Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Africa

By K. Anderson, W. Masters. 2009

230 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One of every two people in Sub-Saharan Africa survives on less than $1.25 a day. That proportion has changed little over the past three decades, unlike in Asia and elsewhere, so the region's share of global poverty has risen from one-tenth to almost one-third since 1980. About 70 percent of today's 400 million poor Africans live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly on farming for their livelihoods. While that rural share was even higher in the past, it means policies affecting the incentives for farmers to produce and sell farm products remain a major influence on the extent of Africa's poverty. The case studies help address questions such as the following: where is there still a policy bias against agricultural production? To what extent are some farmers now being protected from import competition? What are the political economic forces behind the more-successful reformers, and how do they compare with those in less-successful countries where major distortions in agricultural incentives remain? How important have domestic political forces been in bringing about reform, as compared with international forces? What explains the cross commodity pattern of distortions within the agricultural sector of each country? What policy lessons and trade implications can be drawn from these differing experiences with a view to ensuring better growth-enhancing and poverty-reducing outcomes in the study's focus countries and in the region's other economies?

Subfields: Soil Science

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Citations in the corpus

On the Structural Transformation of Rural Africa (2017, background): “…and price incentives against agriculture, with the nominal rates of assistance in 2000-2004, on average across study countries and crops, still 20% lower for agriculture than for nonagriculture, implying a transfer of resources from farming to nonfarming households (Anderson and Masters, 2009).”
Resources, Policies, and Agricultural Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (2013, background): “The two exceptions are results from Avila and Evenson (2007) and Alene (2010), which found long-term TFP growth to average significantly more than 1 percent annually.”
Why has Africa become a net food importer? Explaining Africa agricultural and food trade deficits. (2011, background): “There has been indeed some slow but noticeable reversal of these policies following past and on-going trade negotiations (Anderson and Masters, 2009; Swinnen, 2009), but the effects of the policy reversal seem to be rather limited.”
Market inefficiencies and the adoption of agricultural technologies in developing countries 1 (2013, background): “On the one hand, a disconnect between global prices and farm gate prices buffers farmers from additional price uncertainty; on the other hand, it often results in a much lower farm gate price than border price (Anderson and Masters 2009).”
Assessment of rice self-sufficiency in 2025 in eight African countries (2015, background): “…requires on-the-ground research into socioeconomic and biophysical constraints and solutions (e.g. Haefele et al., 2013; Saito et al., 2012, 2013; Kumashiro et al., 2013; Tanaka et al., 2013; Nhamo et al., 2014) and effective policies (e.g. see Anderson and Masters, 2009; Fuglie and Rada, 2013).”