BASIS CRSP Sixth Annual Report Activities 2001-2002 Workplans 2002-2003 and Outreach 2003 October 2002 BASIS CRSP Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics University of Wisconsin–Madison 424 Taylor Hall, 427 Lorch Street Madison, WI 53706 USA [email protected] tel: +608-262-5538 fax: +608-262-4376 http://www.basis.wisc.edu STAFF Michael Carter, Director Danielle Hartmann, Assistant Director Kurt Brown, Publications and Outreach Manager Beverly Phillips, Web Manager USAID COGNIZANT TECHNICAL OFFICER Lena Heron Phone: (202) 712-0391 Fax: (202) 216-3579 [email protected] BASIS CRSP Sixth Annual Report Activities 2001-2002 Workplans 2002-2003 and Outreach 2003 BASIS CRSP Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics University of Wisconsin-Madison http://www.basis.wisc.edu October 2002 This publication was made possible in part through support provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), under the terms of Grant No. LAG-A-00-96-90016-00, and by funding support from the BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. All views, interpretations, recommendations, and conclusions expressed in this document are those of the various authors and not necessarily those of the supporting or cooperating organizations. Copyright © by BASIS. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Overview—ii Contents Page The BASIS CRSP Program: An Overview 1 Project Portfolio: Activities and Workplans 9 Input Market Constraints Upon the Growth of Russian Agriculture: Land, Labor, Capital, and other Inputs under Alternate Economic Reform Policies 11 Institutional Innovations to Improve Equity Sharing Under Privatization and Farm Restructuring: Helping Land Reform Beneficiaries Gain Access to Land and Financial Resources in Central Asia and Southern Africa 21 Institutional Dimensions of Water Policy Reform in Southern Africa: Addressing Critical Water-Land Intersections in Broadening Access to Key Factors of Production 55 Rural Markets, Natural Capital, and Dynamic Poverty Traps in East Africa 81 Assets, Cycles, and Livelihoods: Addresing Food Insecurity in the Horn of Africa and Central America 101 Research on Rural Financial Markets: New Projects for Year Two 123 Credit Reporting Bureaus and the Deepening of Financial Services for the Rural Poor in Latin America 125 The Structure and Performance of Rural Financial Markets and the Welfare of the Rural Poor: A Comparative Study in Peru and Mexico 126 The Long-Run Effects of Access to Financial Services on Asset Accumulation, Economic Mobility, and the Evolution of Wellbeing: Revisiting Agricultural Commercialization in Bukidnon, 1984-2003 127 Outreach: Conferences and Workshops 2003 129 Workshop on Land Policy, Administration and Management in the English-speaking Caribbean 131 Paving the Way Forward: An International Conference on Best Practices in Rural Finance 133 Annex: Phase I Projects and Activities 2001-02 137 Alleviating Poverty and Food Insecurity: The Case of Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Kenya 139 Central American Gender Analysis of Land Titles 143 Impact of Joint Titling on Gender Equity 147 New Agrarian Contracts: Sharecropping, Outgrower Schemes, and Community-based Tourism in the Context of Zimbabwe’s Land Reform 151 Zimbabwe Mentors Program 153 Overview—iii READER’S GUIDE This is the initial annual report for Phase II of the BASIS CRSP. Phase I ended in September 2001, and the previous five BASIS CRSP annual reports cover its activities and findings. This report has a slightly different format. The first section, which is also published separately as a BASIS Brief, offers an overview of BASIS CRSP by outlining the goal of rural prosperity, detailing the research program and the three global constraints it targets, and showing the methods by which the research findings are communicated to key audiences. The second section, “Project Portfolio,” covers the activities and workplans of the five projects that initiated the Phase II research program. At the time of this report, these projects had finished the first year of the three years planned, and each reports on preliminary findings and anticipated work for the coming year. The third section, “Research on Rural Financial Markets,” introduces three new projects that were added to the portfolio in October 2002. The fourth section, “Outreach,” covers the two workshops and conferences planned for 2003. Finally, the annex offers summaries of activities of Phase I projects whose completion overlapped with the first year of Phase II. Our thanks go to all who participate in the BASIS CRSP for helping make this document possible. Comments on this report and BASIS’s work