and norms of behaviour towards mutually beneficial action. But it remains unclear whether external interventions can actually influence social capital, especially in the short term. I show that IAR4D has had a positive impact on structural bridging social capital in DRC and Uganda. There was no impact on structural bridging social capital in Rwanda, or on the other dimensions of social capital. Finally, I showed that traditional agricultural extension has been less successful in increasing structural social capital than IAR4D. In chapter 5, I use data from a survey I conducted among IP coordinators to measure the extent to which IPs were implemented according to the principles of IAR4D across the three sub regions. Linking these data to the main survey data, I find that the extent to which IPs were implemented according to IAR4D principles is associated with the success of IAR4D in increasing the level of household food security, although not through increased adoption of agricultural innovation or increased levels of social capital at household level. Looking at the sub-components of these principles, especially involvement of IP stakeholder is crucial. Tentative results suggest that this involvement is higher in communities with a higher level of education, a higher percentage of female headed households, and a higher level of village social capital. In chapter 6, I analyse how different indicators used to represent social capital are related in the border region between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. I focus on the relationship between various indicators of trust, an important component of cognitive social capital, and group membership, an important component of structural social capital. The indicators used are based on questions I added to the follow up survey of the SSA CP in 2010. I find that different indicators of trust and group membership cannot be empirically captured by an overarching social capital factor, and are not even necessarily associated to each other. In chapter 7, I present evidence that the relationship between social capital and agricultural innovation is not only evident for the IAR4D approach, but also for a different development initiative in a different context: sustainable coffee certification in Vietnam. I use data collected among 240 randomly selected project participants and 150 comparable farmers that did not participate in the projects. I focus on the role of bonding and bridging cognitive social capital, defined as trust. I find a significant positive relation between trust and the uptake of sustainable agricultural training practices. This relationship mostly results from high levels of bridging trust, and is even higher in combination with high levels of bonding trust. I also find tentative evidence that participation in the sustainable coffee projects positively influenced bonding trust in one project whereas it negatively influenced bridging trust in another project. In chapter 8, I give an overview of the three main findings. First, social capital is associated with agricultural innovation. Second, development initiatives can influence social capital. Third, the existing level of social capital is associated with the success of development interventions. However, the effect was not necessarily positive and depends greatly on the dimension of social capital. I also present several implications for policy. First, stimulating social capital, especially bridging social capital, may be a natural leverage point for policy makers to promote agricultural development. Second, increased levels of social capital can indeed be an outcome of development initiatives, either intentionally or not. At the same time, I show that this impact requires specific efforts and is not necessarily positive. The third implication is that social capital matters for the success of certain development initiatives, either as a source of heterogeneous implementation or impact. Fourth, it is vital to take into account the multi-dimensional nature of social capital and the fact that these dimensions might have different relations to agricultural innovation and development initiatives. Combined these implications mean that indicators of social capital should be included in the design and evaluation of agriculture-related development initiatives. Finally, I give suggestion for future research. First, to further unravel the chains of causation between different dimensions of social capital, agricultural innovation, and development initiatives. Second, to validate the indicators and indices of social capital using experimental games, more advanced survey questions, or better embedding them in existing theories. A third area of future is to advance in the measurement of innovation as a truly interactive and participatory process. Fourth, to address whether the importance of social capital, as a catalyst for success or as an outcome variable, depends on the nature of the development initiatives or the context in which it is implemented. Finally, research yet has to address the long-run effect of development initiatives on social capital.

In the early 1970s, microfinance came to public attention as a promising tool to reduce poverty. However, some people began to claim that microcredit is unsuitable for sustainable development. Nevertheless, the lack of scientific support for both viewpoints has created a need for empirical studies to disentangle whether microfinance interventions should be implemented, and if so, how. The objective of this thesis is to provide evidence on the role of microfinance in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Mexico. The main innovation of this study is the focus on four topics that have thus far received relatively little attention. Firstly, the relationship between efficiency and the ownership structure of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America is investigated. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Cooperative/Credit Unions are found to be less technically efficient and have an inferior technology relative to Banks and Non-Banks Financial Intermediaries (NBFIs). Secondly, this study assesses five different microfinance programs on household welfare in Mexico. The findings reveal that savings-oriented microfinance programs outperform programs that primarily offer microcredit, in reducing poverty. Thirdly, the impact of microfinance on vulnerability to poverty is analyzed. The results of this analysis show that membership in a savings and credit society in Mexico improves the well-being of households and reduces their vulnerability. Finally, the impact of the loan officer’s characteristics on determining repayment rates in microfinance is examined. The main outcome suggests that the gender of the loan officer and his/her professional experience are important determinants of repayment rates. Further conclusions are that loan officers who work longer in Pro Mujer have higher default probabilities and that peer monitoring of group members is not a significant determinant of loan default.

