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The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique challenge to governments across the globe, reinforcing the need to improve understanding of domestic and international trade trends to provide more informed options for policy response. During the last several months, IFPRI has been analyzing a variety of Papua New Guinea (PNG) national and global datasets with the goal of expanding analytical tools to evaluate potential production shortfalls and food price shocks, and their associated impacts on household food security and livelihoods. This research note focuses on agri-food import and export trends during the last two decades to better evaluate potential changes in related import demand and export potential in PNG. In doing so, this research note informs an upcoming economy-wide multi market model analysis that will model a variety of potential shocks to household welfare to identify policies to manage potential ensuing food security threats. PNG's growth in international agri-food trade (both export and import) will continue to be important to overall food security outcomes among rural and urban households. Rural households that produce key export cash-crops (e.g., coffee, cocoa, palm oil) depend on the cash economy to supplement overall food consumption, while urban households depend on rice and other agri-food imports (as well as domestic goods) for consumption. Agri-food imports are also contributing to important increases in the availability of protein-dense foods, with the value of poultry imports growing, on average, 30 percent per capita per year from 2001 – 2016. Although PNG's agri-food import data suggest a greater demand for higher value food items such as animal-sourced foods, the total import value of ultra-processed foods, such as sugary drinks, are also increasing rapidly within PNG. The profitability and growth of agricultural exports and imports are driven by several factors, including levels of public investment in infrastructure, weather and climate shocks, security and political stability, and conditions in the world market. Government economic policies, including exchange rate, trade and price policies, also heavily influence agricultural trade. Policy to promote and facilitate domestic movement of goods, as well as macro-economic policies that influence the relative price of tradable to non-tradable goods (the real exchange rate) should be managed appropriately to support and incentivize greater agri-food production and trade. These policies could also be paired with an expanded set of education programs that integrate nutrition-sensitive information to address current increases in demand and consumption of high-saturated and sugary processed goods, of which total import values are rapidly increasing in PNG. Finally, a greater portfolio of organized databases, analytical tools and policy resources are warranted to facilitate real-time policy analysis that can inform key development investments and initiatives. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; ReSAKSS Asia; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Along with high economic growth over a period of somewhat more than the past three decades, poverty, household food insecurity, and undernutrition have substantially declined in Ghana. Ghana was one of the first African countries that achieved the first MDG, that of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Recently, Ghana achieved (lower-) middle-income-country status. Economic growth has been accompanied by a structural transformation of the economy and progressing urbanization. Household income growth improves people's ability to afford nutritious foods and diversified diets, and allows them to utilize superior healthcare and higher education, contributing to healthier and more productive lives for themselves and their children. However, improvements in people's living standards and changes in their livelihood activities and lifestyle usually also lead to a nutrition transition and give rise to new nutritional challenges, including increasing prevalence of overweight/obesity and related NCDs. To successfully address these new nutritional challenges, governments may need to launch new health and nutrition programs and revisit established food policies that have become inefficient in reducing food insecurity and malnutrition or even detrimental under the new circumstances. ; PR ; IFPRI1; ReSAKSS ; DSGD; WCAO; ESAO

This report presents findings on the supply side of agricultural mechanization in Myanmar, based on a survey of 57 agricultural machinery suppliers in five urban centers in Myanmar's Central Dry Zone, and incorporating information on the location and year of establishment of branches of machinery businesses based in Yangon. Key findings are summarized below. Machinery supply businesses are now numerous and widely distributed. Fifty-seven enterprises were identified, operating a total of 234 stores in 74 townships and 13 states/regions. Ownership is quite concentrated, with six businesses accounting for 52% of all stores. All enterprises surveyed are Myanmar owned and operated. Most were established in order to supply agricultural machines or other heavy machinery, but a few of the largest have since diversified into other sectors. The main rice growing zones of the Delta and Dry Zone were the first to begin to mechanize, with mechanization subsequently spilling over into areas of the Dry Zone growing non-rice crops, and to upland areas. Numbers of agricultural machinery supply shops in Myanmar increased 333% between 2008 and 2018, from 54 to 234, while the number of townships with machinery suppliers jumped from 29 to 74. Numbers of agricultural machinery supply outlets in the Dry Zone grew slowly