Can Crop Purchase Programs Reduce Poverty and Improve Welfare in Rural Communities? Evidence from the Food Reserve Agency in Zambia

Winnie Fung (), Lenis Liverpool-Tasie, Nicole Mason and Ruth Oyelere

No 211637, 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: The last decade has seen a resurgence of parastatal crop marketing institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, many of which cite improving food security and incomes as key goals. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the welfare effects of these programs. This study considers one such program, the Zambian Food Reserve Agency (FRA), which purchases maize from smallholder farmers at a pan-territorial price that typically exceeds maize market prices in surplus production areas. Using both fixed effects and an instrumental variables approach combined with correlated random effects, we estimate the effects of the FRA’s maize marketing activities on smallholder farm household welfare. Results suggest that FRA activities have positive direct welfare effects on the small minority of smallholder households that are able to sell to it. However, the results also suggest negative indirect FRA effects, as higher levels of FRA activity in a district are associated with higher levels of poverty.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Crop Production/Industries; Food Security and Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/211637/files/F ... ve%20welfare-836.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Can Crop Purchase Programs Reduce Poverty and Improve Welfare in Rural Communities? Evidence from the Food Reserve Agency in Zambia (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae15:211637

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.211637

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().