are encouraged. Please visit the BASIS website for more information about the projects, contact information, and upcoming events: http://www.basis.wisc.edu. Overview—iv THE BASIS CRSP PROGRAM: AN OVERVIEW Seeking Rural Prosperity BY HELPING MAKE MARKETS WORK FOR ALL, BASIS CRSP seeks to improve the quality of life for people in rural areas of the developing world. With a cutting edge and innovative research program, BASIS produces impacts through its publications, training, education, capacity building, and informed policy recommendations that help facilitate broadly based and sustainable economic growth. More and more people around the world face hunger and malnutrition even as food supplies are abundant. Aid programs that deliver food for emergencies can be of short-term benefit, but there remains a critical need to prevent more people from falling into poverty and to find ways for those who already are poor to escape poverty permanently. Rural prosperity is the BASIS CRSP goal. Strategies for accumulating and protecting (Photo by A. Peter Castro.) assets are important. Also there must be sound strategies for recovering from disasters such as drought, war, and HIV/AIDS, avoiding the degradation of one’s own resources and those shared with others, and effectively utilize resources is constrained, and participating in the institutions that manage resources people often resort to unproductive accumulation and other assets. BASIS seeks to provide these strategies. Increasing numbers of households find strategies through a coherent research program that themselves unable to respond to economic addresses a basic cause of chronic poverty: lack of opportunities that emerge while also lacking effective access or unequal access to factors of production strategies for coping with economic downturns, such as land, water, labor, and finance, as well as to disasters, and changes brought about by political, services, information, and market opportunities. social, or economic restructuring. Solutions are not as simple as linking the poor to Methods for helping the rural poor often are rural factor markets. Often these markets are missing regionally specific, yet lessons learned in one area or imperfect, leaving non-market institutions and may in fact provide key elements to solutions in other rules to broker resource allocation and access. areas. A well-balanced examination across regions of Missing and imperfect factor markets often underlie rural factor markets and their role in enhancing or problems of food insecurity, poverty, and constraining growth can inform policy that seeks to unsustainable growth. In such an environment, a rural foster rural economies in which growth is a household’s ability to access, accumulate, and sustainable foundation for broad rural prosperity. Developing Innovative Solutions 7. The Structure and Performance of Rural Financial Markets and the Welfare of the Rural In 1996, the United States Agency for International Poor: A Comparative Study in Peru and Mexico Development (USAID) launched BASIS—a collaborative research support program that examines 8. The Long-Run Effects of Access to Financial the interactions and inter-relationships of land, water, Services on Asset Accumulation, Economic labor, and financial factor markets and the impacts of Mobility, and the Evolution of Wellbeing: policy or policy reform in helping improve access to Revisiting Agricultural Commercialization in and efficiency of factor markets. Phase I of the Bukidnon, 1984-2003 program ended in September 2001. At that time, Together, these eight projects target imperfections in USAID awarded the University of Wisconsin- factor markets and other resource allocation Madison an additional five-year grant to extend the institutions that result in the following constraints to research to 2006. broadly based and sustainable growth: BASIS Phase II is comprised of individual research Global Constraint 1: Ineffective agricultural projects in multiple regions of the world designed to resource use in post-reform economies have policy impact both locally and globally. The projects emerge from a competitive process that Global Constraint 2: Unsustainable use of selects the top proposals submitted in response to a environmentally sensitive resources call for work on pressing global constraints to Global Constraint 3: Poverty and food growth. Projects are intended first to understand the insecurity traps constraints to development and then to deliver innovative and creative policy solutions. As detailed below, each BASIS project addresses one Although each project focuses on a country or a or more of these constraints in innovative ways with regional