ESSP Research Notes

× We examine the implication of the Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia on the economic resilience of rural households. Using five-rounds of household panel data covering nine years, we implement a recently developed probabilistic moment-based approach to measure resilience and evaluate the role of PSNP transfers and duration of participation in PSNP on household resilience. We document three important findings. First, although PSNP transfers are positively strongly associated with resilience, we find that transfers below the median are less likely to generate meaningful improvements in resilience. Second, continuous participation in PSNP is associated with higher resilience. Third, our evaluation of both short-term welfare outcomes and longer-term resilience suggests that these outcomes are likely to be driven by different factors. These findings suggest boosting household resilience will require significant investments in social protection programs and continuous participation in these programs. Our findings have important implications for the design and targeting of social protection programs in Africa, where safety nets programs generally operate at small scale with small transfers to beneficiaries over relatively short durations.

× Ethiopia has witnessed significant reductions in child mortality, undernutrition and communicable diseases, but more substantial and faster progress is still needed. The rise in overweight and obesity and in non-communicable diseases, particularly in urban areas, is alarming and requires urgent policy and programmatic attention. Unhealthy diets are the drivers of both forms of malnutrition and are the underlying cause of significant proportion of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Maintaining the relatively high breastfeeding practices and increasing the diversity of diets will be critical. Implementation of effective nutrition messaging that shapes consumer behavior to adopt healthy dietary patterns, while bridging gaps in reach and quality of nutrition messaging is warranted. The health extension program that is the cornerstone of the health sector transformation may need to be redesigned in a way that improves reach, quality, and minimize the risk of burnout of frontline health workers. Interventions focusing on making healthy diets affordable, accessible and available are urgently needed.

× Nominal cereal prices in Ethiopia in July 2019 were significantly higher than the year before – maize prices had risen by 32 percent; sorghum by 39 percent; teff by 35 percent; and wheat by 2 percent. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence that nominal cereal prices have increased rapidly since. A number of factors help explain this pattern: Overall inflation has been high both for food and non-food items. This general high inflation is linked to macro factors related to broad money and credit growth; overall changes in prices for inputs, labor, and transport have important impacts on production costs for agricultural products, thereby putting upward pressure on prices. However, controlling for inflation, real prices are close to average real prices over the last ten years, indicating little change in supply relative to demand; seasonality is important in Ethiopian cereal markets, with mostly higher prices in August and September, just before the new Meher harvest comes in. The current (September 2019) high prices for food are partly a seasonal phenomenon; there are no signs of increased real marketing costs. Nonetheless, given their importance for food security, close monitoring and assessments of the functioning of Ethiopia’s food markets remains necessary.

× Geography has been shown to be an important determinant of economic development. Remote areas tend to be poorer due to higher transaction costs for trade or inhospitable environments. In this study, we show that remote areas in rural Ethiopia are also disadvantaged in their access to public service delivery. Relying on large household surveys, we assessed the association between exposure to agriculture and health extension and two measures of remoteness: (1) the distance of service centers to district capitals; and (2) the distance of households to service centers (i.e., the last mile). We found that villages located farther away from district capitals were less likely to receive agricultural extension services than other villages. In contrast, exposure to health extension services did not vary across more and less connected villages. This difference between the two sectors could be due to the fact that more remote villages tend to have fewer agriculture extension workers who also put in fewer hours into their work than their peers. We did not find similar evidence in the health sector. Finally, for both sectors, we found that the last mile matters: more remote households within villages were less likely to receive both types of extension services.

× As in many other low-income countries, fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption is very low in Ethiopia. Consequently, micronutrient deficiencies, such as for Vitamin A, are widespread, and more than half of young Ethiopian children suffer from anemia. Efforts to increase FV consumption in Ethiopia have focused on improving consumer knowledge of the health benefits of FV and other nutritious foods. While these interventions have been successful in improving knowledge and ultimately improving dietary diversity, diets remain extremely monotonous across the country. Recent international research in this area suggest that high relative prices of FVs could be another important constraint. To shed more light on this issue, we assess the affordability of FVs in Ethiopia. Using expenditure and price data collected by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, we find that the average Ethiopian household would have to spend 11 percent of their income to meet the international recommendation of two servings of fruits and three servings of vegetables per person per day. This share is more than 2.5 times higher for households in the poorest quintile, indicating that meeting these guidelines is currently out of reach for the poorest households in Ethiopia. More investments and research attention to the production of fruits and vegetables is urgently needed to improve supplies and, hence, their affordability.

× Storage losses of crops on the farm are often assumed to be an important contributor to presumed large post-harvest losses in developing countries. However, reliable and representative estimates on these losses are often lacking. We study farmers’ storage decisions and self-reported storage losses for grain crops based on two recent large-scale household surveys conducted in major grain producing areas in Ethiopia. We show that a relatively large share of grain production is stored, mainly for own consumption, and that storage technologies are rudimentary. We find that farmers’ self-reported storage losses amount to an average of 4 percent of all grains stored and 2 percent of the total harvest. These storage losses are shown to differ significantly by some households’ socio-economic characteristics and wealth and also by crop and prevailing humidity levels. We further see strong spatial heterogeneity in storage losses, being significantly higher in the southwestern part of the country. Efforts to scale up the adoption of improved storage technologies to reduce storage losses at the farm level should take into consideration these characteristics.

× This research note evaluates Ethiopia’s demographic shift over the last four decades while also evaluating potential urbanization trends 20 years into the future.1 Propelling Ethiopia’s urban growth is new secondary city development, ongoing population growth in small towns, and improved access to markets. In order to understand how secondary city growth is contributing to urbanization, we update the agglomeration index for the country. In addition, we look at recent patterns of domestic migration. Reviewing the government’s investment strategy in industrial parks and sugar factories, we explore current plans for industrial zones in Ethiopia. In examining the scope for their success, we consider the key role that government policy will need to play in terms of overall investment in infrastructure, as well as the major implications of macro-economic and trade policies to motivate increased private sector investment in Ethiopia’s industrial sector.

