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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Jason S. Bergtold / Benjamin B. Schwab / Agricultural development is an essential factor in the economic development of much of the developing world and comprises a significant element of foreign assistance portfolios. Over the last decade, there has seen a renewed interest in more credible estimates of the economic impacts of development programs, such as assistance to extension programs. We compare the estimation of technical efficiency to farm output and income as an outcome variable to evaluate the impact of development programs such as farm education and extension programs. We develop a simple theoretical model which shows that using technical efficiency as an outcome variable could be a viable alternative to more traditionally used outcome variables such as farm output and farm profit. We note that when farmers are capital constrained, extension programs can theoretically have a large efficiency effect despite a small or zero change in farm profits. If farm technical efficiency is used as an outcome variable, then it must be estimated correctly. Mismeasurement of farm technical efficiency leads to misleading extension program evaluations. Farm households face heterogeneous infrastructural constraints (Suri 2011; Ojiem et al. 2006), credit constraints, information barriers and other input market constraints (Duflo, Kremer and Robinson 2011; Jack 201; Suri 2011and Stifel and Minten 2008), labor markets constraints (Henning and Henningsen 2007), socio-economical (Ojiem et al. 2006) and non-farm income opportunities (Chang et al. 2012) and thus have different access to agricultural inputs and outputs. These constraints have a substantial impact on agricultural production decisions of farm households. A key production decision of farm households is the allocation of resource to cash and food crops. Production of cash crops requires relatively higher market involvement in both the purchase of inputs and the selling of output than home-consumed food crops. The heterogeneous constraints across farm households leads to a substantial imbalance in the transaction costs associated with the production of each crop. Moreover, home-consumed crops may have quality attributes (e.g. color, taste, softness of dough, and suitability for certain dishes) not reflected in market prices. Factors such as transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics are farmer specific and drive a heterogeneous price wedge between the market prices for household’s crop production and the economic value of these crops for the household. These distinctions have important implication for farm productivity analysis, such as technical efficiency measurement. The standard approach to productivity analysis, such as efficiency estimation, assume that farm households face homogenous price wedges that leads to homogenous set of production and profit functions. However, the price gap created by transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics generally vary among subsistence, semi-subsistence and commercial farmers and leads to a heterogeneous set of profit and production frontiers. Subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers who produce largely home consumed crops have potentially greater price wedges than commercial farmers. Failing to account for the heterogeneity in price wedges that drive heterogeneity profit and production frontiers is likely to lead to underestimation of the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. We test if traditional productivity analysis indeed underestimates the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers by employing a conditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model for household survey data in Uganda. Results confirm that naïve estimates of efficiency understate the efficiency scores of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. The results cast doubt on policies, such as extension programs or other information treatments, that interpret low efficiency scores for subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers as a management shortfall. We demonstrate the use of farm technical efficiency as an outcome measure by analyzing data from 2008-2012 for farm training program in Armenia. In this program, farmers received technical guidance on modern farm techniques. Two previous evaluations (Schwab and Shanoyan 2016; Fortson et al. 2012) find ambiguous evidence that farm profits increased. The measurement or potential gain from an extension program is captured using farm technical efficiency measures. We find evidence that the program in Armenia increased farm technical efficiency from 2008 to 2012.

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This thesis comprises three essays on “The Economic impact of adult mortality and morbidity on smallholder farm households in Malawi.” The first essay estimates the levels of technical efficiency of AIDS-affected and non-affected smallholder farm households, and examines the technical efficiency differentials. The study uses time-varying and timeinvariant inefficiency models of production. The results show that among both female and male headed households, for both affected and non-affected households, fertilizer and seeds are the only variables that contribute significantly towards technical efficiency. The mean efficiency levels of affected and non-affected households are statistically not different. The second essay examines the maize production differentials between AIDS-affected and nonaffected farm households using the difference in difference estimation method. The results show that, for both affected and non-affected households, the mean maize production levels are higher during 2006/07 compared to 2004/05 However, the difference between the mean maize production levels of affected and non-affected households over the 2004/05 and 2006/07 period is not statistically significant. The third essay examines the coping strategies used by households facing food security problems. The results from the multinomial logistic model show that during 2004/05 and 2006/07, the most dominant coping strategy used by both AIDS-affected and non-affected households facing food security problems, is buying food from market. This is followed by casual labour, obtaining food from relatives and friends, eating unripe maize before harvest, and irrigation farming. The results from logistic discriminant analysis function indicate that, for all households, ordinary coping strategies are dominant among food-insecure households with a total score of close to 80 percent, much higher than survival strategies at around 20 percent during 2004/05. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

