Agriculture

Extreme heat is changing how farming households work

Extreme heat in West Africa does not simply reduce farm labour but reshapes household labour allocation – often increasing reliance on women and children and reducing hired labour – while the overall response varies significantly across countries, de...

Agriculture

Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong Ange T. Kakpo Jourdain C. Lokossou

Published

27.03.26

Rising fertiliser prices hit developing countries hard

When fertiliser prices spike, farmers in countries dependent on fertiliser imports are hit especially hard, and governments must grapple with a range of trade-offs in how they respond.

Agriculture

Wyatt Brooks Kevin Donovan

Published

24.03.26

How cold weather increases domestic violence in Peru

Cold snaps increase domestic violence in the Peruvian Highlands by reducing agricultural income. Policies that improve households’ resilience to agricultural income losses can help mitigate this effect.

Agriculture

Katie Bollman Judhajit Chakraborty Leah Lakdawala Eduardo Nakasone

Published

24.03.26

Rethinking the agricultural productivity gap: Informality matters

After adjusting for labour input differences, the apparent agricultural productivity gap in India is largely a formal-informal sector divide. Differences in education and labour hours fully explain the productivity gap between informal sector and agr...

Agriculture

Rajveer Jat Bharat Ramaswami

Published

10.03.26

Fostering negotiation skills in land and forest agreements

Negotiation training improves the ability of Liberian communities to strike beneficial deals around forest and land management by strengthening leaders’ ability to identify mutually beneficial, higher-value agreements. However, it does not substantia...

Agriculture

Darin Christensen Alexandra Hartman Cyrus Samii Alessandro Toppeta

Published

05.03.26

Why collectivisation in Vietnam still holds back agricultural productivity decades later

Evidence from Vietnam shows that institutional barriers not only misallocate resources but also discourage farmers from investing in productivity improvements, compounding the losses from misallocation.

Agriculture

Stephen Ayerst Loren Brandt Diego Restuccia

Published

04.03.26

Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction?

Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production. However, when a large international buyer required inte...

Agriculture

Rocco Macchiavello Josepa Miquel-Florensa Nicolás de Roux Eric Verhoogen Mario Bernasconi Patrick Farrell

Published

25.02.26

Guaranteed income as insurance: How safety nets in India encouraged productive investment in agriculture

In India, a guaranteed income programme acted as insurance rather than a substitute for credit, reducing downside risk for small farmers and increasing their willingness to borrow – unlocking large credit-financed gains in investment, productivity, a...

Agriculture

Pulak Ghosh Nishant Vats

Published

13.02.26

The downstream impacts of mines: How pollution hits agriculture

Mines pollute their surroundings, including water flows. In Africa, new evidence shows that plants and crops are less healthy downstream of mining sites, with the largest impacts in fertile, densely vegetated areas and regions dominated by gold minin...

Agriculture

Lukas Vashold Gustav Pirich Maximilian Heinze Nikolas Kuschnig

Published

09.02.26