Agriculture and development

Team
Agriculture and development
FERDI's work examines the importance of agriculture for the development of countries, and the means to develop family farms.

Subsidy policies and insurance demand
Why is weather insurance take-up low among farmers in spite of positive returns? How can subsidies be used to sustainably increase demand? Based on a field experiment involving 3500 rice farmers in China sustained over four years, the authors Jing Cai (University of Maryland), Alain de Janvry (UC Berkeley; Senior FERDI Fellow) and Elisabeth Sadoulet (UC Berkeley; Senior FERDI Fellow) find that the stochastic nature of weather shocks and resulting insurance payouts makes learning about the value of insurance particularly difficult. Subsidies increase payout experiences and take-up. However, only for farmers who benefited from financial education does learning from shocks and payouts result in permanent take-up. On https://voxdev.org. 
BLOG
08 September 2020
Learn more
Featured
Risques liés aux catastrophes naturelles dans les pays en développement

In collaboration with Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet and Alexandros Sarris, FERDI's works concern:

  • Methods of creating and adopting technological innovations to produce new agricultural plant varieties which are more resistant to climate change and shocks
  • Impact of, and methods of, setting up agricultural value chains for the development of family farms
  • Study of models for financing and insuring against natural disasters
  • Impact of the volatile international agricultural commodity prices on food security.

Results and Impact

The book published by FERDI Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance: Issues and Results (Clarke D., de Janvry A., Sadoulet E., Skoufias E. (2015) Ferdi, 105 p.) has been posted on the platform https://www.preventionweb.net/risk/disaster-risk

Publication in 2017 of the book Learning for adopting: Technology adoption in developing country agriculture (by Janvry A., Macours K., Sadoulet, E. (2017), FERDI, 120 p.)

Publication in 2016 of the book Commodity market instability and asymmetries in developing countries: Development impacts and policies, (Sarris A. (2016), FERDI, 92 p.)

Training

Publications
All publications

Show more

Events
All events

Show more

Blogs

63 boulevard François-Mitterrand, CS 50320
63009 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex
France
Téléphone : +33 (0)4 73 17 75 35
Fax : +33 (0)4 73 17 75 38
Contact us
Programmes
Chaires
A foundation recognised to be of public utility by the French state by a decree in 2003.