× Given the importance of agriculture in developing economies, food processing industries often dominate employment and value addition in the industrial sector in these settings. For example, it is estimated that the food processing industry in Ethiopia employs one million people, around 2 percent of the economically active population. However, the way in which Ethiopia’s food processing industry is changing and how it functions is little understood. We study the markets in urban Ethiopia for commercial ready-to-eat enjera, the traditional staple pancake of the country. We find that these commercial enjera markets are rapidly growing, employing more than 100,000 people in urban Ethiopia, many of whom are women. Moreover, enjera is now being prepared by mixing flour from locally produced teff with that of imported rice, thus absorbing an important part of the rapidly growing rice imports (almost 200 million USD in 2015) to the country and leading to higher profits for those enterprises en

× Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is a large-scale social protection intervention aimed at improving food security and stabilizing asset levels. The PSNP contains a mix of public works employment and unconditional cash and food transfers. It is a well-targeted program; however, several years passed before payment levels reached the intended amounts. The PSNP has been successful in improving household food security. However, children’s nutritional status in the localities where the PSNP operates is poor, with 48 percent of children stunted in 2012. This leads to the question of whether the PSNP could improve child nutrition. We examine the impact of the PSNP on children’s nutritional status over the period 2008–2012. Doing so requires paying particular attention to the targeting of the PSNP and how payment levels have evolved over time. Using inverseprobability-weighted regression-adjustment estimators, we find no evidence that the PSNP reduces either chronic undernutrition (height-for-age z-scores, stunting) or acute undernutrition (weight-for-height z-scores, wasting). While we cannot definitively identify the reason for this non-result, we note that child diet quality is poor. We find no evidence that the PSNP improves child consumption of pulses, oils, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, or animalsource proteins. Most mothers have not had contact with health extension workers nor have they received information on good feeding practices. Water practices, as captured by the likelihood that mothers boil drinking water, are poor. These findings, along with work by other researchers, have informed revisions to the PSNP. Future research will assess whether these revisions have led to improvements in the diets and anthropometric status of preschool children

× The livestock sub-sector has contributed little to the remarkable economic growth recorded in Ethiopia in the last decade. In an effort to stimulate livestock production, the Ethiopian government has recently recognized livestock as an important strategic sub-sector in which to invest. Unlike most studies that focus purely on aspects of livestock production, this study provides a detailed descriptive assessment of the livestock production and marketing behavior of smallholder mixed crop-livestock farmers.

× What is the optimal size and composition of rural financial cooperatives (RFCs)? With this broad question in mind, we characterize alternative formations of RFCs and the implications of each in improving the access of rural households to financial services, including savings, credit, and insurance services. We find that some features of RFCs have varying implications for delivering various financial services. The size of RFCs is found to have a nonlinear relationship with the various financial services RFCs provide. We also show that compositional heterogeneity among members, including diversity in wealth, is associated with higher access to credit services, while this has limited effects on the savings behavior of members. Similarly, social cohesion among members is strongly associated with higher access to financial services. These empirical descriptions suggest that the optimal size and composition of RFCs may vary across the different domains of financial services that they are designed to facilitate. This evidence provides suggestive insights on how to ensure financial inclusion among smallholders, a priority among agricultural sector policy makers in developing countries, including Ethiopia. The results also provide some insights for the design of rural microfinance operations as they seek to satisfy members’ demand for various financial services.

× Given the high prevalence of undernutrition among children in low income countries and the associated high human and eco-nomic costs (Hoddinott et al. 2013), improving nutritional out-comes must be an urgent priority. Improving nutrition is high on the policy agenda of the government of Ethiopia, as stated in the Growth and Transformation Plan II, which aims to reduce young child stunting levels from 40 percent in 2014/15 to 26 percent in 2019/2020.
Lack of access to diverse diets is one of the underlying factors contributing to chronic undernutrition (Arimond and Ruel 2004, UNICEF 1998). Despite recent improvements, child stunting in Ethiopia remains widespread (CSA and ICF International 2017). Moreover, Ethiopian children consume one of the least diverse diets in sub-Saharan Africa (Hirvonen 2016). At the household level, food consumption baskets are dominated by cereals and pulses, while the consumption of animal-source foods and fruits and Vitamin A-rich vegetables is rare, especially in rural areas.1 Such monotonous diets are regarded as a major contributor to non-communicable diseases in Ethiopia (Melaku et al. 2016).
Recent research suggests that the poor dietary diversity in ru-ral areas can be explained, at least partly, both by limited knowledge about the health benefits of diverse diets and by poor access to food markets. Households in areas in which food crop production is not very diverse but which have good access to mar-kets are found to have more diverse diets than do households in such areas but which have poor access to markets and, so, de-pend primarily on own-production for the food they consume.2
Yet, even with sufficient access to markets and knowledge on the benefits of diverse diets, poor households may simply be un-able to afford nutritionally rich foods (Warren and Frongillo 2017). Indeed, prices and affordability of nutritious foods remains a neglected area of research in efforts to understand poor dietary diversity in Ethiopia and elsewhere.3 In the analysis described here, we explore how prices and, consequently, the affordability of nutritious food have changed over the last decade in Ethiopia.

× Agricultural productivity in Ethiopia’s highlands, the country’s breadbasket, is threatened by severe land degradation. To mitigate ongoing soil erosion and soil nutrient loss, the government of Ethiopia initiated the Sustainable Land Management Program (SLMP). We evaluated the program’s impact on the value of agricultural production in select kebeles (administrative sub-districts) in which it was implemented using a two-round survey of farm households.

