Jose Luis Figueroa’s scientific contributions

This paper characterizes smallholder farm households in Upper Egypt based on data from a comprehensive farm household survey. The results from the descriptive analysis in combination with findings from the global literature provide recommendations on how agricultural projects can be leveraged for improving nutrition. The importance of focusing on nutrition is underlined by relatively high undernutrition and overnutrition rates among the surveyed farm households: almost 18 percent of children under five years of age are stunted and almost 25 percent of them are at risk of being overweight. Agricultural interventions can impact nutrition through six main pathways, which are: 1) providing direct access to food from own production; 2) providing a source of income from which food and other nutrition needs can be met; 3) affecting food prices; 4) affecting women’s social status and empowerment; 5) affecting women’s time use from participation in agricultural work; and 6) affecting women’s health and nutrition from engagement in agricultural activities. The surveyed farm households purchase in the market most of the foods that they consume, cultivating crops primarily for commercial sale. This finding suggests that access to food markets and the level of food prices are key determinants of food and nutrition security among smallholder farm households in Upper Egypt. The survey analysis also identified potential levers for increasing agricultural productivity, including promoting more efficient use of water, fertilizers, and pesticides and improving farming practices to narrow the productivity gap between small-scale farmers and medium and large-scale farmers. As the role of women in agricultural activities in Upper Egypt is limited, the gendered pathways for leveraging agriculture for improved nutrition are less relevant. However, to achieve positive impact on people’s diet or nutritional status that goes beyond income and price channels, programs that reach farm households in Upper Egypt should include education and behavioral change communication activities, including on themes related to breastfeeding, dietary diversity, physical activities, and sugar intake. For such activities to be effective, it is important to consider the low literacy levels in the population.

This paper is part of a series of three country-case studies to investigate the potential role of agro-processing for economic development based on the strong backward and forward linkages agro-processing firms have with the agricultural sector. Previous analyses for Egypt and Jordan (Figueroa, Mahmoud, and Breisinger 2017; El-Enbaby et al. 2016) have shown how developing the agro-processing sub-sector as well as encouraging the production of high-value crops can promote economic and social well-being, especially in rural areas where the majority of the poor are concentrated. In continuation with this line of research, this paper aims at analyzing: • What role agriculture has played for the Tunisian economy in recent years; • What is the role of agricultural productivity and structural change in fostering agricultural growth in Tunisia; and • What is the potential of agro-processing for economic development and rural transformation in the country.

This paper aims to support the implementation of the strategic development plans of Jordan by analyzing the role of agriculture and farmers in the Jordanian economy, the role that productivity and structural change can play for fostering agricultural growth, and the role agro-processing may play in Jordan’s economic development. We argue that the development of the agro-processing sector often has stronger backward and forward linkages with the agricultural sector than other sectors and, thus, plays an important role for rural transformation.