IFPRI Abstracts

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/129222

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Micronutrient sprinkles are effective at reducing anemia among children 6-24 months in rural Haiti
(Abstract, 2006) Menon, Purnima; Ruel, Marie T.; Loechl, Cornelia U.; Arimond, Mary; Habicht, Jean-Pierre; Pelto, Gretel H.
Feasibility of distributing micronutrient sprinkles along with take-home food aid rations in rural Haiti
(Abstract, 2006) Loechl, Cornelia U.; Arimond, Mary; Menon, Purnima; Ruel, Marie T.; Habicht, Jean-Pierre; Pelto, Gretel H.
Food-based approaches for ensuring adequate vitamin A nutrition
(Working Paper, 2008) Tanumihardjo, Sherry A.
More than 250 million children under the age of five have vitamin A (VA) deficiency. Efforts to improve VA status globally have included supplementation and food fortification. Supplementation, however, can result in sharp spikes and declines in VA concentration in the body, while VA fortificants can lead to hypervitaminosis, which requires continuous monitoring to ensure that levels of total ? body VA are not excessive. Biofortifying staple crops with ??carotene, a major source of provitamin A, is an emerging option for improving VA status without these shortcomings. This review tests the extent to which biofortification may be an alternative to supplementation and food fortification.
The quantity of zinc absorbed from wheat in adult women Is enhanced by biofortification
(Working Paper, 2009) Rosada, Jorge L.; Hambidge, K. Michael; Miller, Leland V.; Garcia Olga P.; Westcott, Jamie; Gonzalez, Karla; Conde, Jennifer; Hotz, Christine; Pfeiffer, Wolfgang; Ortiz-Monasterio, Ivan; Krebs, Nancy F.
Biofortification of staple food crops with micronutrients could reduce micronutrient malnutrition at relatively low cost. Zinc is especially important in this consideration as a lack of dietary zinc is a major cause of early childhood morbidity and mortality. Indicators of zinc deficiency and quantitative data on the negative effects of phytates on zinc absorption are also limited. Measurements of zinc bioavailability and the effect of phytates on these, as addressed in this paper, are thus of extra significance.
Successful organizational learning in the management of agricultural research and innovation: The Mexican produce foundations
(Brief, 2009) Ekboir, Javier; Dutrénit, Gabriela; Martínez V., Griselda; Vargas, Arturo Torres; Vera-Cruz, Alexandre O.
To be an effective poverty alleviation instrument, agricultural policies (including research, extension, and innovation) must be based on an evolutionary approach that emphasizes experimentation, learning, and active interactions among diverse partners However, most agricultural research and extension policies and institutions in developing countries lack the necessary flexibility to implement such an approach. Instead, they apply uniform recipes and struggle with organizational rigidities and other problems. Notable exceptions to this trend have been the Mexican Produce Foundations (PFs). While most organizations eventually lose their creativity and seldom regain it, the PFs have learned, adapted, and contributed to major and diverse impacts on the Mexican agricultural innovation and research systems. Such impacts came from activities that were peripheral to the PFs’ original purpose of managing funds for a national institute devoted to agricultural research. This research report investigates the success of the PFs, exploring how they have sustained organizational innovation over extended periods and adapted to maximize their impact on the agricultural innovation system. Using a theoretical framework that draws on the literature on innovation systems, complexity theories, and organizational cultures and governance, this study analyzes the factors that allowed the PFs to develop strong innovative capabilities and how these capabilities were affected by changes in the interactions among regulatory frameworks, the federal and state governments and organizational structures, creative individuals, and the history of the processes. Understanding the factors that enabled such unusual behavior will help to improve the design and implementation of innovation and research programs in developing countries. Studying the PFs also offers new insights into the dynamics of innovative organizations and how they relate to innovative capabilities.
Seasonal dimensions of the HIV-hunger nexus in eastern and southern Africa
(Working Paper, 2009) Gillespie, Stuart; Drimie, Scott
The seasonality of disease, ill-health and hunger were illustrated in multiple contexts in the original IDS conference on seasonality over three decades ago. The subsequent book (Chambers et al. 1981) was published in the same year as the first case of AIDS was reported. Since then, the rapidly accelerating AIDS epidemic of the 1990s and its current state of “hyperendemicity” in southern Africa have affected the levels, intensity and nature of vulnerability of households to livelihood shocks and stresses. The food price crisis of 2008 and the ongoing global financial crisis have further impacted the ability of households, communities, and national governments to achieve food security for large numbers of people in the region. Overlaying these dynamics, various manifestations of climate change are beginning to have an impact again, with evidence of interactions with other drivers of vulnerability.