× This research shows how basic living conditions have improved markedly since 2000, albeit somewhat unevenly, with urban areas witnessing the greatest improvements. Still, better access to safe drinking water and proper toilets, together with better housing quality, are indicative that the benefits of economic growth are reaching rural areas.

× This note synthesizes one of the two study tour reports written by the participating African officials. This report provides observations made by participants from Ethiopia and Kenya, the two East African countries with participants on the tour.

× In this research note, we provide a preview of results from a study of agricultural mechanization in Ethiopia. Our research shows that 9 percent of farmers in the Feed the Future regions of Ethiopia used mechanization at some point during the agricultural year 2014/15. We find that mechanized ploughing was most widespread (5 percent), while mechanized threshing and harvesting was reported by 3 and 2 percent of households, respectively. We further examine the uptake of different forms of mechanization through a number of associations. The results show that farm size and rural wages are positively associated with the adoption of mechanization, while remoteness is negatively linked. These findings suggest that as Ethiopia’s economy transforms and leads to higher rural wages, as well as with further development of its infrastructure, more demand for mechanized agricultural services will likely arise. Having policies that actively assure widespread availability of appropriate mechanized services at low cost, seem likely to benefit Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation.

× Using child-level panel data from rural areas of Ethiopia, we analyze effects of both economic and non-economic shocks on child cognition skills measured after the early childhood age window. We identify that drought, in particular, reduces child cognitive skills markedly. Food price inflation during the study period and divorce also have significant adverse effects on cognition. Promisingly, we find that the safety net program established by the Ethiopian government in 2005 to protect households from the economic effects of such shocks mitigated the reduction in cognitive skills associated with these shocks

× Chronic undernutrition in Ethiopia is widespread and many children consume highly monotonous diets. To improve feeding practices in Ethiopia, a strong focus in nutrition programming has been placed on improving the nutrition knowledge of caregivers. In this paper, we study the impact of improving nutrition knowledge within households and its complementarity with market access. To test whether the effect of nutrition knowledge on children’s dietary diversity depends on market access, we use survey data from an area with a large variation in transportation costs over a relatively short distance. This allows us to carefully assess the impact of households’ nutrition knowledge with varying access to markets, but still within similar agro-climatic conditions. We find that nutrition knowledge leads to considerable improvements in children’s diets, but only in areas with relatively good market access.

× We estimate the impact of improved market access on household well-being and nutrition using a quasi-experimental setting in Ethiopia. We find that households in remote areas consume substantially less than households nearer to markets, they are more food insecure, and their school enrollment rates are lower. Although their diets are also less diverse, we find no significant differences in anthropometric measures. Part of these welfare differences can be attributed to lower household agricultural production in remote areas. But agricultural production differences alone do not account for all of the differences in household consumption levels for remote households. An additional contributing factor is the deteriorating terms of trade for remote households that negatively affect both the size of the agricultural surplus that these households market and the quantity of food items that they purchase. Reducing transaction costs associated with poor rural infrastructure can pay important dividends as it facilitates households’ abilities to transform marketed surpluses into consumption goods and into healthier, more diverse diets.

× This study assesses factors that explain households’ perceived land tenure insecurity and the demand for new formalization of land rights in Ethiopia. We use data from the 2013 Agricultural Growth Program survey of 7,500 households from high agricultural potential areas of Ethiopia. The results from a descriptive analysis and a logistic estimation reveal that demand for further land demarcation is positively associated with higher perception by households of tenure insecurity. Moreover, disaggregated results indicate that ownership and boundary-related disputes characterize periurban locations and economically vibrant communities, whereas perceived risk of government expropriation of land is mainly manifested in rural communities and areas where administrative land redistribution is a recent practice.

× Ethiopia’s agricultural sector has recorded remarkable rapid growth in the last decade. This note documents aspects of this growth process. Over the last decade, there have been significant increases – more than a doubling – in the use of modern inputs, such as chemical fertilizers and improved seeds, explaining part of that growth. However, there was also significant land expansion, increased labor use, and Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth estimated at 2.3 percent per year. The expansion in modern input use appears to have been driven by high government expenditures on the agricultural sector, including agricultural extension, but also by an improved road network, higher rural education levels, and favorable international and local price incentives.

× Seasonality in agricultural production continues to shape intra-annual food availability and prices in low-income countries. Using high-frequency panel data from northern Ethiopia, this study quantifies seasonal fluctuations in children's weights. In line with earlier studies, we document considerable seasonality in children’s age and height adjusted weights. While children located closer to local food markets are better nourished compared to their counterparts residing in more remote areas, their body weight is also subject to considerable seasonality. Further analysis provides evidence that children located closer to food markets consume more diverse diets than those located farther away. However, the content of these diets varies across seasons: children are less likely to consume animal source foods during the lean season that occurs between May and September in northern Ethiopia.

× Using household survey data from 2013 covering more than 7,000 households in five regions of Ethiopia, we investigate the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on the nutritional outcomes of children and women. We use multivariate regression methods and instrumental variable techniques to establish the relationship between women’s empowerment and the dietary diversity of women and children. The results show that the indicators for assessing women’s empowerment are all positively related to better dietary diversity for both children and women. As women’s empowerment leads to improvements in children’s and women’s dietary diversity, it follows that interventions which increase women’s empowerment contribute to improving child nutrition as well as their own well-being.