until 2013. Very rapid growth took place from 2014-2017, during which 61% of all stores were established. Half (49%) of all machinery supply business are located in the Dry Zone, 36% in the Delta and 15% in the hilly and border states. Sales of agricultural machinery in the Dry Zone boomed from 2013-2016, increasing several fold, but growth peaked by 2017. Sales of four-wheel tractors and combine harvesters contracted slightly in 2017, by -22% and -16% respectively. Sales of two-wheel tractors and attachments for four-wheel tractors also fell in 2017. A wider assortment of agricultural equipment is now available from a greater range of sources than ever before. The proliferation of businesses has created opportunities for numerous brands to enter the marketplace as both suppliers and manufacturers compete for market share. The number of four-wheel tractor brands sold quadrupled from 2013 to 2017, while the number of combine harvester brands available doubled from 2015 to 2017 Products sold by businesses in the Dry Zone reflect the agro-ecology of the region. Four-wheel tractors and their attachments (disc plows and rotary tillers) are the main items, outselling two-wheel tractors, water pumps, and engines, which are the highest volume items sold in the Delta. Very low sales of water pumps in the Dry Zone reflect limited direct access to irrigation canals and ground water. Dry Zone farmers prefer four-wheel tractors for non-paddy crops because two-wheel tractors have insufficient power to break up hardened soils prior to cultivation. In the Delta, where paddy is the dominant crop and water is plentiful, soils are softened by puddling before paddy cultivation commences, making two-wheel tractors better suited to plowing than heavy four-wheel tractors. Finance for agricultural machinery purchases is widely available and utilized, contributing the rapid growth of machinery sales. Almost all machinery supply businesses offer some form of hire purchase financing. The importance of banks as a source of finance has grown relative to that of direct finance provided by machine suppliers. The share of machinery suppliers partnering with banks to provide hire purchase loans to customers buying two-wheel tractors, four-wheel tractors, and combine harvesters increased from little or nothing before 2013, to 84%, 87% and 96%, respectively in 2017. Sales financed through hire purchase loans supplied by banks are reported to account for 76%, 67% and 98% of sales of these machines, respectively. The number of banks offering hire purchase loans for agricultural machinery has increased quickly, from five in 2014 to 11 in 2017. Throughout this period two banks, Yoma and MCB, dominated the provision of hire purchase finance. Yoma accounted for 41% of partnerships with machinery dealerships in 2014, rising to 48% in 2017. Almost all purchases of agricultural machines and attachments are initiated by customers, except for four-wheel tractors. One quarter of four-wheel tractors purchases made in 2017 were organized by co-operative associations under the Department of Co-operatives, or brokered by the Agricultural Mechanization Department. The benefit of government agents acting as intermediaries between buyers and sellers of machinery is not clear, given that sales of all machines other than four-wheel tractors are made almost exclusively via direct customer-supplier interaction. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI2; Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Food Security Policy (FSP) ; DSGD

Outsourcing enterprises that rent out agricultural machinery with operators to farm households have been vital to facilitating rapid agricultural mechanization in Myanmar over the past five years. This report presents results from the first ever study of agricultural machinery outsourcers in Myanmar. One hundred and twenty two outsourcing enterprises were surveyed in 12 Dry Zone townships in December 2017. These included 79 enterprises providing four-wheel tractor (4WT) outsourcing services, 32 providing combine harvester (CH) services, and 11 offering both CH and 4WT services. The following results stand out: Outsourcing of CH and 4WT services is a recent phenomenon, and has expanded extremely rapidly: 88% of 4WT and 94% of CH owned by surveyed outsourcers were purchased during or after 2014. However, purchases of both 4WT and CH slowed in 2017, suggesting that market maturation is beginning. The total area harvested by CH outsourcing enterprises grew 1240% from 2013 to 2017, while that serviced by 4WT outsourcers grew 900%. The average area of land harvested by each CH outsourcing enterprise annually grew from 101 ha in 2013 to 114 ha in 2015, shrinking thereafter as greater competition emerged, to reach 86 ha in 2017. The average area of land worked by 4WT outsourcers was stable from at around 150 ha from 2014 onwards. Agricultural machinery outsourcing enterprises are small businesses. The vast majority own a single machine and are also farmers. Their farms are toward the upper end of the farm size distribution, but they are not large landowners or companies. Agricultural machines were purchased mainly from private machinery supply businesses. This was the case for all CH, and three-quarters of 4WT, despite government efforts to promote tractor sales through the Department of Cooperatives. Machine purchases have been facilitated by access to formal finance. Two-thirds (64%) of CH and just over half (54%) of 4WT were purchased using financing from a bank or machinery dealership. Purchases of 4WT made using credit obtained from government sources accounted for 19% of sales. The introduction of transferrable land use rights (Form 7) has facilitated access to formal finance. Form 7 was used to guarantee almost all machinery loans provided