Pro-poor biotechnology and biosafety research in partnership with developing countries: An overview of current IFPRI initiatives
(Report, 2009) International Food Policy Research Institute
The majority of poor people in developing countries rely on agriculture for their food and livelihoods. However, they are increasingly vulnerable and food insecure due to declining agricultural productivity growth, climate change susceptibility, and volatile food and energy prices. As part of its commitment to improving livelihoods and reducing poverty, IFPRI is undertaking substantial work on food- and nutrition-related science and technology policy, with an emphasis on innovations that are relevant, safe, and accessible to poor people. Assessing the socioeconomic opportunities and risks of agricultural biotechnology for smallholder farming systems, poor consumers, biodiversity, and trade is a priority on IFPRI’s research agenda. IFPRI’s biotechnology research is also complemented by its work on biosafety policy issues.
Philippine agricultural and food policies: Implications for poverty and income distribution
(Brief, 2009) Cororaton, Caesar B.; Corong, Erwin
Natural genetic variation in lycopene epsilon cyclase tapped for maize biofortification
(Working Paper, 2008) Harjes, Carlos E.; Rocheford, Torbert R.; Bai, Ling; Brutnell, Thomas R.; Kandianis, Catherine Bermudez; Sowinski, Stephen G.; Stapleton, Ann E.; Vallabhaneni, Ratnakar; Williams, Mark; Wurtzel, Eleanore T.; Yan, Jianbing; Buckler, Edward S.
Maize is the dominant subsistence crop in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, where 17 to 30 percent of children under age 5 are vitamin A deficient. Diet diversification, food fortification, and supplementation have all been used to combat dietary micronutrient deficiencies. However, diet diversification is often limited by crop seasonality, expense, and low bioavailability of green leafy plant carotenoids. In addition, poor infrastructure has limited widespread use of direct vitamin supplementation. Perhaps the most feasible approach, therefore, is biofortification, a process by which staple crops are purposefully bred for higher nutritional density. Biofortified foods could potentially be an inexpensive, locally adaptable, and long?term solution to diet deficiencies.
The bang for the birr: Public expenditures and rural welfare in Ethiopia
(Brief, 2008) Mogues, Tewodaj; Ayele, Gezahegn; Paulos, Zelekawork
During the past decade and a half, Ethiopia’s approach to promoting development and improving the lives of the country’s rural population has been driven by a government strategy called Agricultural Development–Led Industrialization (ADLI). This strategy’s main goal is to encourage fast, broad-based development within the agricultural sector in order to power economic growth. While ADLI considers regulatory, trade, market, and other policies to be key engines of agricultural growth, it also focuses on increasing public expenditure in agriculture and road infrastructure, as well as in social sectors that are perceived as contributing to agricultural productivity. Thus, Ethiopia’s public expenditure policy is at the heart of the policy measures emerging from ADLI. Given budget constraints, it is essential to examine the relative contributions that different types of public investments make to welfare. An improved understanding of investment outcomes will have important implications for expenditure policy, especially in terms of the portfolio composition of public resources. This research report explores and compares the impacts of different types of public spending on rural household welfare in Ethiopia. Most previous studies examining the link between public expenditure and development outcomes either explore how the size of overall public expenditure or public investment affects growth or poverty, or they correlate spending in one economic sector with outcomes in that sector or with broader measures of welfare. Both types of studies can provide useful input into policymaking decisions. However, there is a striking lack of research aimed at examining how the composition of public spending affects key development outcomes—a particularly policy-relevant question. This study fills that gap. It compares the impact of different types of public spending through a three-stage analysis. The first stage assesses the impact of access to different sector-specific services on rural household consumption and the productivity of households’ private assets, differentiating these effects by geographic region. The second stage determines the contribution of different types of public spending to key sector-specific outcomes. The final stage of the analysis draws on the first two to estimate the effect on rural welfare of a unit increase in public spending across different sectors.