× We analyze the evolution of crop and livestock producer prices and wages of unskilled laborers in Ethiopia over the January 2014 to January 2016 period, during which time the country was massively impacted by El Niño triggered droughts. The analyses reveal no evidence of widespread adverse price effects of the drought in the labor and cereal markets. Real prices of the major cereals were lower at the beginning of 2016 compared to two years earlier, especially for maize, sorghum, and wheat, the crops that make up the major source of calories in the areas that were most hit by the drought. Conversely, prices of root crops and pulses increased. Given the large importance attached to cereal consumption, the overall real food consumption basket price declined compared to two years earlier, the decline being lower in drought-affected areas. Considering crop and livestock prices jointly reveals that livestock-cereal terms of trade declined in the worst affected areas, contrasting considerably with improvements seem in areas less affected by the drought. This contrast is mainly due to livestock prices declining faster than cereal prices in such areas. The fluctuating behavior of cereal prices since January 2015 strikingly contrasts with the situation during the major drought of 1997/98. During that period, cereal production declined by 25 percent compared to the year before, with significant simultaneous real price increases of between 15 and 45 percent.

× The findings from this study reveal that, on an economy-wide ba-sis, the benefits of PSNP significantly exceed the cost of PSNP transfers. New income created by PSNP benefits households that do not receive cash transfers; these non-beneficiaries benefit as markets transmit PSNP impacts to them through local and national markets. Documenting the total benefits, including benefits to non-beneficiaries, is critical to garner support for PSNP. Our analysis shows that PSNP achieves both social and productive goals by raising income in beneficiary households while stimulating local and national production. This should be good news to both finance and social welfare ministries.

× Due to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, many more farmers are now living in rural hinterlands in relatively close proximity to cities. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. In particular, we analyze data from teff farmers in major teff producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers located closer to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. This urban proximity has a strong and significant effect on these aspects of teff production, possibly related to the use of more formal factor markets, lower transaction costs in crop production and marketing, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find a strong and positive relationship between rural population density increases and agricultural transformation – increased population density seems to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries

× Improved technologies are increasingly being promoted to farmers in sub-Saharan-African countries to address low agricultural productivity in their staple crops. There is, however, a lack of evidence on how adoption affects farmers’ labor use and profitability at the farm level, as well as the importance gender roles play. This paper analyses the labor and profitability impact of the recently introduced row planting technology in teff production in Ethiopia. Based on agronomic evidence in experimental settings, the government of Ethiopia has focused extension efforts on promoting the widespread uptake of row planting to address low teff yields, replacing the traditional broadcasting method of planting teff. Using an innovative Randomized Controlled Trial set-up, we show that the implementation of row planting at the farm level significantly increases total labor use, but not teff yields, relative to broadcast planting, resulting in a substantial drop in labor productivity when adopting row planting. Moreover, the implementation of row planting has important consequences for inter- and intra-household labor allocation, with relatively more use of non-family labor. The adoption of row planting was further found not to be profitable for farmers in the first year of the promotion cam-paign, seemingly explaining the limited success in up-scaling the adoption of the technology by farmers in the second year of the program.

× Based on a unique large-scale data set on teff production and marketing, Ethiopia’s most important cash crop, we study post-harvest losses in rural-urban value chains, specifically between producers and urban retailers in the capital, Addis Ababa. We analyze the structure of the value chain and rely on self-reported losses by different value chain agents (farmers, wholesale traders, and retailers). We estimate that post-harvest losses in the most prevalent pathway in the rural-urban value chain, amount to between 2.2 and 3.3 percent of total harvested quantities. The variation in this figure depends on the storage facilities used and on assumed losses during transport at the farm. These losses are significantly lower than is commonly assumed for staple foods, possibly because of the rather good storage characteristics of teff due to its low moisture content. These findings, nonetheless, point to the need to gather further solid evidence on post-harvest losses in staple foods in these settings to ensure appropriate policies and investments

× Ethiopia’s economy is rapidly transforming. However, the extent to which this is affecting off-farm income and labor markets in rural areas is not well understood. Based on a large-scale household survey in high potential agricultural areas of the country, we find that total off-farm income (defined as wage and enterprise income) makes up 18 percent of total rural income. Wage income in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors accounts for 10 percent of total household income, equating in importance to livestock income. We show off-farm income and wage income to be relatively more important for the poor and for female and youth-headed households. We further find that real rural wages increased by 54 percent over the last decade, mostly driven by high agricultural growth. While this wage increase is good news for the poor, it also induces adjustments in agricultural production practices, including increased adoption of labor-substituting technologies, such as herbicides.

× We use qualitative and quantitative information from a number of datasets to study the adoption patterns and labor productivity impacts of herbicide use by farmers in Ethiopia. We find a four-fold increase in the value of herbicides imported into Ethiopia over the last decade, primarily by the private-sector. Adoption of herbicides by smallholders has grown rapidly over this period, with the application of herbicides on cereals doubling to more than a quarter of the area under cereals between 2004 and 2014. Relying on data from a large-scale survey of producers of teff, the most widely grown cereal in Ethiopia, we find significant positive labor productivity effects of herbicide use of between 9 and 18 percent. We show that the adoption of herbicides is strongly related to proximity to urban centers, levels of local rural wages, and access to markets. All these factors have changed significantly over the last decade in Ethiopia, explaining the rapid take-off in herbicide adoption. The significant increase in herbicide use in Ethiopia has important implications for rural labor markets, potential environmental and health considerations, and capacity development for the design and effective implementation of regulatory policies on herbicides.

× Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are rapidly increasing in global value chains. While consumers, mostly in developed
countries, are willing to pay significant premiums for such standards, it is not well understood how effectively these
incentives are transmitted to producing countries.

× Traditional food marketing systems in developing countries are often not trusted. In consequence, policy makers frequently try to regulate them and modern market arrangements increasingly are emerging that seek to address some of their presumed deficiencies. However, it is unclear how trustworthy these markets actually are, and if and to what extent regulation and modernization affects market governance. In this paper we look at the case of coffee in urban settings in Ethiopia to test trustworthiness along three dimensions of trade transactions – weight, quality, and the presence of illegal trade. We find that traders are relatively trustworthy on observable quality characteristics and weights. However, there is significant illegal trade (prohibited trade of export quality coffee) and a consistent pattern of over-representation of not easily observable quality characteristics. We find that modern marketing outlets or formats, including branded and packaged products, deliver higher quality at a higher price, but are no more trustworthy than traditional marketing arrangements in terms of these dimensions of trade transactions.

