Abstract
The world economy has largely overcome the Malthusian challenge, but there are regions such as the Sahel where this challenge remains formidable and food insecurity is exacerbated by multiple threats of climate change, low agricultural productivity, and high population growth. While the interactions among these forces governing long-term food security are widely discussed for policy making in the Sahel, analysis of the comparative magnitude of the forces in the resulting food security outcomes is largely absent. In this paper, we identify the relative contribution of these long-term drivers of food security outcomes in rural and urban Niger into 2050. We then consider three policy scenarios to address food security issues: accelerated investments in agricultural R&D (supply side), reduction of fertility rates (demand side), and market integration. We use a historically validated partial equilibrium model tailored to Nigerien agriculture, with data inputs gleaned from various sources, including household and farm surveys and grid-cell level production data. Our study finds that among growth in population, income, and agricultural productivity and climate change impacts on yields and labor productivity, population growth in Niger will remain the single largest driver of crop output growth and undernourishment in the country. Three-fourths of the increase in undernourished population is projected to be among the urban population. Climate change impacts on agricultural productivity will have differential impacts on undernourishment prevalence among rural and urban population, pushing an additional 2 million people into undernourishment by 2050. The relative impacts of climate change are larger among the rural population offsetting revenue gains from increased crop prices. We emphasize that feasible advancements in agricultural productivity are likely to be outpaced by rapid population growth and climate change setbacks unless simultaneous actions are taken on the demand side. On the supply side, interventions are required in transforming R&D spending into higher farm productivity. Greater integration into regional markets will also aide in mitigating undernourishment prevalence.
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Availability of data and material
The baseline input data and the data to simulate shocks can be provided in GEMPACK files.
Code availability
The code for the SIMPLE-Niger model are available in text. To use the code, the GEMPACK software with license is required.
Change history
24 February 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-023-01358-4
Notes
Niger ranked 101 among 117 countries in global hunger Index (GHI) in 2019 with a score of 30.4. The cut off score for an alarming situation is 35. GHI scores are based on undernourishment, child wasting, stunting, and mortality levels.
The public sector funding gap in the 10 Sahelian countries, on average, remain 32% of the required resources.
Security related spending rose from 1.5 percent of GDP in 2011 to 5.2 percent in 2015.
In the 2017–21 Economic and Social Development Plan, Niger identified ensuring demographic transition, maintaining sustainable and inclusive economic growth, strengthening food and nutrition security, and adaptation of production systems to climate change among its eight major challenges. Specific targets had been set in each of the strategic axis addressing these challenges, such as reducing population growth to 3.06% by 2021, projecting GDP growth rate to an optimistic 6.2% from the current 5%.
TFP reflects the technology and efficiency with which all inputs are transformed into outputs. Sources of crop output growth can be decomposed into agricultural land expansion (extensification) and/or growth in yield per hectare (intensification). Yield growth itself can come through input intensification (i.e., more capital, labor, and fertilizer per hectare of land) and/or TFP growth. Growth in TFP can occur from research on productivity, economic policy reforms, growth in human capital of labor forces including its skill level and health status, infrastructure development etc. (Fuglie & Rada, 2013).
The population growth rate in Niger is the fourth highest in the world. The average population growth rate in SSA is 2.7 percent per annum. The growth rate in Niger is increasing at an average of 0.07 percent points a year.
High fertility rates in Niger are not only due to factors such as low child survival rates (replacement) or “supply side” economic factors such as unavailability of family planning services. It also stems from a deep desire to have large families, based on an accumulation of the mother’s desire, family desire and social norms (Canning et al., 2015).
Gender Inequality Index is a composite index of reproductive health, empowerment, and labor force participation.
Nigeriens rely on carbohydrates primarily sourced from crops for seventy-two percent of their dietary energy calorie (DEC). Reliance on cheap sources of starch for meeting energy requirements, is typical of households in least developed countries. However, FAO et al. (2020) notes in its global study that while a nutrient adequate or healthy diet would be on average affordable in most countries in SSA, in Niger the costs would be two times and five times of average food expenditures respectively, the highest ratios globally.
It is evident from the studies by Daouda et al. (1998) for the periods of 1950–1967 and 1968–1985, and by Sivakumar (1992) for 1969-1988 that isohyet lines (which are horizontal parallel lines on the map connecting points of similar rainfall range) moved southward from 1950 to 1980s, resulting in the most productive zones to shrink. The isohyets moved north again from 1988-1998 (Ben Mohamed et al., 2002). Although this looked promising whether the trend will continue is debated. It is evident, however, that even though rainfall may have increased the rainfall season has become shorter and there is more spatial and temporal variability with erratic and extreme rainfalls often leading to flooding in the Niger river.
More discussion about uncertainties and yield impact estimation in Supplementary Appendix S4.
