PIM NEWS: SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2020

Issue #36, September - October 2020

Welcome to PIM News! In this issue, we are happy to introduce a new series of PIM Synthesis Briefs that will share some of the key findings from the Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) Program over the past 10 years. The first brief, “Gender and Rural Transformation”, is based on the work of our gender team and illustrates how the processes of rural transformation may influence women’s and men’s labor patterns, access to resources, and broader gender relations and norms. Read the blog for a quick overview and download the full brief to learn more!

Agricultural extension: Global status and performance in selected countries

Edited by Kristin Davis, Suresh C. Babu, and Catherine Ragasa
The new book provides a global overview of agricultural extension and advisory services, compares extension systems at national and regional levels, examines the performance of extension approaches in a selected set of country cases, and shares lessons and policy insights.
Learn more I Synopsis I Download the book I Launch event (recording)

Ethiopia's agrifood system: Past trends, present challenges, and future scenarios

Edited by Paul Dorosh and Bart Minten
Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction in recent years, but today the agriculture sector faces challenges to future growth, including increasing land and water constraints. The new book illustrates how growth in the country's agriculture sector remains critical to cutting poverty, and provides lessons relevant for other African countries as well.  [Open Access, read the book]

Quantity and quality food losses across the value chain: A comparative analysis

Food Policy
Luciana Delgado, Monica Schuster, and Maximo Torero test one traditional and three new measurement methodologies for five staples in six countries. Comparative results suggest that losses are highest at the producer level and most product deterioration occurs before harvest. Aggregated self-reported measures consistently underestimate actual food losses. [Open Access]

Land tenure security for women: A conceptual framework

Land Use Policy
While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Cheryl Doss and Ruth Meinzen-Dick identify aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators and provide a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it. [Open Access at this link until November 27, 2020]

Gender, labor migration and changes in small-scale farming on Vietnam's north-central coast

Critical Asian Studies
Nozomi Kawarazuka, Tuan Minh Duong, and Elisabeth Simelton investigate how men’s and women’s migration experiences influence agricultural production and livelihoods after migration. While increased economic independence of women through labor migration has not necessarily increased their management roles in agriculture, the stereotypical image of a rural woman is challenged. While migration can be a catalyst for men to transform their livelihoods, it can also widen gaps in social and economic statuses among men. [Open Access]

Landownership and the gender gap in agriculture: Insights from northern Ghana

Land Use Policy
Phanwin Yokying and Isabel Lambrecht find that, while landownership is positively associated with women and men’s agency in agriculture, gender gaps in agency persist among those who own land. Landownership alone may not suffice to reduce the gender gaps in agriculture.

Structural transformation and gendered transitions to adulthood among rural youth: Cross-national evidence from low- and middle-income countries

Journal of Development Studies
Jessica Heckert, Audrey Pereira, Cheryl Doss, Emily Myers and Agnes Quisumbing analyze nationally-representative, sex-disaggregated data from 36 countries to examine how structural and rural transformation are associated with landownership, labor force participation, and sector of employment for rural young women and men. [Open Access]

The changing nature of hydroclimatic risks across South Africa

Joint Program Report Series, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Schlosser et al. evaluate distributions of surface-air temperature and precipitation change over three regions across South Africa (western, central, and eastern), find a strong likelihood that temperatures will rise considerably higher than the current climate’s range of variability in all three regions, and a risk toward decreased precipitation for western and central parts of South Africa. [Open Access]

Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences, lessons learned and upscaling challenges

Land Use Policy
Adam Drucker and Marleni Ramirez review the application of nine Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes applied in four Latin American countries over the period of 2010–2018. While conservation costs are modest, the small-scale and one-off nature of the interventions has limited their environmental effectiveness in the short-term. [Pre-print open access version available here]

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