Structural Changes in Smallholder Agriculture: A Comparison between Southeast Asia and Sub Saharan Africa

考虑到农村和城市移民将继续发生，那么考虑到亚洲和非洲90%的农场是小规模的，农业的未来是什么呢？结构性变化发生了吗？如果发生了，变化的速度如何？拟议的研究旨在将这一问题置于一个洲际比较的背景下，即东南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲(SSA)。在这两个区域将选出两个国家。前者是泰国和越南，后者是乌干达和尼日利亚。对于这四个国家来说，长期面板数据的存在有力地促进了这种分析。对于泰国和越南，DFG赞助的项目泰国-越南社会经济小组(TVSEP)下存在一个为期十年(2007-2016)的家庭和村庄小组数据集。对于撒哈拉以南非洲，申请者将与康奈尔大学与世界银行和其他合作伙伴协调的非洲农业和农村空间结构转型(STAARS)项目合作。她还将与国际粮食政策研究所(IFPRI，华盛顿特区)合作。世界银行拥有自20世纪80年代以来建立的生活水平衡量研究农业综合调查(LSMS-ISA)的SSA数据集。STAARS项目组和IFPRI使用了关于非洲的这个数据集。因此，使用TVSEP和LSMS-ISA数据集，本研究将分析农业结构变化的驱动因素、制约因素和后果，重点是劳动力移徙。亚非比较可望大大提高人们对将发展概念从一种背景转移到另一种背景的认识和理解。从泰国和越南等新兴经济体那里汲取非洲国家在农业转型方面的经验教训，将是有益的。从两个高质量的小组数据集中提取数据的可能性为与政策有关的实证研究以及测试和推进方法提供了独特的机会。

Given that rural urban migration will continue to take place what then is the future of farming considering that 90 % of the farms in Asia and Africa are small-scale? Does structural change take place and if so, at what pace? The proposed research aims to investigate this question against the background of an intercontinental comparison namely Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In both regions two countries will be selected. These will be Thailand and Vietnam for the former and Uganda and Nigeria from the latter. For all four countries, long-term panel data exist that strongly facilitates such analysis. For Thailand and Vietnam, a ten-year (2007 – 2016) household and village panel dataset exits under the DFG sponsored project Thailand-Vietnam Socioeconomic Panel (TVSEP). For Sub-Saharan Africa, the applicant will collaborate with the Structural Transformation of African Agriculture and Rural Spaces (STAARS) project coordinated by Cornell University along with Wold Bank and other partners. She will also collaborate with International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI, Washington DC). World Bank has the dataset on SSA from Living Standards Measurement Study Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) established since 1980s. This dataset on Africa is used by STAARS project team and IFPRI. Thereby, using both TVSEP and LSMS-ISA datasets, this research will analyse the drivers, constraints and consequences of structural change in agriculture with emphasis on labour migration. The Asia-Africa comparison is expected to significantly improve the knowledge and understanding of transferring development concept from one context to another. It will be useful to extract lessons that African countries can learn from emerging economies like Thailand and Vietnam on transforming their agriculture. The possibility of drawing from two high quality panel datasets offers a unique opportunity for policy-relevant empirical research as well as testing and advancing methodologies.