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Abstract
Over the past several years IFPRI has undertaken research on the production,
consumption, and nutrition effects of agricultural commercialization in The Gambia,
Guatemala, Kenya, the Philippines, and Rwanda. While it is widely recognized that the
commercialization of agriculture is essential to overall economic development, various
rural population groups adapt differently to the process of commercialization, depending
on the resources available to them, economic and social conditions, and government
policies. Many households benefit in the form of higher incomes; others may suffer a
decline in income. A particular concern of policymakers has been the effect of
commercialization on nutrition.
The purpose of these studies has been to analyze the process of commercialization
in order to identify key factors that determine nutritional outcomes, with the objective of
formulating policies to enhance the beneficial effects of commercialization and minimize
the harmful effects.
The present report by Howarth E. Bouis and Lawrence J. Haddad presents the
findings for the Philippine case study, located in an area on the southern island of
Mindanao where a substantial number of households converted lands from corn to
sugarcane production after construction of a sugar mill. The main effects of the
introduction of export cropping in this area were a significant deterioration in access to
land as smallholder corn tenant farms using primarily family labor were consolidated
into larger sugar farms using primarily hired labor; an increase in incomes for
households that grew sugarcane; a decline in women's participation in own-farm
production; and very little improvement in nutritional status as a result of increased
incomes from sugarcane production, primarily because of the high levels of preschooler
sickness in the sugarcane-growing households.
The difficulty of generalizing as to the varied effects of agricultural commercialization
is brought out by a comparison with the case study for Kenya (see IFPRI Research
Report 63 by Eileen Kennedy and Bruce Cogill), where farmers also switched from
maize to sugarcane production. In that African setting, where land is often relatively
abundant and labor scarce compared with many situations in Asia, women increased
their participation in own-farm production as sugarcane was introduced. Yet there are
important similarities as well. As all of the commercialization studies have confirmed,
poor health and sanitation conditions are a serious constraint to the improved nutrition
that increases in income might otherwise have made possible.