× In the absence of well-established factor markets, the roles of indigenous institutions and social networks as mobilizing factors for agricultural production can be substantial. We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves households’ access to factor markets. Specifically, we find that by joining an iddir network, households’ access to land, labor, and credit improves between 7 and 11 percentage points. Furthermore, our findings indicate that iddir networks crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as Arata Abedari), a relatively expensive credit source, virtually without affecting borrowing from formal credit sources. These results improve our understanding of the role informal market arrangements, such as social networks, can play in mitigating factor market inefficiencies in poor rural markets. The results also have important policy implications for designing alternative policy measures which aim to improve these markets.

× We study the relationship between pre-school children’s food consumption and household agricultural production. Using a large household survey from rural Ethiopia, we find that increasing household production diversity leads to considerable improvements in children’s diet diversity. However, we also document how this non-separability of consumption and production does not hold for households that have access to food markets. These findings imply that nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions that push for market-integration are likely to be more effective in reducing undernutrition than those promoting production diversity.

× This study uses two rounds of the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) to statistically analyze patterns and trends in undernutrition (child growth) in Ethiopia over the period 2000 to 2011. In 2000, over half of Ethiopian preschool children were stunted and almost a third were severely stunted. However, progress against child undernutrition over the study period was solid, with stunting prevalence reduced by 1.4 percentage points per year, although progress has slowed since to 1.0 points per year between 2011 and 2014.

× Research does not always provide the results that we expect. At the recent conference on improving nutrition in Ethiopia, Together for Nutrition 2015, we learnt about the rapid progress in Ethiopia in child nutritional outcomes that are linked to improved birth size and, hence, improved maternal health. However, most of the improvement in maternal health seems related to better sanitation, rather than to diet, care, or health factors.

× Important changes to Ethiopia’s coffee sector have occurred in the last decade. The adoption of improved production, harvest, and post-harvest practices has been increasing with positive impacts on coffee productivity and incomes. Upstream marketing has improved, along with large investments in processing capacity, shown by the extended coverage of wet mills. These changes seem to have been driven by greater availability of extension agents, market reform, and high international prices. However, despite these changes, yield growth has been small. Weather shocks, the prevalence of coffee diseases, lack of improved seedlings, and saving constraints has impeded uptake of improved practices, with consequent repercussions on farmers’ productivity and income.

× The paper revisits seasonality by assessing how the quantity and quality of diets vary across agricultural seasons in rural and
urban Ethiopia. Using unique nationally representative household level data for each month over one calendar year, we document
seasonal fluctuations in household diets in terms of both the quantity of calories and the number of different food groups
consumed. Households in both rural and urban areas consume less calories in the lean season, but interestingly, due to
changes in the composition of diets, the diet diversity score increases towards the end of the lean season.

× The agricultural sector in Ethiopia and in other developing countries is increasingly asked to contribute to reducing undernutrition as well as poverty and food insecurity. Within agriculture, the livestock sector is thought to play a particularly important role in this respect, since the consumption of animal-sourced foods (ASFs) is a well-known determinant of child growth and the production of ASFs is an important source of income. However, there is growing evidence of associated health risks of poultry rearing in developing countries, particularly for young children who have been observed to directly ingest poultry feces. This is hypothesized to contribute to chronic gut damage – a condition termed environmental enteric disorder (EED) – that is widely believed to be a leading cause of child stunting in developing countries such as Ethiopia.

× A large proportion of Ethiopians derive their livelihoods from smallholder agriculture. This has provided the impetus for the smallholder agriculture-focused policies that have guided agricultural development efforts in Ethiopia over the past two decades. In this study, we investigate the productivity of smallholder teff farmers in Ethiopia, since this is an important crop in terms of cultivated area, food expenditure, and gross domestic product. Despite the remarkable growth in the production of teff in the last decade, the drivers of this growth are not well understood. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on the contribution of improvements in productivity to this growth and the link between farm size and productivity. This study employs data envelopment analysis on a recently collected large farm household survey dataset from Ethiopia to measure relative productivity and efficiency of teff farmers and to identify the factors that explain differences in relative productivity and efficiency.

× Cereal production has exhibited unprecedented growth in Ethiopia, leading to important welfare improvements in the country. However, it is not well understood what the drivers have been of this growth and how it can be sustained. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on the contribution of improvements in productivity to growth in yields. Moreover, doubts exist on whether it is possible to sustain such growth on declining landholdings. We study cereal production using a unique large-scale survey of households and analyze productivity is-sues using stochastic frontier and data envelopment analyses, two conceptually dissimilar methods. Production frontier estimates indicate that modern inputs contribute significantly to improvements in yields. The two analytical methods used indicate that an average cereal producing household is less than half as efficient as optimally producing households, and, consequently, there is considerable opportunity for additional growth in cereal production in Ethiopia.

× Ethiopia’s food economy is transforming fast. To better understand this ongoing process, we analyze changes in food consumption that have happened over the period between 1996 and 2011, relying on four rounds of nationally representative household data. The main findings are as follows: First, the share of food in overall expenditures is declining. Second, quantities consumed per capita are increasing. Third, the relative importance of cereals is on the decline. Fourth, there are large differences in the cereal basket of households between rural and urban areas, indicating the importance of increasing urbanization on the food economy. Fifth, cereals – and in particular maize – remain the largest source of calories in the food basket. Sixth, there is a relative shift in consumption to more expensive foods. Seventh, purchased foods are seemingly becoming more important. Finally, there are strong differences in food consumption by income level, but all levels exhibit changes over time. This diet transformation has important implications for the food security debate and for agricultural and food policy in the country.