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This study investigates the factors affecting agricultural production of farm households in the National Regional State of Tigray, Ethiopia. The major primary sources of data for the study were farm household surveys, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The study revealed that the annual average crop production of respondents was found to be below the standard annual food requirement recommended by the international organizations. The proportion of irrigated land to total cultivated land was only 11per cent. The proportion of irrigated land in the two districts is lower than 11.27 per cent at the regional level. The utilization of chemical fertilizers for the majority of the respondents was below the recommended standard for the region. Although the farmers were interested in using improved seeds, the supplied varieties were not based on their preferences. Extension agents were mainly engaged in activities which were not related to their professions. The farm income model result showed that landholding size (p<0.0001), possession of oxen(p<0.0001), amount of fertilizer(p=0.010), improved seeds(p=0.002), irrigation(p=0.028), soil quality(p=0.019), village distance to the district market(p=0.066), average distance of plots from the homestead (p=0.023) and crop rotation(p=0.016) were determinant variables. Farmers were engaged in off-farm activities to fulfill the cash requirements in credit constrained conditions. The laws of the region do not allow farmers to be out of their localities for more than two years and the farmerswere restricted to renting out only half of their land. This discouraged farmers from off-farm participation for fear of land confiscation. In the Probit model, the determinant variables of off-farm participation were: irrigation (p=0.001), age (p=0.007), amount of money borrowed (p=0.078), village distance to the wereda market (p=0.055), fear of land confiscation (p=0.023) and access to electricity (p=0.044). It is recommended that if farmers are to use chemical fertilizers, they should be supplied with High Yielding Varieties (HYV)and enough water through access to irrigation. Furthermore, farmers should be allowed to have long term off-farm employment to augment the farming sector. / Development Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Development Studies)

Les aléas climatiques et environnementaux sont aujourd’hui au cœur des préoccupations et il est reconnu que les pays en développement et surtout ceux d’Afrique et d’Afrique subsaharienne sont les plus vulnérables à ces risques climatiques, mais sont paradoxalement les moins responsables du réchauffement climatique. L’adaptation de ces populations est ainsi primordiale, et peut prendre plusieurs formes dont la migration, qui, par ses retombées financières est une source non négligeable de fonds permettant aux ménages de faire face aux risques climatiques, aux désastres naturels, aux conflits et chocs d’autre type. Comparativement aux pays de la région ouest africaine tels que le Mali, le Sénégal ou le Nigéria, le Burkina Faso, n’a pas fait l’objet d’un grand nombre d’études sur le thème de la migration et les transferts de fonds. Le pays a cependant une histoire migratoire riche dans un contexte de fortes variabilités climatiques. Les conditions climatiques sont d’autant plus importantes dans ce pays que son économie est fortement ancrée dans l’agriculture.Les résultats du présent travail montrent que les transferts de fonds ont un impact sur la capacité des ménages à gérer les effets néfastes des aléas climatiques sur leurs conditions de vie, mais ils ont également leurs limites. Le premier chapitre cherche à évaluer l’impact des transferts et de la variabilité climatique sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages Burkinabè. Nous proposons un indicateur de sécurité alimentaire prenant en compte les différents concepts de la sécurité alimentaire, et aussi un indicateur de variabilité interannuelle des précipitations. Après avoir contrôlé pour les problèmes d’endogénéité des transferts en utilisant des variables sur les caractéristiques démographiques des migrants et des variables de distance, nos résultats montrent que les transferts ont un impact positif sur la sécurité alimentaire, et trouvons le résultat inverse pour la variabilité des précipitations. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous testons l’effet des transferts et des désastres naturels sur la pauvreté des ménages, représentée par un indicateur que nous construisons. Les résultats montrent l’effet négatif des transferts sur la pauvreté. De plus, une réinterprétation de l’indicateur montre que les ménages ayant subi des catastrophes naturelles par le passé sont plus à même de faire face à l’éventualité de futures catastrophes. Dans le dernier chapitre de ce travail, nous testons la capacité des ménages agricoles à diversifier leur portefeuille d’activité lorsqu’ils font face à des risques de sécheresse, et lorsqu’ils reçoivent des transferts. Les résultats montrent que les transferts ne sont pas, à eux seuls, suffisant pour permettre aux ménages de diversifier leurs activités. La diversification est toutefois possible lorsque le niveau de richesse des ménages est déjà élevé lorsqu’ils reçoivent les transferts. La présente recherche contribue à mettre en lumière l’importance des transferts dans la capacité d’adaptation des ménages qui font face à des risques climatiques. Les politiques nationales et internationales pouvant contribuer à un acheminement plus efficace et moins couteux de ces flux sont à encourager. Cependant, afin que ces transferts soient efficaces, ils doivent être accompagnés de politiques de réduction des inégalités afin de ne pas rendre les plus pauvres encore plus pauvres. Ils doivent être ainsi vus comme complémentaires et non substituts d’autres sources de revenus. / Environmental and climate issues constitute a predominant and much up to date topic in international discussions. It is broadly recognized that developing countries are the most vulnerable when it comes to climate issues, albeit, they are the least responsible. Finding ways for households’ of these countries to cope with the harmful effects of climate goes through the necessity to identify mechanisms that can help, such as migration and remittances. The latter have been found in the scientific literature to be a hedge against several shocks such as natural disasters, conflicts, and economic shocks.This research thesis explores the theme of remittances, and climate variability in developing countries, by focusing on a sub-Saharan African country, Burkina Faso. Compared to its neighbouring countries, Burkina Faso has not been subject to much research in the migration and remittances. The country however has a vast migration history that is worth studying. Climate issues are also rampant, and very important, as the country is practising subsistence agriculture. The findings of this dissertation show that remittances have a positive impact on households’ ability to cope with the negative effects of climate issues. Yet these important sources of inflows for developing countries might have some limitations. The first chapter assesses the impact of remittances and climate variability on the food security of households in Burkina Faso. We build a food security index using principal component analysis that encompasses the accessibility and utilization dimensions of the concept. We also compute an inter-annual rainfall index and the latter is found to have a negative impact on food security. After controlling for potential endogeneity issues using distance variables and migrant characteristics as instruments, remittances are found to enhance food security. Results are robust to alternative measures of food security and alternative calculations of rainfall variability. In Chapter two, we assess the impact of remittances and natural disasters on poverty in Burkina Faso. To do so, we construct a poverty index using household’s housing characteristics and Multiple Correspondence Analysis method. Propensity score matching method is used as an empirical strategy, and results show that remittances have a negative impact on poverty. Another important result is that remittances have a higher impact on the resilience of households, when they have experienced disasters in the past. Therefore, when it comes to natural disasters, these inflows act as an important tool for populations to be more resilient. Lastly in chapter 3, we assess the role of remittances and drought on diversification strategies of farm-households. This chapter uses the same database as chapter two, and also takes advantage of the climate database of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of University of Anglia . Results show that remittances by themselves are not sufficient to push households towards costly diversification strategies, and they need to be conditional to households’ wealth status to be effective. Climate conditions as well as soil properties have not surprisingly been found to significantly push households towards diversifying their income.This research sheds light on the undeniable importance of remittances in helping households to cope with harmful effects of climate, but also on its limitations. International and national policies that will contribute in a more efficient and less costly conveying of these inflows are to encourage. However in order for remittances to be efficient, reducing inequalities and poverty within populations is a necessity. Otherwise, they can contribute to dig further poverty gaps and extensively the vulnerably levels inside populations. Therefore, remittances should be seen as complementary to other sources of income, rather than substitute.

