PhD Defence: Maïmouna Barro

Three Essays on Challenges Facing Agriculture in Developing Countries

Maïmouna Barro
Cerdi, Université Clermont Auvergne

Jury

Flore Gubert, Research Director, IRD, Université Paris Dauphine, Leda
Matthieu Clément, Professor, Université de Bordeaux, BSE
Pascale Phélinas, Research Director, IRD, Université Clermont Auvergne
Karine Marazyan, Professor, Université de Rouen, Normandie, Lasta
Sébastien Desbureaux, Chargé de recherche CR-CPJ INRAE, Montpellier
Sébastien Marchand, Associate Professor, CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne
Martine Audibert, Research DirectorCERDI-CNRS, Université Clermont Auvergne  

Abstract

Agriculture plays a major role in the economy of developing countries where the majority of the population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture and food systems for their livelihoods. This population is also faced with numerous challenges such as climate change, poverty, environmental degradation or food insecurity. The objective of the thesis is to shed new light on the issues related to agriculture in order to derive economic policy recommendations. The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 2 assesses the impact of adopting irrigation on household and women’s dietary diversity. The study focuses on Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, particularly countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) where the share of the population suffering from moderate to severe food insecurity is very high. Our identification strategy is based on the entropy balancing method developed by Hainmueller 2012. The results show that irrigating households have higher dietary diversity scores compared to non-irrigating households. In addition, the results also reveal that women in irrigating households have higher dietary diversity scores than women in non-irrigating households. Furthermore, these findings highlight that women’s empowerment, increased agricultural income, production, and water supply are potential mechanisms through which irrigation contributes to improving dietary diversity.

Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between malaria prevalence and agricultural labor in the context of irrigation and family farming in SSA. The goal of this study is to analyse the impact of malaria on agricultural labor (quantity and productivity) by highlighting some underlying mechanisms that explain the relationship between malaria and labor in African family farming. More precisely, we focused on irrigation and household size as two potential moderator variables of the impact of malaria on labor. On the one hand, the results show that malaria has a negative impact on labor quantity. This effect is a direct health impact through the loss of workday due to the disease. However, once malaria interacts with irrigation or household size, its effect turns out to be insignificant. We explain these results by the presence of a moderating effect of irrigation and household size. On the other hand, the baseline and robustness results reveal that malaria increases labor productivity. We explain this result in the context of the productive inefficiency of African family farming. Regarding the moderating effect of irrigation, we do find a negative impact of the interaction of malaria with irrigation while few are robust. Overall, our results highlight that malaria remains a constraint in family farming in Africa.

Chapter 4 examines the issue of industrialization in rural areas. More specifically, it analyzes the impact of industrial water pollution from manufacturing firms on rice production in Jiangsu, China. This study aims to disentangle this complex relationship by using a translog production function model. This model allows us to separate the direct effects of industrial water pollution on rice cultivation from its adaptation effects. Our results confirm that rice yields are negatively impacted by industrial water pollution through a direct biological effect. This detrimental effect is the most significant within a radius of 5 kilometers from the county center. In response, farmers use more operating costs to mitigate the negative impact of industrial water pollution. The change in production behaviors helps farmers to better cope with industrial development and adapt to the changing rural environment. Our study highlights the need to better understand the nexus between industry and agriculture at the local level.

Keywords

Irrigation; dietary diversity; agricultural labor; malaria; water pollution; Sub-Saharan African; China.