A complete listing of model variables, equations, and source of data is available in the textbook authored by Hertel and Baldos (2016b).
Livestock (and processed foods) are value-added products in the model, which are produced and consumed within each demand region using crop and non-crop inputs. The livestock sector generates derived demand for crop through livestock feed, in addition to non-crop inputs. Technological change and factor substitution in these sectors can alter the intensity of crop use in producing these products. It is assumed that only the livestock sector has the ability to increase feeding intensity (via input substitution or reduction of waste) as captured by the elasticity of substitution between feed and non-feed inputs and technical change.
These indicators are limited to the caloric volume aspect of food security and does not account for the quality of food consumption. This can be considered a limitation from nutritional point of view given the emphasis on diet quality and it underestimates Niger’s food insecurity situation. Stunting among children under 5, vitamin and micronutrient deficiency, diet diversity index are complementary measures of undernutrition. However, incorporation of these measures in the study will require improved data.
The 16 global regions are Eastern Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia & New Zealand, European Union, South Asia, Central America, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Canada, USA, China & Mongolia, Middle East, Japan & Korea, Central Asia, Sub Saharan Africa (excludes Niger and South Africa).
For interested readers a complete listing of sources and construction of regional data of the original framework is listed in Supplementary Materials of Baldos and Hertel (2013) available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034024/media/erl472278suppdata.pdf. The details of Niger data construction process can be found in the Supplementary Appendix S3.
SSP2 assumes “middle of the road” world where trends broadly follow their historical patterns (SSP2). SSP3 assumes a fragmented world of “resurgent nationalism”. SSP1 and SSP5 represent relatively optimistic trends for human development with rapid economic growth. SSP1 “Sustainability” features low adaptation and mitigation challenges, while SSP5 assumes that growth will be driven by energy intensive, fossil fueled development (Riahi et al., 2017). The underlying income and population growth projections and the narratives are very unlikely scenarios for Niger and thus we did not consider them.
Interested readers can find the results under all the scenarios in Supplementary Appendix.
Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 which is a greenhouse emission trajectory. The RCPs set pathways for GHG emissions and effectively the amount of warming to be observed. RCP 8.5 indicates an increase of around 2.5oC by 2050 in Niger, reference period 1995–2014, sourced from the World Bank’s Climate Change Portal (https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/niger/climate-data-projections).
The labor endowment effect refers to the shift in rural labor supply. This is tied to projected rural population growth in Niger.
Niger currently has a relatively small urban base, but its concentration of undernourished population is higher in urban areas (20 percent vs. 15.4 percent in rural areas, LSMS 2011/ECVMA).
Urban households in Niger source only 4 percent of their dietary energy from own produced food (vs 32 percent by rural households). Consequently, they also have a larger share of purchased food in total food consumption in terms of monetary value (89 percent in urban vs 67 percent in rural).
Country specific elasticities are not available. It is possible that elasticities could be smaller or larger for Niger. R&D spillovers from neighboring countries could be better captured or perhaps the CGIAR is targeting relatively more attention in Niger (with an ICRISAT station in the country, for example). NGOs might also be contributing with development of small-scale irrigation methods (Walker et al., 2016), and zai pits and agroforestry innovations (Reij et al., 2009) that have been widely adopted.
https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/aggregated-ranking, accessed on 20 April 2022. The LPI is an index consisting of efficiency of clearing process by border control agencies, quality of trade and transport related infrastructure, ease of arranging competitively priced shipments, competence and quality of logistics services, ability to track and trace consignments, and timeliness of shipments in reaching destination.
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Acknowledgements
The database and model were built in consultation with local researchers and key informants in Niger. The study has benefited greatly from Drs. Bokar Moussa, Germain Ibro, and Salissou Issa of the Niger National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRAN), Dr. Alkhalil Adoum of AGRHYMET regional center, and Dr. Tahirou Abdoulaye of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for their assistance in data collection, field visits, and overall understanding of the Nigerien context for conceptualization and design. Tom Hertel acknowledges support from USDA-NIFA Project 1003642 and NSF Project OISE-2020635.
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This study did not receive funding beyond Purdue University travel grants for field trips and dissemination workshops in Niger.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by Kayenat Kabir with guidance from Thomas Hertel and Uris Baldos. Model code was prepared by Kayenat Kabir and Uris Baldos. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kayenat Kabir and all authors commented and edited on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The original online version of this article was revised: In section 6.2, paragraph 3, “well known to reduce fertility rates while empoweOneof the reasonsring women to decide freely...” should read “well known to reduce fertility rates while empowering women to decide freely...”.
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Kabir, K., Baldos, U.L.C. & Hertel, T.W. The new Malthusian challenge in the Sahel: prospects for improving food security in Niger. Food Sec. 15, 455–476 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01319-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01319-3