Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture
Back cover blurb Rising agricultural productivity has driven improvements in living standards for millennia. Today, redoubling that effort in developing countries is critical to reducing extreme poverty, ensuring food security for an increasing global population, and adapting to changes in climate. This volume presents fresh analysis on global trends and sources of productivity growth in agriculture and offers new perspectives on the drivers of that growth. It argues that gains from the reallocation of land and labor are not as promising as believed, so policy needs to focus more on the generation and dissemination of new technologies, which requires stepping up national research efforts. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, a serious research spending gap has emerged precisely at the time when the challenges faced by agriculture are intensifying. The book focuses on how this problem can be redressed in the public sector, as well as on reforms aimed at mobilizing new private sector actors and value chains, particularly creating a better enabling environment, reforming trade regulations, introducing new products, and strengthening intellectual property rights. On the demand side, the book examines what recent research reveals about policies to reduce the barriers impeding smallholder farmers from adopting new technologies. Harvesting Prosperity is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers. “As rightly argued by the authors, growth in agricultural productivity is the essential instrument to promote development in low-income agriculture-based countries. Achieving this requires research and development, upgrading of universities, reinforcement of farmer capacities, removal of constraints to adoption, and the development of inclusive value chains with interlinked contracts. As important, such efforts also need to be placed within a context of comprehensive agricultural, rural, and structural transformations. However, in many countries implementation of the requisite policies has been lagging. This book, with contributions from many top experts in the field, provides the most up-to-date presentation of this argument and explains in detail how to successfully put its ideas into practice. Governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations need to study it carefully to turn the promise of agriculture for development into a reality.“ Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet Professors of the Graduate School, University of California at Berkeley
1132899836
Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture
Back cover blurb Rising agricultural productivity has driven improvements in living standards for millennia. Today, redoubling that effort in developing countries is critical to reducing extreme poverty, ensuring food security for an increasing global population, and adapting to changes in climate. This volume presents fresh analysis on global trends and sources of productivity growth in agriculture and offers new perspectives on the drivers of that growth. It argues that gains from the reallocation of land and labor are not as promising as believed, so policy needs to focus more on the generation and dissemination of new technologies, which requires stepping up national research efforts. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, a serious research spending gap has emerged precisely at the time when the challenges faced by agriculture are intensifying. The book focuses on how this problem can be redressed in the public sector, as well as on reforms aimed at mobilizing new private sector actors and value chains, particularly creating a better enabling environment, reforming trade regulations, introducing new products, and strengthening intellectual property rights. On the demand side, the book examines what recent research reveals about policies to reduce the barriers impeding smallholder farmers from adopting new technologies. Harvesting Prosperity is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers. “As rightly argued by the authors, growth in agricultural productivity is the essential instrument to promote development in low-income agriculture-based countries. Achieving this requires research and development, upgrading of universities, reinforcement of farmer capacities, removal of constraints to adoption, and the development of inclusive value chains with interlinked contracts. As important, such efforts also need to be placed within a context of comprehensive agricultural, rural, and structural transformations. However, in many countries implementation of the requisite policies has been lagging. This book, with contributions from many top experts in the field, provides the most up-to-date presentation of this argument and explains in detail how to successfully put its ideas into practice. Governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations need to study it carefully to turn the promise of agriculture for development into a reality.“ Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet Professors of the Graduate School, University of California at Berkeley
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Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture

Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture

Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture

Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture

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Overview

Back cover blurb Rising agricultural productivity has driven improvements in living standards for millennia. Today, redoubling that effort in developing countries is critical to reducing extreme poverty, ensuring food security for an increasing global population, and adapting to changes in climate. This volume presents fresh analysis on global trends and sources of productivity growth in agriculture and offers new perspectives on the drivers of that growth. It argues that gains from the reallocation of land and labor are not as promising as believed, so policy needs to focus more on the generation and dissemination of new technologies, which requires stepping up national research efforts. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, a serious research spending gap has emerged precisely at the time when the challenges faced by agriculture are intensifying. The book focuses on how this problem can be redressed in the public sector, as well as on reforms aimed at mobilizing new private sector actors and value chains, particularly creating a better enabling environment, reforming trade regulations, introducing new products, and strengthening intellectual property rights. On the demand side, the book examines what recent research reveals about policies to reduce the barriers impeding smallholder farmers from adopting new technologies. Harvesting Prosperity is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers. “As rightly argued by the authors, growth in agricultural productivity is the essential instrument to promote development in low-income agriculture-based countries. Achieving this requires research and development, upgrading of universities, reinforcement of farmer capacities, removal of constraints to adoption, and the development of inclusive value chains with interlinked contracts. As important, such efforts also need to be placed within a context of comprehensive agricultural, rural, and structural transformations. However, in many countries implementation of the requisite policies has been lagging. This book, with contributions from many top experts in the field, provides the most up-to-date presentation of this argument and explains in detail how to successfully put its ideas into practice. Governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations need to study it carefully to turn the promise of agriculture for development into a reality.“ Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet Professors of the Graduate School, University of California at Berkeley