× In rural economies encumbered by significant market imperfections, farming decisions may partly be motivated by nutritional considerations, in addition to income and risk factors. These imperfections create the potential for farm assets to have direct dietary impacts on nutrition in addition to any indirect effects via income. We test this hypothesis for the dairy sector in rural Ethiopia, a context in which markets are very thin, own-consumption shares are very high, and milk is an important source of animal-based proteins and micronutrients for young children. We find that cow ownership raises children’s milk consumption, increases linear growth, and reduces stunting in children by seven to nine percentage points. However, we also find that the direct nutritional impacts of household cow ownership are less important where there is good access to local markets, suggesting that market development can substitute for household cow ownership.

× We study the structure and performance of the coffee export sector in Ethiopia, Africa’s most important coffee producer, over the period 2003 to 2013. We find an evolving policy environment that leads to structural changes in the export sector, including an elimi-nation of vertical integration for most exporters. Ethiopia’s coffee export earnings increased four-fold in real terms over this period. This increase has mostly been due to changes in international market prices. The quality of coffee improved only slightly over this time, but the quantity exported increased by 50 percent, explained by both higher domestic supplies and reduced local consumption. To further progress coffee export performance, investments to increase the quantities produced and to improve quality are needed, including an increase in washing, certification, and traceability, as these characteristics are shown to be associated with significant quality premiums in international markets.

× Ongoing debate over water resource management and land degradation suggests a need for efficient sustainable land management mechanisms to improve agricultural output in the Blue Nile basin in Ethiopia. Numerous econometric and hydrological models have been developed to assess the effects of sustainable land and watershed management (SLWM) investments. However, these models fail to address the trade-offs faced by rural farmers in maintaining such structures. This study combines household survey data that evaluates the economic determinants of program sustainability with a detailed hydrological model that explores location specific effects of SLWM structures. Simulations suggest that more comprehensive investments (such as SLWM with increased fertilizer application) may reap more economically significant increases in household income. Cost benefit analysis suggests that a packaged investment approach is needed in order to outweigh the opportunity costs (foregone labor, particularly) of investing in SLWM infrastructure at farm level.

× This analysis utilizes recent hydrological and meteorological data collected from the Mizewa watershed in Fogera woreda in order to better understand the physical impact of sustainable land and watershed management (SLWM) investments. The effectiveness of the simulated conservation practices (terraces, bunds, and residue management) are evaluated using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model taking into account investment decisions on different terrain types. Simulations compare the limited investments that currently exist with increases in terracing and residue management activities within the watershed. The results suggest mixed impacts on surface run-off and erosion depending on terrain and management practices. However, the type and amount of investment (and therefore costs) in SLWM have different implications with respect to labor input and utilization of agricultural land, and the consequent socio-economic effects on households.

× Although theory predicts that better property rights to land can increase land productivity through tenure security effects (investment effects) and through more efficient input use due to enhanced tradability of the land (factor intensity effect), empirical studies on the size and magnitude of these effects are very scarce. Taking advantage of a unique quasiexperimental survey design, this study analyzes the productivity impacts of the Ethiopian land certification program by identifying how the investment effects (technological gains) would measure up against the benefits from any improvements in input use intensity (technical efficiency). For this purpose, we adopted a data envelopment analysis–based Malmquist-type productivity index to decompose productivity differences into (1) within-group farm efficiency differences, reflecting the technical efficiency effect, and (2) differences in the group production frontier, reflecting the long-term investment (technological) effects.

× This study links smallholder livestock production data from the Agricultural Census (2001/02) and annual CSA agricultural sample survey with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data on land cover, city population, and road networks in order to assess the relationship between livestock population, market access, and grazing land. We use existing studies of travel time to calculate shares of livestock populations within defined travel time thresholds of major markets. In addition, we attempt to provide greater insight into changes in available grazing land given Ethiopia’s increasing human and livestock population pressure.

× Weather risk remains a major challenge to farming in poor countries that face frequent droughts. Recent evidence on index-based weather insurance points to low take-up rates largely due to basis risk (i.e. residual risk left uninsured by the index). Using randomized control trials, we study to what extent traditional groups can be utilized to mitigate basis risk by retailing insurance through these groups. We find that selling insurance through iddirs, with pre-defined sharing rules, increases take-up—suggesting that groups are better placed to reduce basis risk. We also find that insurance strengthens existing risk-sharing behavior within groups, for example, by improving access to loans from the iddir to cover crop losses and improving perceived ability to finance emergencies. Insurance has also improved household welfare in the short term considered in this study, albeit to a limited extent.

× This study contributes new empirical evidence on the gender difference in access to extension services in Ethiopia and how this translates to observed differences in technology adoption and agricultural productivity. Our results suggest that female house-hold heads and plot managers are less likely to get extension services and are less likely to access quality services than their male counterparts. Receiving advice from development agents, as agricultural extension officers in Ethiopia are called, is strongly and positively related to adoption of improved seed and fertilizer for both female and male headed households. How-ever, visits by or advice from development agents do not significantly affect productivity, for both females and males. The re-sults highlight the need for closing the gender gap in the provision of extension services and in productivity.

× We study food retail in Addis Ababa based on a large survey of food retail outlets selling cereals, fruits and vegetables, and pro-cessed foods. The study shows high variation in quality and prices in the city and an increasing differentiation in food retail markets in recent years.