This study investigates the factors affecting agricultural production of farm households in the National Regional State of Tigray, Ethiopia. The major primary sources of data for the study were farm household surveys, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The study revealed that the annual average crop production of respondents was found to be below the standard annual food requirement recommended by the international organizations. The proportion of irrigated land to total cultivated land was only 11per cent. The proportion of irrigated land in the two districts is lower than 11.27 per cent at the regional level. The utilization of chemical fertilizers for the majority of the respondents was below the recommended standard for the region. Although the farmers were interested in using improved seeds, the supplied varieties were not based on their preferences. Extension agents were mainly engaged in activities which were not related to their professions. The farm income model result showed that landholding size (p<0.0001), possession of oxen(p<0.0001), amount of fertilizer(p=0.010), improved seeds(p=0.002), irrigation(p=0.028), soil quality(p=0.019), village distance to the district market(p=0.066), average distance of plots from the homestead (p=0.023) and crop rotation(p=0.016) were determinant variables. Farmers were engaged in off-farm activities to fulfill the cash requirements in credit constrained conditions. The laws of the region do not allow farmers to be out of their localities for more than two years and the farmerswere restricted to renting out only half of their land. This discouraged farmers from off-farm participation for fear of land confiscation. In the Probit model, the determinant variables of off-farm participation were: irrigation (p=0.001), age (p=0.007), amount of money borrowed (p=0.078), village distance to the wereda market (p=0.055), fear of land confiscation (p=0.023) and access to electricity (p=0.044). It is recommended that if farmers are to use chemical fertilizers, they should be supplied with High Yielding Varieties (HYV)and enough water through access to irrigation. Furthermore, farmers should be allowed to have long term off-farm employment to augment the farming sector. / Development Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Development Studies)

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