Other

Irrigation, Ports, Airports, Storage and Processing

Apart from human settlements and roads, HarvestChoice is compiling information on other key types of infrastructure. The first relates to irrigation and the second to potential linkages to markets other than local human settlements via ports (e.g. import of fertilizer and export of bulk cash crops) and airports (e.g. export of high value horticultural products). Over time we will improve the scope and quallity of these layers as well as add further layers on processing facilities (e.g., cotton ginneries).

Irrigation

Regional irrigation data are available through at least three primary sources: AQUASTAT is FAO’s comprehensive database focusing on developing country water demand and usage, particularly with regard to irrigation use. There are two spatial databases of the extent and nature of irrigation; the Global Map of Irrigation Areas (current version 4.0.1) developed through collaboration between Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt and FAO's AQUASTAT team. The other product is the Global Irrigated Area Map (GIAM, current version 2.0) compiled by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI, one of the 15 CGIAR centres) based on the interpretation and groundtruthing of remotely sensed data. In many HarvestChoice applications we use Frankfurt/FAO product that indicates the proportion of an area equipped for irrigation (we use this database, for example, as an input to our assessment of the spatial distribution of crop production and performance, SPAM).

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Ports and Airports

The economic geography of market opportunity is not only shaped by the location of farm households relative to local towns and cities but also, potentially, by their location relative to major ports and airports. Port locations not only influence spatial price patterns for imported production inputs (e.g. fertilizers and agrochemicals) and the maximum farmgate costs of potential export crops, but also the local cost of imported foodstuffs that might compete with local produce.

HarvestChoice has begun to compile port and airport data (as well as related transport cost data) to support its economic evaluation of specific productivity enhancing and market integration interventions (often for specific crops). Very preliminary analysis of spatial patterns of transport costs from major ports in sub-Saharan Africa has been undertaken (Map 1), and this has helped define a continental overview of “marketsheds” based on the least cost trade corridors associated with individual ports (Map 2). We will continue to develop the breadth and depth of this type of data and analysis.

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Profitability Prototype Analysis: Linking On-site Productivity Change Potential to Estimated "Farmgate" Prices

In assessing the potential impacts of smallholder productivity it is important to consider not only the possible on-farm effects of, say improved technologies and practices, but also the economic incentives ...