scholarly journals Management of the Pandemic: Agriculture, Food Management and Resilience During Covid-19 in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-336
Author(s):  
Pushpa Singh

This article aims to analyse the impact of Covid-19 on agricultural activities, food security and policies of food management during the pandemic in India, particularly with reference to hardships caused to the most vulnerable communities due to the loss of livelihood, issues of access and availability. The explorations suggest that the growing inclination to centralise the structure of contemporary food and farming would make the entire system fragile, further accentuating the issues of food insecurity in the country. On the other hand, the localised, diverse systems of farming practices existing in various parts of India are rooted in agroecology, judiciously using and conserving the local natural resources. Thus, they have emerged as not only sustainable in the long run but are also food secure. While this impending crisis has exposed the systemic weakness of globalised food systems like never before, it also provides us with a crucial opportunity to mend our food and farming, keeping the long-term sustainability and food security as the goals.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6503
Author(s):  
Yu Peng ◽  
Hubert Hirwa ◽  
Qiuying Zhang ◽  
Guoqin Wang ◽  
Fadong Li

Given the impact of COVID-19 and the desert locust plague, the Ethiopian food security issue has once again received widespread attention. Its food crisis requires comprehensive and systematic research to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger. This review discusses the current situation and the causes of food security in Ethiopia. We focus on the challenges in the food security assessment field. The article lists seven typical causes of food insecurity and three roots of food security in Ethiopia. Long-term food security assessment and a comprehensive understanding and manageability for food security causes are considered as the main existing research challenges. Climate-resilient management, water management, and long-term ecosystem network monitoring and data mining are suggested as potential roadmap for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Russ D. Kashian ◽  
Tracy Buchman ◽  
Robert Drago

PurposeThe study aims to analyze the roles of poverty and African American status in terms of vulnerability to tornado damages and barriers to recovery afterward.Design/methodology/approachUsing five decades of county-level data on tornadoes, the authors test whether economic damages from tornadoes are correlated with vulnerability (proxied by poverty and African American status) and wealth (proxied by median income and educational attainment), controlling for tornado risk. A multinomial logistic difference-in-difference (DID) estimator is used to analyze long-run effects of tornadoes in terms of displacement (reduced proportions of the poor and African Americans), abandonment (increased proportions of those groups) and neither or both.FindingsControlling for tornado risk, poverty and African American status are linked to greater tornado damages, as is wealth. Absent tornadoes, displacement and abandonment are both more likely to occur in urban settings and communities with high levels of vulnerability, while abandonment is more likely to occur in wealthy communities, consistent with on-going forces of segregation. Tornado damages significantly increase abandonment in vulnerable communities, thereby increasing the prevalence of poor African Americans in those communities. Therefore, the authors conclude that tornadoes contribute to on-going processes generating inequality by poverty/race.Originality/valueThe current paper is the first study connecting tornado damages to race and poverty. It is also the first study finding that tornadoes contribute to long-term processes of segregation and inequality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Talknice Saungweme ◽  
Nicholas M. Odhiambo

Abstract This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the impact of public debt service on economic growth; and it provides an evidence-based approach to public policy formulation in Zimbabwe. The empirical analysis was performed by applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique to annual time-series data from 1970 to 2017. The study findings reveal that the impact of public debt service on economic growth in Zimbabwe is negative in the short run but positive in the long run. The results are suggestive of the existence of a crowding-out effect of public debt service in Zimbabwe in the short run and a crowding-in effect in the long run. In view of these findings, the government should consider fiscal and financial policies that promote a constant supply of long-term finance, long-term fixed investments, and extension of a government securities maturity structure so as to ensure sustainable short- and long-term public debt service expenditures. The study further recommends the strengthening of non-distortionary revenue mobilisation reforms to reduce market distortions and boost domestic investment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2465
Author(s):  
Laura Brad ◽  
Gabriel Popescu ◽  
Alina Zaharia ◽  
Maria Claudia Diaconeasa ◽  
Daniela Mihai