by banks. Provision of outsourcing services is highly profitable. Most of the capital costs of CH outsourcing enterprises can be recovered within two years. Repayment periods are slightly longer for 4WT outsourcing enterprises, but almost all 4WT outsourcers were able to repay loans in full on time. Very few owners or operators of CH or 4WT received formal training on how to use them. Among individuals who had received training, nearly all were trained by machinery supply businesses. Fees charged by outsourcers have remained stable or become cheaper in real terms, indicating the existence of competitive markets. CH enterprises initially served local markets but have expanded their geographical coverage over time, from a 'core' of irrigated paddy cultivating areas around Shwebo to other areas of the Dry Zone, the Delta and Bago. Provision of 4WT outsourcing services is much more localized than CH outsourcing. New specialized economic actors and markets for services have emerged extremely quickly in response to opportunities created by the growth of agricultural machinery outsourcing in the areas of: (1) 3rd party transport services; (2) brokers organizing groups of clients; (3) skilled machine operators. Transport logistics from 3rd party providers have lowered entry barriers into CH outsourcing by removing the need to own or operate vehicles used to transport CH. This makes it possible for CH outsourcers to offer services in distant locations without having to visit them in person Brokers acting as intermediaries between prospective service users and CH outsourcing enterprises have largely replaced self-organized groups, conferring advantages to both CH outsourcing enterprises and their customers. CH outsourcers have replaced their own labor with that of hired machine operators, freeing up their own time to engage in activities such as farming or non-farm business. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI2; Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Food Security Policy (FSP) ; DSGD

Ghana is one of a few African countries where agricultural mechanization has recently undergone rapid development. Except for places in the forest zone where stumps are still an issue in fields, tractors used for plowing and maize shelling have been widely adopted even among small farmers. Medium- and large-scale farmers who own tractors provide the majority of mechanization services. Recognizing this fundamental fact is important for designing any effective mechanization policy, which should aim at the entire service market instead of targeting a selected group of service providers as beneficiaries. Tractor owners and operators are often discouraged from traveling long distances to plow only a few acres for individual small farmers, which becomes a considerable barrier for smallholders to access tractor services on time. This requires the government consider mechanisms to improve coordination among small farmers and to encourage Farmer Based Organizations (FBOs) to facilitate such coordination. The use of harrowing or second-plowing has been shown as a productivity-enhancing farming practice but it is currently under-demanded by farmers. A pilot program to address the coordination failures and to nudge small farmers to adopt harrowing services together can be considered. ; Non-PR ; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies ; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Following poor harvests in the 2015/16 cropping season in Malawi, vulnerability assessments found that nearly 6.7 million people, primarily in the Southern and Central regions, were likely to suffer from food insecurity before the next harvest. The government of Malawi and its development partners designed the 2016/17 Food Insecurity Response Programme (FIRP) in Malawi to meet the food needs of many of the households affected, mobilizing approximately USD 265 million in resources to do so. In the wake of this intervention, a team led by the International Food Policy Research Institute was contracted to assess the quality of this humanitarian response along four primary dimension: Assess the quality of the national food security assessments which began the response; Investigate the accuracy of the geographical and beneficiary targeting within selected areas; conduct an operational assessment of the humanitarian response design and implementation; and Assess overall programme and draw technical, market, and methodological implications for the design of future humanitarian responses and their contribution to resilience building. This Discussion Paper provides considerable detail on which facets of the implementation of FIRP were successful and where implementation fell short in addressing the needs of the affected population, in ensuring that Malawi was better prepared for future food crises, and in laying a foundation for improved resilience in the face of such shocks for both the affected households and Malawi as a whole. The 2016/17 FIRP was largely successful in preventing disaster and saving lives and livelihoods. However, the assessment of the design and implementation of the FIRP highlighted the high level of dependency of the Malawi government on its development partners for resources to undertake such humanitarian responses and the significant deficiencies in the technical and institutional capacity of the institutions responsible for responding. Unless the cycle of food insecurity is broken and the resilience of Malawian food systems increased, the government of Malawi and its development partners will continue to depend on FIRP-type interventions to save people's lives and protect them from food insecurity and hunger. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2 ; DSGD; DGO; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)