Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth.
Considerable poverty and food insecurity in Ethiopia, combined with the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, make agricultural transformation a crucial development goal for the country.
This ADB study documents the transformation of value chains moving rice and potatoes between the farm gate and the consumer in Bangladesh, the People's Republic of China, and India.
This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML information with a number of decisions they have made, and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading. But the magnitude of these effects is small.
There has been a rapid transformation of food supply chains in India over the past two decades. Modern retail sales are growing at 49 percent per year and quickly penetrating urban food markets and even rural markets.
This discussion paper documents differing practices in traditional and modern food supply chains and identifies an agenda for future research. Finds that overall urban consumption is increasing, the urban food basket is shifting away from staples toward high-value products, and modern market channels (modern retail, food processing, and the food service industry) are on the rise.