× The recent drought in the Horn of Africa has again generated widespread pessimism about the future of pastoralism in the re-gion. In this paper we argue that a much more balanced development strategy needs to be adopted in pastoralist areas. First, livelihood diversification must become a positive process, through education, infrastructure, and policies facilitating migration and nonfarm investments. Second, economic transformation must involve a social and demographic transition through reduced fertility rates. And third, transformation of the traditional agricultural sector, dominated by livestock, is needed and is inevita-ble for the simple reason that it is simply too large to ignore, and no amount of livelihood diversification can create enough jobs to pull pastoralists out of poverty. Commercialization efforts, drought management practices, and institutional reforms are the three basic pillars to make the sector more profitable and more resilient to droughts. In addition to all this, interventions in pastoralist areas need to make greater use of innovative practices, such as ICTs, mobile service delivery, and spatial clustering of services.

× Increasing adoption of modern inputs remains one of the best hopes toward higher agricultural production in developing coun-tries. Based on unique data from a quasi-experimental setting in northwestern Ethiopia, this study examines the “last mile(s)”—from the input distribution center to the farmer—in the chemical fertilizer and improved seed distribution system. We find that increasing transaction and transportation costs over a 35 kilometer distance contribute to a significant decline in incentives for modern input adoption and lead to a reduction to one quarter in modern input use. Farmers who live about 10 km from the distribution center face per unit transaction and transportation costs as high as the costs needed to bring the ferti-lizer from the international port to the input distribution center (about 1,000 km). Tackling the “last mile” costs should thus be a priority to improve modern input adoption in the country.

× We study the value chain of teff, Ethiopia’s most important staple food crop by area and value. Based on large-scale primary surveys, we find significant changes in the last decade. First, there is increasing adoption of modern inputs (chemical fertilizer, improved varieties, and herbicides) by farmers, especially by those living close to urban centers. Second, quality demands are rising and there are important shifts from the cheap red varieties to the more expensive white ones. Third, we see an increasing willingness-to-pay for convenience in urban areas, as illustrated by the emergence of one-stop retail shops—that provide sales, cleaning, milling, and transport services—as well as by a sizable foodservice industry. Fourth, the share of rural–urban market-ing, urban distribution, and milling margins in final retail prices is declining, indicating improved marketing efficiency over time.

× The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is targeted towards households that are both food-insecure and poor. Overall the targeting principles laid out in the Project Implementation Manual are being followed, but with some regional variation. Over time, community understanding of targeting criteria improved across most of the PSNP regions. From an international perspec-tive, the PSNP is well-targeted. The need for continuous capacity building and the level of follow-up and monitoring from higher level implementers have important implications for how well communities can target resources to the poorest.

× We assess the impact of the promotion of row planting at reduced seed rate on farmers’ teff yields in Ethiopia. Results indicate that the program to scale-up row planting, on average, has a positive but moderate effect on teff yield. These findings, however, are in contrast with larger yield increases found on village demonstration plots, in more controlled settings, and with the expectations of teff farmers. The differences are linked to problems in the implementation of the program and of its recommendations, to methodological issues, and likely to over-optimism on the potential of row planting in real farm settings.

× The Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) has set higher growth and investment targets than those of any of Ethiopia’s earlier national plans and its implementation requires faster growth in total factor productivity and large-scale mobilization of domestic and foreign savings. We analyzed these GTP targets using a CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) model to assess the implications of the plan on macro- and microeconomic variables. We hereby focused on two financing options: increased domestic savings and increased foreign savings.

× This paper presents an overview of crop agriculture in Ethiopia, focusing mainly on cereal production. Ethiopia’s crop agriculture continues to be dominated by the country’s numerous small farms that cultivate mainly cereals for both own-consumption and sales. Five major cereals (teff, wheat, maize, sorghum, and barley) occupy almost three-quarters of total area cultivated. Much of the increase in crop production in the past decade has been due to increases in area cultivated. To what extent expansion can continue remains a question, therefore obtaining higher yield rates is the challenge of Ethiopia’s agricultural system.

× Decisionmakers in Ethiopia have pursued a range of policies and investments to boost agricultural production and productivity. An important tool has been to increase the availability of improved seed, chemical fertilizers, and extension services for small-scale, resource-poor farmers. While there is some evidence to suggest that the process has led to improvements in both agricultural output and yields, there is an urgent need for more substantial progress. A rethinking of approaches is required, one that reallocates the roles of the public and private sectors in the agricultural input sector.

× We study cereal wholesale markets in Ethiopia in the last decade (2001–2011), a period that has been characterized by important local changes affecting agricultural markets, including strong economic growth, urbanization, improved road and communication infrastructure, an increase in importance of cooperatives and commercial farms, and a doubling in commercial surplus. We find that these changes are associated with significant declines in real price differences between supplying and receiving markets, in cereal milling margins, as well as in retail margins. Important improvements have thus happened in the last decade in Ethiopia’s food marketing system, traditionally identified as a major cause of food security problems in the country.

× This study examines the trends and behavior of urban wages in Ethiopia during the country’s recent inflationary episodes. We use the CSA Consumer Price Survey to construct a real wage series for the urban poor, and to conduct formal econometric tests of whether wages adjust to food and non-food price inflation over the short run and the long run. We find that although real wages were trending upward in the early 2000s, the rapid inflation episodes of 2007–2008 and 2010–2011 led to serious short run declines in purchasing power, on the order of 10–26% depending on the episodes, the region, and the wage indicator analyzed. The severity of these shocks justifies further consideration of social safety nets for urban areas.

× This study examines the magnitude of the macro and welfare effects generated by a realistic acceleration in the productivity growth of the Ethiopian livestock sector, as compared to historical trends and to alternative scenarios of productivity expansion in the cereal and cash crop sectors. Results from the dynamic general equilibrium simulations show large aggregate gains from livestock productivity acceleration and effects on poor households’ incomes and consumption that are roughly in line with those obtained under cereal growth. This bears important initial implications for the allocation and prioritization of public investment in agriculture in Ethiopia.