Pakistan’s cotton and textile economy: Intersectoral linkages and effects on rural and urban poverty
(Brief, 2008) Cororaton, Caesar B.; Orden, David
Pakistan’s economy relies heavily on its cotton and textile sectors. The cotton-processing and textile industries make up almost half of the country’s manufacturing base, while cotton is Pakistan’s principal industrial crop, supplying critical income to rural households. Altogether, the cotton-textile sectors account for 11 percent of GDP and 60 percent of export receipts. The future of this vital component of the national economy is uncertain, however. These industries face the challenges of unstable world prices and increased competition resulting from global liberalization of the multilateral textile and clothing trade. At the same time, Pakistan’s macroeconomic situation is volatile. Given such challenges and volatility, this study investigates what the future might hold for Pakistan’s cotton and textile industries and its implications for rural and urban poverty reduction in the country. The study uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to a 2001–02 social accounting matrix of the Pakistan economy to conduct experimental simulations of possible economic changes. The CGE model results are linked to the nation-wide 2001–02 Pakistan Household Integrated Economic Survey to examine the implications the simulated developments have for Pakistani poverty. Simulation 1 examines the effects of a doubling of foreign capital inflows, as occurred from 2002 to 2006, before a subsequent financial crisis emerged in 2008. Simulation 2 analyzes the counterfactual effects of an increase in world prices of cotton lint and yarn and/or textiles which would have offset declines experienced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Pakistan’s strong textile association motivates Simulation 3, which examines the effects of a 5-percent increase in government production subsidies to the industry. Simulation 4 uses a dynamic-recursive version of the model to analyze the short- and long-run effects of a 5-percent increase of total factor productivity (TFP) in cotton, lint and yarn, and textile production.
Linkages between land management, land degradation, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Uganda
(Abstract, 2008) Nkonya, Ephraim M.; Pender, John L.; Kaizzi, Kayuki C.; Kato, Edward; Mugarura, Samuel; Ssali, Henry; Muwonge, James
Agriculture is vital to the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa: two-thirds of the region’s people depend on it for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, agricultural productivity in most of the region is stagnant or declining, in large part because of land degradation. Soil erosion and soil nutrient depletion degraded almost 70 percent of the region’s land between 1945 and 1990; 20 percent of total agricultural land has been severely degraded. If left unchecked, land degradation could seriously threaten the progress of economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa. Within this context, most African countries strive to achieve poverty reduction and sustainable land management. In designing policies to achieve these objectives concurrently, a clear understanding of their linkage is crucial. Nonetheless, the relationships between poverty and land management are complex, context specific, and resource specific, and empirical evidence to demonstrate their linkage has been limited. This analysis seeks to improve the understanding of this linkage by examining how poverty (broadly defined to include limited access to capital, infrastructure, and services) influences land-management practices, land degradation, crop productivity, and household incomes. In particular, the study focuses on how factors susceptible to policy initiatives—such as education, agricultural technical assistance, and credit— affect households’ land management decisions. Uganda was chosen to serve as a case study of these issues, for several reasons. Of all Sub-Saharan African nations, Uganda has some of the most severe soil nutrient depletion in Africa: about 1.2 percent of nutrient stock stored in the topsoil is depleted by farmers each year. Also, the country contains a wide variety of agroecological zones (AEZs), making it an appropriate microcosm of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Ugandan government has also been conducting ambitious poverty-reduction and conservation efforts, and a study such as this one serves to measure those efforts. Working with the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), the authors drew on Uganda’s 2002–03 National Household Survey, as well as a specific survey conducted to collect poverty, land management, and land-degradation data at the household and plot levels.
Iron biofortified rice improves the iron stores of non-anemic Filipino women
(Abstract, 2005) Haas, Jere D.; Beard, John L.; Murray-Kolb, Laura E.; del Mundo, Angelita M.; Felix, Angelina; Gregorio, Glenn B.
Iron deficiency is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world affecting an estimated 3.5 billion people. Among the most at risk in developing countries, are women of reproductive age. Strategies to alleviate the problem are public education to improve diets, supplementation, and iron fortification of the food supply. Biofortification of staple food crops is a new approach to complement existing interventions. Developing staple food crops with substantial amounts of micronutrients such as iron, zinc, and pro‐vitamin A through conventional breeding and biotechnology has the potential to significantly improve nutritional status of vulnerable groups. In processed and cooked form, biofortified high iron rice developed through conventional breeding at the International Rice Research Institute has four to five times more iron than commercially available rice. Sensory evaluation prior to the feeding study showed that high‐iron rice was comparable with the commercial rice.
Road development, economic growth, and poverty reduction in China
(Abstract, 2005) Fan, Shenggen; Chan-Kang, Connie
Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in China over the last two decades. It disaggregates road infrastructure into different classes to account for differences in their quality, and then estimates the impact of road investments on overall economic growth, agricultural growth, urban growth, urban poverty reduction, and rural poverty reduction. The report makes the case for a greater focus on low-quality and rural roads in future infrastructure investment strategies in China. It does so by showing how investing in low-quality and rural roads will generate larger marginal returns, raise more people out of poverty per yuan invested, and reduce regional development disparity more sharply than investing in high-quality roads. The study’s findings will have considerable implications for China’s infrastructure policy.