The importance of agricultural financing in ensuring food security and safety, jobs, poverty reduction, economic growth and more recently, climate change mitigation, natural resource conservation and sustainable development imposes periodic analysis of the factors which might influence the farmers’ financial situation, in order to improve it. One way of assessing this is to analyze the agricultural debt. In this context, based on previous models, the paper aims to assess the impact of specific factors on the agricultural debt level in the European Union during 2008–2015, as these should be considered in future common agriculture policies as well as in achieving sustainable agriculture. The research was conducted based on econometric techniques, by applying panel models in the Eviews 7.0 software-64 bit version. More than 20 variables were considered in the analysis. Some of the findings suggest that an increase in subsidies as well as the share of cash flow in the total existing capital would determine considerable reductions of the total debt. Decoupled subsidies seem to have a higher impact than coupled subsidies on short term debt, while its value is between the one found for coupled subsidies in the case of long term debt. Large farms/companies, to which decoupled payments are granted, have higher debts on long run and on total debt. The same units, to which coupled subsidies were granted, have smaller short-term debt. In contrast, the increases of labor costs, fixed costs, and crop/livestock costs lead to an increase in the total debt, since the farms require additional financial resources to cover the expanded costs. Also, the results suggest that short-term debts are mainly formed of long-term loans that reached maturity. In this case, the authors support the idea of differentiated financing programs for the agricultural activities because of their peculiarities and reinforced by the need to turn the intensive agriculture into a sustainable and plentiful one.


Author(s):  
Takrima Sayeda

The purpose of the paper is to see if there is any relationship exist between free floating exchange rate and export performance of Bangladesh. It inspects the monthly data of exchange rate and export value for the time period between year 2000 and 2017. It utilized the Johansen [1] cointegration approach to identify the extent of long run and short run relationship between them. The study could not establish neither any long term trend nor any short term dynamics between the variables. Respective variables are significantly related to their own immediate past values. Distant past values do not have any implications. This study suggests that short run macroeconomic policy would be beneficial to influence the foreign exchange market and eventually the performance of export of Bangladesh.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-299
Author(s):  
Md Arafat Islam ◽  
Nazmul Ahsan Khan ◽  
Raisa Bashar

Inorganic farming is the norm in most areas of Bangladesh today, especially at croplands near Bangladesh’s capital - Dhaka. However, several recent studies have shown that such practices cause soil degradation overtime, consequently leading to long-term harm to the environment and economic profits. This long-term cost is often avoided by most farmers as inorganic farming is believed to fetch increased productivity/monetary gains, than its environmentally friendly, organic counterpart: the primary aim of this research was to find out the validity of this belief. The research used literature review and analysis of primary data collected about input costs, returns, crop yields, environmental effects, etc., from sixty respondents (mostly farmers and consumers involved in both types of farming), using one-on-one structured interviews, and three focus group discussions at the selected areas of Savar, Sreenagar and Rupganj, focusing primarily on two popular crops – tomato and corn; graphical and tabular analyses were conducted using MS Excel to propose interpretations and record findings. Keeping all other things constant and internalizing environmental externalities, while organic farming was found to produce around 50% and 33% less tomatoes and corns in net terms, respectively, than inorganic farming, the input costs and returns from one cycle of production were found to be lower (50%) and higher (around 200USD), respectively. Hence, from a long-run perspective, organic farming was concluded as the more cost-effective choice both in economic and environmental terms, given that the Dhaka market for organic products are managed better by the producers, consumers and government, alike. Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.6(2): 289-299, August 2019


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Smeets-Kristkova ◽  
Thom Achterbosch ◽  
Marijke Kuiper

