Designing an IPM Research Strategy to Benefit Poor Producers and Consumers in Honduras

J Adam Sparger,George W Norton,Donald Breazeale,Mauricio Rivera,Jeffrey Alwang

doi:10.1603/ipm11010

Abstract

Agricultural research organizations face pressure to justify investments in agricultural research and need tools to allocate their resources such that the resulting research portfolio has the largest impact across multiple objectives. These tools should use available information so that the allocation exercise is flexible and low cost. This paper describes a simple mechanism for assessing ex-ante impacts of agricultural research on population subgroups. Economic surplus analysis is combined with household data to predict the impacts of agricultural research in integrated pest management technologies for eggplants, onions, peppers, and tomatoes on overall efficiency and poverty reduction in Honduras.

Highlights

Despite positive economic growth in the recent past, Honduras has exhibited persistent poverty and has some of the worst social indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean (World Bank 2006)
Poverty is concentrated in agriculture; 81% of the extreme poor, 60% of the moderate poor, and only 35% of the nonpoor are dependent on agriculture (World Bank 2006)
Onion producers rely on onion production for Ϸ63% of total agricultural income, pepper producers rely on peppers for 55%, and tomato producers rely on tomatoes for 49%

Summary

Introduction

Despite positive economic growth in the recent past, Honduras has exhibited persistent poverty and has some of the worst social indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean (World Bank 2006). Ligon and Sadoulet (2007) estimate the effect of economic growth originating in agriculture versus nonagriculture on the poorest decile’s expenditures. They found that outside of Latin America growth in the agricultural sector has a much larger positive effect on the poorest decile’s expenditures than growth in other sectors. In Latin America, extreme inequality in income and land holdings prevents the poor from benefiting in similar fashion. America’s poor, but unless it is focused in specific subsectors, poverty may not automatically fall with increased growth in the sector

Methods

Results

Conclusion