Impact evaluation of a conditional cash transfer program: the Nicaraguan Red de Protección Social
(Abstract, 2005) Maluccio, John; Flores, Rafael
In 2000, the Nicaraguan government implemented a conditional cash transfer program designed to improve the nutritional, health, and educational status of poor households, and thereby to reduce short- and long-term poverty. Based on the Mexican government’s successful PROGRESA program, Nicaragua’s Red de Protección Social (RPS) sought to supplement household income, reduce primary school dropout rates, and increase the health care and nutritional status of children under the age of five. This report represents IFPRI’s evaluation of phase I of RPS. It shows that the program was effective in low-income areas and particularly effective when addressing health care and education needs. The report offers the first extensive assessment of a Nicaraguan government antipoverty program.
The impact of agroforestry-based soil fertility replenishment practices on the poor in Western Kenya
(Abstract, 2005) Place, Frank; Adato, Michelle; Hebinck, Paul; Omosa, Mary
Western Kenya is one of the most densely populated areas in Africa. Farming there is characterized by low inputs and low crop productivity. Poverty is rampant in the region. Yet the potential for agriculture is considered good. In the study described here, researchers looked specifially at soil fertility replenishment (SFR) systems...Focused on two specific systems -- the tree-based
PROGRESA and its impacts on the welfare of rural households in Mexico
(Abstract, 2005) Skoufias, Emmanuel
Power, politics, and performance: community participation in South African public works programs
(Abstract, 2005) Adato, Michelle; Hoddinott, John F.; Haddad, Lawrence James
...Through a study of seven public works programs implemented in Western Cape province, this report examines the benefits and challenges of pursuing community participation, together with the effects of participation on meeting the other objectives of the programs. Although aspects of South Africa’s experience are unique to its political economy, the study’s findings reveal insights, dilemmas, and possibilities of considerable relevance in the wider context of participatory or “community-driven” development programs, which have increasingly become integral to the development agenda throughout the world.and were not trained...Politics, conflicts of interest, struggles over resources, and processes of consultation and consensus-building are part of the landscape of community-driven development. If participatory development is to remain on South Africa’s development agenda, all actors must commit to realizing this objective, including generating sufficient resources, creativity, and patience to see the process through.
Policy analysis for sustainable land management and food security in Ethiopia: a bioeconomic model with market imperfections
(Abstract, 2005) Holden, Stein; Shiferaw, Bekele A.; Pender, John L.
Policy Analysis for Sustainable Land Management and Food Security in Ethiopia presents a bioeconomic model of this less- favored area in the Ethiopian highlands. The main reason for selecting this case study area is the unique availability of both biophysical and socioeconomic data covering a period of 15 to 20 years.The data provides a valuable opportunity to analyze the relationships between population pressure, poverty, and land degradation and to test policies for reducing vulnerability and improving sustainable management of the resource base.... Our analysis of the Andit Tid watershed community should be useful to policymakers and others seeking to reduce poverty and improve land management in Ethiopia and other countries where such problems are severe. Beyond this, the bioeconomic modeling approach used in this study can be usefully adapted and applied in many other settings.
Carotenoid-biofortified maize maintains adequate vitamin A status in Mongolian gerbils
(Abstract, 2006) Howe, Julie; Tanumihardjo, Sherry A.
In many areas of the world, especially Africa and Southeast Asia, vitamin A deficiency is a major health problem, particularly in children and women. In addition, staple foods in these areas, such as rice, wheat, and maize, tend to be low in provitamin A. Efforts to breed maize for increased provitamin A have resulted in varieties with enhanced activity, but relatively low concentrations compared to carrots and other orange vegetables. In addition, low predicted bioconversion rates bring into question the bioefficacy of biofortified maize. Before breeding efforts continue, it is important to assess whether maize biofortification with provitamin A carotenoids can contribute to vitamin A status. This research investigated the bioefficacy of ß ‐ carotene in biofortified maize in vitamin A ‐ depleted Mongolian gerbils. Study 1 compared the bioefficacy of ß‐carotene from maize with vitamin A and ß ‐ carotene supplements, and study 2 investigated the effect of two types of maize at two dietary levels (i.e., four carotenoid concentrations) on vitamin A status.

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