This thesis describes the adaptation of smallholders to market changes shaped by neoliberal policy reforms in the Mexican maize sector. Contrary to expectations about smallholder responses to a liberalised maize market, in the study area maize still is the main source of income. Farmers did not leave the maize sector to produce more profitable crops neither did they exit agriculture. Special attention is given to the role of social capital in shaping households’ adaptation behaviour. By analysing the role of trust in adaptation processes, this study enhances our understanding of the importance of the social and historical context in contemporary livelihood decisions. It demonstrates that new forms of social capital are difficult to sustain if they do not link up with existing, local forms of social capital. Data collection in the field took place between March 2007 and May 2010. The research was conducted in Morelos, Veracruz, Mexico.

Persistent poverty remains a huge challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, official statistics indicate that the incidence of rural poverty was 49% in 2005/2006. This study uses different approaches and data sources to explore temporal and spatial dimensions of rural welfare in Kenya. The objective is to identify and understand the linkages between welfare, livelihood assets, livelihood strategies, local-level institutions, and exposure to shocks. First, we compared participatory and income approaches to studying poverty and poverty dynamics. We found a significant positive correlation between the results obtained using the two approaches, with both approaches showing evidence of geographical clusters of poverty. Nevertheless, discrepancies in poverty rates and dynamics were found as well. Second, we used asset-based approaches to explore the nature of rural poverty dynamics over multiple periods. We found that majority of households that were poor in two consecutive survey years were structurally poor. Of the households escaping poverty, a large proportion was characterized by stochastic transitions. Few households successfully escaped poverty through asset accumulation, while a large proportion of households declining into poverty experienced structural movements. A combination of livelihood strategies, shocks, and other factors interact to influence household structural transition. Third, we characterized shocks facing rural households. Health expenses, ill-health, funeral expenses, livestock losses, land sub-division, and death of major income earner were the most frequently reported shocks. We also found limited evidence that welfare level affects exposure to specific shocks, but a significant geographical effect. Finally, we revisited the geography versus institutions debate at the micro-level suing local data to explain within-country income differences. We found that certain geographical variables appear more important drivers of per capita income levels than local institutions. Our community-level measures of institutions did not explain within-Kenya income differences. Altogether, the findings underscore the importance of geographical targeting of poverty reduction interventions. Moreover, the coexistence of high rural poverty rates and limited asset accumulation, and strong macroeconomic growth highlight the fact that causes of poverty are complex. Macroeconomic growth policies need to be complimented with policies that enhance escapes from poverty (“cargo net” policies) and those that prevent descents into poverty (“cargo net” policies).

Keywords: Credit, cash transfers, remittances, migration, poverty, inequality, impact evaluation, Vietnam, Asia This study estimates the impact of various economic flows including government-subsidized micro-credit, informal credit, public and private transfers, international remittances, and migration on poverty and inequality for Vietnam using Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys in 2004 and 2006. Impact evaluation methods employed in the study include fixedeffects regression and difference-in-differences with propensity score matching. Poverty is measured by three Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty indexes, while inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient, Theil’s L and Theil’s T indexes. It is found that the impact of the governmental micro-credit, public transfers and international remittances on poverty reduction is very limited. On the contrary, informal credit, domestic (internal) private transfers and migration have positive and statistically significant impacts on poverty reduction. The domestic private transfers have the largest effect on the total poverty of the population due to a high impact on expenditure and a large coverage of the poor. Regarding inequality, both government-subsidized micro-credit and informal credit do not affect inequality significantly. Public transfers and international remittances increase inequality slightly, while domestic private transfers and migration lead to a decrease in inequality.