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781464814297
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Publication date: 11/05/2019
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 268
File size: 9 MB

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Abbreviations xvii

Executive Summary: The Elusive Promise of Productivity xxi

1 Sources of Growth in Agriculture 1

Improving Agricultural Productivity: Traversing the Last Mile toward Reducing Extreme Poverty 1

Poverty Reduction, Productivity Growth, and Economic Transformation Trends in Land and Labor Productivity 7

Conceptualizing Sources of Agricultural Growth 8

The Increasing Importance of TFP in Driving Agricultural Output Growth 11

What Will Accelerate Agricultural TFP? 17

Annex 1A. Issues in Measuring Agricultural Productivity 24

Notes 37

References 38

2 Misallocation and Productivity Growth 43

The Potential for Productivity Gains from Reallocation 43

Insights on Farm Size and Productivity 44

Labor Productivity and Structural Transformation 55

Annex 2A Microdata Sources for Measuring Labor Productivity in China and India 82

Annex 2B Distribution of Workdays by Farm and Nonfarm Activities in a Typical Month for an Average Adult Worker in India 84

Annex 2C Labor Productivity Differences by Farm Size 85

Annex 2D Labor Productivity Differences by Education Level 86

Annex 2E Drivers of Wage Differentials between Farm and Nonfarm Work in China 87

Notes 88

References 88

3 Investing in Innovation 95

Agriculture Innovation Policy in a Changing Global Context 95

Agriculture R&D Spending Worldwide: Increasing but Uneven 98

Revitalizing Public Research 105

Providing Incentives for Private Innovation 114

Concluding Remarks 131

Annex 3A Market Liberalization in Africa's Maize Seed Industry 133

Annex 3B Do Plant Breeders' Rights Stimulate Investment in Crop Improvement? 135

Annex 3C Herbicide Demand and Regional Harmonization of Regulations in Africa 137

Notes 139

References 140

4 Improving the Enabling Environment for Technology Adoption 147

Removing Constraints and Adopting Policies to Promote Diffusion of Technology 147

The Technology Adoption Puzzle 148

Removing Policy Bias against Agriculture 151

Closing Education Gaps 153

Securing Land Tenure Rights for Smallholders 156

Providing Information Services 157

Helping Farmers Manage Risk 164

Improving Access to Financial Services 169

Linking Farmers to Markets 174

Concluding Remarks 178

Notes 180

References 180

5 The Challenge of Agricultural Productivity Policy and the Promise of Modern Value Chains 187

The Agricultural Productivity and Innovation System 187

The Productivity Policy Dilemma in Agriculture and the Modern Value Chain 191

The Emergence of High-Value Markets 195

Value Chains and Agricultural Productivity: Some Conceptual Issues 198

Models of Value Chain Innovations and Organization 205

The Impact of Value Chain Transformations on Productivity 208

Cultivating Value Chains 214

Concluding Remarks 222

Notes 224

References 225

Boxes

1.1 Decomposing Sources of Agricultural Growth 9

1.2 New Data for Decomposing Agricultural Growth and Measuring Total Factor Productivity 12

1.3 Research, Technological Capabilities, and Knowledge Diffusion: Key to the Transformation of US Agriculture 21

2.1 Analytically Challenged? The Mechanics of the Agricultural Productivity Gap 59

2.2 High-Quality Microdata Sets Provide New Insights on Rural Labor 63

3.1 R8cD Capital, R&D Elasticities, and the Rate of Return to Research 104

3.2 The Expansion of Animal Protein Industries in Nigeria and Bangladesh 118

3.3 Policies and Innovation in China's Agricultural Machinery Industry 124

4.1 Farmer Adoption of Flood-Tolerant Rice in Odisha, India 170

4.2 Ethiopia: An Emerging African Success Story in Agricultural-Led Development 176

5.1 The Agriculture for Development Sequence 193

5.2 Value Chain Innovations and Farm Productivity in Eastern Europe, 1990-2005 210

5.3 Farm-Level Productivity Spillovers of Value Chain Innovations in Two African Countries in the 2000s 212

5.4 Examples of Multistakeholder Platforms to Stimulate Innovative Forms of Value Chain Organization 218

5.5 Blockchain at the Border: Exploring Whether Blockchain Can Help Rural Entrepreneurs and SMEs Boost Exports and Get Financing 220

5.6 Pilot of Distributed Ledger Technology for Traceability and Payment in Haiti's Fresh Fruits Value Chains 221

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