An informative post on farmer suicides in India by Rida Bilgrami on the do no harm blog, which features writings by students in Development Studies at the London School of Economics:
Published August 30, 2011
Category: Crop Insurance
Published May 11, 2011
Index Insurance in Africa
From a post on the New York Times‘ Opinionator blog:
“The insecurity of farming sabotages yields even when the weather is good. Because of the risk, many farmers are unwilling to bet all their money on a crop, so they sow only a portion of their land. Or they use poor quality seeds because they do not want to increase their risks by spending more. Risk makes it very difficult for farmers to get credit to buy needed seeds, fertilizer, herbicides or insecticides, so their yields are stunted. These are people who can ill afford to get less than the maximum from their plots.
Weather insurance for small farmers has always faced numerous barriers. But throughout east Africa today there are projects finding creative and innovative ways to overcome them.”
This is quite à propos, as I am going to Washington, DC this weekend for the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4) technical workshop, which will convene the I4 grant recipients to discuss the technical details of index insurance implementation and evaluation.
(HT: Chris Paul.)
More on the Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies
From an article in the Wall Street Journal:
“The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead, it is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion — a sum far greater than the nation’s net farm income this year.
This year [the USDA] will give a record $20 billion in various crop ‘supports’ to the nation’s wealthiest farmers — with the richest 10 percent receiving over 70 percent of all the redistributive payouts. Free-market conservatives don’t dare touch the Department of Agriculture, given the senatorial clout of Midwest farm states. Don’t expect left-wing Democrats to object either. In a brilliantly conceived devil’s bargain, the Department of Agriculture gives welfare to the wealthy on the one hand, while on the other sending more than $70 billion to the lower income brackets in food stamps.”
Here is more from the same author.