× This study examines the consumption patterns of livestock products in Ethiopia. The contribution of livestock products to households’ daily consumption is very limited. A considerable difference exists between urban and rural areas and the consumption of livestock products rises significantly with income. We found substantial expenditure and price responses for livestock products with higher price responses in rural areas than urban areas. A strong substitution relationship among most livestock products exists, the only exception being dairy products. The results seem to indicate the existence of constraints imposed on the consumption choices for livestock products in Ethiopia.

× This study examines the impact of sustainable land and watershed management (SLWM) on value of agricultural production and livestock holdings. Analysis suggests that plots that received investment in the first period (1992) experience a 20.6 percent higher value of production in 2010. Although value of production increases with investment, results indicate that SLWM infrastructure must be maintained for at least seven years in order to reap positive increases in value of production. Although value of production increases over time, benefits may not outweigh costs in the short term, and mechanisms to incentivize farmers to maintain the SLWM infrastructure on their plots may be needed.

× We estimate households’ willingness-to-pay for rural feeder roads in Ethiopia. Using a quasi-experimental setting, we find that the benefits of reducing transportation costs by 50 US dollars per metric ton of goods (agricultural surplus, purchased consumption goods, purchased agricultural inputs) would result in benefits worth roughly 35 percent of household consumption. A hypothetical gravel road of 21 km (a road built halfway through the survey site) that lasts 10 years will have an internal rate of return (a measure for the profitability of an investment) that ranges from 12 to 34 percent, using conservative assumptions. These results suggest that investments in rural feeder roads are cost-effective ways to help reduce widespread poverty even in unfavorable settings where small-scale farmers have low levels of marketed agricultural surplus, nonfarm earnings opportunities are negligible, and the provision of motorized transport services is not guaranteed.

× Over the last several years, the Ethiopian government has committed substantial resources for the expansion of public services and infrastructure in rural areas. To what extent do these investments and services reach different social and economic groups in rural areas? This paper applies a public expenditure benefit incidence analysis of different public services in rural Ethiopia across gender and wealth groups. Among the results are findings that the gender gap in our study areas is substantial and that public works transfers are more progressive than direct support transfers.

× his paper examines the importance of achieving high agricultural growth as a means of accelerating Ethiopia’s economic transformation. The conclusions are that a high rate of agricultural growth has farreaching positive implications for increasing employment and accelerating poverty reduction. An agricultural GDP of six percent is feasible through a high growth rate in agricultural productivity; however, reforms are needed to accelerate growth in seed production and distribution, and in fertilizer distribution and application.

× This study aims to investigate how households have adjusted their demand for various food and non-food items to changes in price and income. The Quadratic Linear Almost Ideal Demand Model (AIDM) was used on the Household Income Consumption Expenditure Survey (HICES) 2004/05 data. The results suggest that Ethiopian households display significant responses to changes in prices and income. In both rural and urban areas the consumption increase of teff, animal products, and non-food items exceeds the proportional income increase, which illustrates the growing importance of these sectors. Price elasticities of demand for cereals are roughly the same in urban and rural areas of the country.

× This paper evaluates the impacts of access to infrastructure on development of handloom weaving clusters in Ethiopia based on a survey collected in both urban and rural areas. Geographical clustering enables entrepreneurs with limited capital to enter the business through shared workspaces and greater specialization of labor. In towns with electricity access, producers work longer hours by sharing workspaces with electric lights at lower rental cost, resulting in higher labor productivity.

× This study uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques to estimate urbanization rates in Ethiopia, using a definition of urban extents that combines city population size, along with population density and travel times in surrounding areas. Defining the minimum population of an urban area as 50,000, the urbanization rate has risen from only 3.7 percent in 1984 to 14.2 percent in 2007. Over this same period, the percentage of the population more than 10 hours travel time from an urban center has fallen from 40.3 percent in 1984 to only 12.2 percent in 2007.

× Beginning in April 2008, lack of access to foreign exchange effectively stopped private sector wheat imports. Government imports and subsidized sales to millers and households in late 2008, subsequently increased domestic supply and lowered market wheat prices, though market prices remained above import parity levels. Allowing the private sector access to foreign exchange for wheat imports (or auctioning government wheat imports of the same volume) would have eliminated the wheat import subsidy, estimated at about $US 90 million in 2008, while reducing market prices to import parity levels.

× This paper examines macro-economic developments in Ethiopia between 2004/05 and 2008/09, focusing on the external accounts and the real exchange rate. Simulations using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of Ethiopia's economy show that, compared to a policy of foreign exchange rationing, a policy of real exchange rate depreciation and no rationing improves economic efficiency and welfare of all households except those who receive the rents (excess profits) arising from rationing.

× This paper provides details of the analysis done for Ethiopia’s background study for its implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The analysis provides an assessment of agricultural growth options utilizing a new computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Ethiopia based on data from the EDRI 2004/05 Ethiopia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). The CGE model results indicate that if Ethiopia can meet its targets for crop yields and livestock productivity, then it should be possible to reach and sustain the six percent agricultural growth target during 2006-2015.

× This study investigated access to agricultural extension and rural water supply and assessed strategies to improve the provision of these services by strengthening accountability. The study paid special attention to the gender dimension of service delivery. The research was conducted in eight districts located in seven administrative regions of Ethiopia, combining quantitative surveys with a qualitative case study approach. Empirical findings show that access to safe drinking water is rather low: 32% of the surveyed households use safe drinking water sources, and the average time to fetch water from safe sources during the dry season ranged from 29 minutes to 82 minutes. Agricultural extension services were relatively accessible, but there were differences in access between men and women, and particularly stark differences across the survey sites in different regions. Farmers' satisfaction with extension services was very high, but only 8 percent of the sampled farmers had adopted any new practices in the past two years.