Nigeria is one of the most dynamic economies in Africa. Strong GDP and population growth coupled with urbanization trends place tremendous pressures on natural resources and the food systems that are dependent on them. Understanding the impact of these “mega trends” is important to identify key leverage points for navigating towards improved nutrition and food security in Nigeria. This paper contributes to the Foresight Project of the Food Systems for Healthier Diets which aims to analyse how the food system in Nigeria is expected to transform in the next decades, and to identify the leverage points for making sure that the transformation contributes to balanced consumer diets. For the food systems foresight, a well-established global economy-wide model, MAGNET, is applied that enables to capture the interlinkages among different food industry players in one consistent framework. By linking MAGNET to the GENUS nutritional database, it is further possible to relate the developments occurring on a macro-level with detailed macro and micronutrient consumption. Model projections suggest that a process of intensification of agriculture in combination with land substitution appears critical for the evolution of food and nutrition security, and for shifts towards healthy diets for the population. Intensification results in greater diversity of the production systems, which in turn cascades into positive effects on the diversity in the food supply and better food security outcomes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Dustmann ◽  
Uta Schönberg

This paper evaluates the impact of three major expansions in maternity leave coverage in Germany on children's long-run outcomes. To identify the causal impact of the reforms, we use a difference-indifference design that compares outcomes of children born shortly before and shortly after a change in maternity leave legislation in years of policy changes, and in years when no changes have taken place. We find no support for the hypothesis that the expansions in leave coverage improved children's outcomes, despite a strong impact on mothers' return to work behavior after childbirth. (JEL J13, J16, J22, J32)


Author(s):  
David K Evans ◽  
Mũthoni Ngatia

Abstract In recent decades, the number of evaluated interventions to improve access to school has multiplied, but few studies report long-term impacts. This paper reports the impact of an educational intervention that provided school uniforms to children in poor communities in Kenya. The program used a lottery to determine who would receive a school uniform. Receiving a uniform reduced school absenteeism by 37 percent for the average student (7 percentage points) and by 55 percent for children who initially had no uniform (15 percentage points). Eight years after the program began, there is no evidence of sustained impact of the program on highest grade completed or primary school completion rates. A bounding exercise suggests no substantive positive, long-term impacts. These results contribute to a small literature on the long-run impacts of educational interventions and demonstrate the risk of initial impacts depreciating over time.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania El Kallab ◽  
Cristina Terra

PurposeThis paper explores the role of colonial heritage on long-term economic development from a resource-curse perspective. The authors investigate the impact of colonial exports on long-term economic development through two channels: (1) a direct impact of the economic dependency on natural resources and (2) an indirect impact via its effect on colonial institutions, which persisted over time and influenced current economic development.Design/methodology/approachTo address this issue, the authors use an original data set on French bilateral trade from 1880 to 1912. The authors use partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in the empirical analysis, so that the authors are able to construct latent variables (LVs) for variables that are not directly observable, such as the quality of institutions.FindingsThe authors find that exports of primary goods to France had a negative impact on colonial institutions and that for French colonies, this impact was driven by minerals exports. Despite its impact on colonial institutions, exports of French colonies had no significant indirect impact on their current institutions. The authors find no significant direct impact of colonial trade on current development for French colonies. Finally, colonial exports of manufactured products had no significant impact on colonial institutions among French colonies and a positive impact among non-French ones.Research limitations/implicationsResearch implications regarding the findings of this paper are, namely, that the relative poor performance within French colonies today cannot be attributed to the extraction of raw materials a century ago. However, human capital and institutional development, instead of exports, are more relatively important for long-term growth. Some limitations in trying to determine the simultaneous relationship among colonial trade, institutions and economic performance are the relation between colonial trade and the extent of extraction from the colonizer, which is hard to quantify, as well as its precise mechanism.Practical implicationsSince the initial institutions set in those former colonies presented a strong persistence in the long run, their governments should focus now on building sound and inclusive political and economic institutions, as well as on investing in human capital in order to foster long-term growth. Once a comprehensive set of institutional and human resources are put in place, the quality and quantity of exports might create a positive spillover on the short-run growth.Social implicationsOne social implication that can be retrieved from this study is the ever-lasting effect of both human capital investment and introduction of inclusive political and economic institutions on the long-run impact of growth.Originality/valueThe paper uses an original primary data set from archival sources to explore the role of colonial heritage on long-term economic development from a resource-curse perspective. It applies a relatively new model partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) that allows the construction of LVs for variables that are not directly observable, as well as channeling the impact on growth through both direct and indirect channels. Finally, it allows for the simultaneous multigroup analysis across different colonial groups.


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