Prof. Dr. Regina Birner

Peer-reviewed

Other Publications

Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) (2014-2022)

PARI aims to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth and food and nutrition security in Africa and India as part of the One World, No Hunger Initiative (SEWOH) by the German government. PARI accompanies development efforts with research on the potential and challenges of different agricultural innovations and with research on how to strengthen the framework conditions for the generation and dissemination of promising innovations. The division 490C leads PARI’s research activities on agricultural mechanization and researches livestock development, agrochemical use, and digital agriculture in several African countries and India.

Link to the project website

Related Publications:

Daum, Thomas, & Birner, Regina. 2020. Agricultural mechanization in Africa: Myths, realities and an emerging research agenda. Global Food Security, 26, 100393. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191242030047X

Daum, Thomas, Adegbola, Y. Patrice, Kamau, Geoffrey, Kergna, O. Alpha, Daudu, Christogonus, Zossou, Roch, Crinot, G. Fabrice, Houssou, Paul., Mose, Lawrence, Ndirpaya, Yarama, Wahab A. A., Kirui, Oliver, Oluwole, Fantunbi. 2020. Impacts of agricultural mechanization: Evidence from four African countries. Hohenheim Working Papers on Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development. 003-2020. University of Hohenheim. https://490c.uni-hohenheim.de/fileadmin/einrichtungen/490c/Publikationen/Working_Papers_3_Mechanization_Impacts.pdf

Daum, Thomas, Villalba, Roberto, Anidi, Oluwakayode, Mayienga, Sharon, Gupta, Saurabh, Birner, Regina. 2020. Uber for tractors? Opportunities and challenges of digital tools for tractor hire in India and Nigeria. Hohenheim Working Papers on Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development 001-2020. University of Hohenheim. https://490c.uni-hohenheim.de/fileadmin/einrichtungen/490c/Publikationen/WP_001-2020_Uber_for_tractors_-_Opportunities_and_challenges_of_digital_tools_for_tractor_hire_in_India_and_Nigeria.pdf

Daum, Thomas. 2019. Of bulls and bulbs: Aspirations, opinions and perceptions of rural adolescents and youth in Zambia. Development in Practice, 29(7), 882-897. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2019.1646209

Adu-Baffour, Ferdinand, Daum, Thomas, & Birner, Regina. 2019. Can small farms benefit from big companies’ initiatives to promote mechanization in Africa? A case study from Zambia. Food Policy, 84, 133-145. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919218303816

Daum, Thomas, Buchwald, Hannes, Gerlicher, Ansgar, & Birner, Regina. 2019. Times Have Changed Using a Pictorial Smartphone App to Collect Time-Use Data in Rural Zambia. Field Methods, 31 (1), 3-22. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1525822X18797303

Daum, Thomas, Capezzone, Filippo, Birner, Regina. 2018. The forgotten agriculture-nutrition link. Estimating the energy requirements of different farming technologies in rural Zambia with time-use data. ZEF Working Paper No. 182. Center for Development Research.
https://www.zef.de/uploads/tx_zefnews/ZEF_WP_182.pdf

Daum, Thomas, Buchwald, Hannes, Gerlicher, Ansgar, & Birner, Regina. 2018. Smartphone apps as a new method to collect data on smallholder farming systems in the digital age: A case study from Zambia. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 153, 144-150.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168169917314886

Daum, Thomas, Huffman, Wallace. E., & Birner, Regina. 2018. How to create conducive institutions to enable agricultural mechanization: A comparative historical study from the United States and Germany. Economics Working Papers IOWA State University No. 18009. core.ac.uk/download/pdf/212843662.pdf

This research project pilots innovative gender-sensitive information services featuring locally-appropriate practices on climate-smart agriculture. The BMZ-funded project is led by the International Food Policy Research and works with grassroots women’s organizations and university institutions, including the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, GROOTS in Kenya, and Uganda’s Africa Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services Development (AFRISA) of Makerere University. Its aims are to facilitate uptake of climate-smart practices that will increase resilience to climate change, and to contribute to closing gendered yield gaps, improving food security, and reducing natural resource degradation.

IFPRI

Related publications:

Kawerau, Laura; and Birner, Regina. 2020. ‘Cellphilms’ and ‘photovoice’: How visual tools can help understand farmers’ adaptation to climate change. Rural 21 54(2). www.rural21.com/english/scientific-world/detail/article/cellphilms-and-photovoice-how-visual-tools-can-help-understand-farmers-adaptation-to-climate-change

Project begin: 01.10.2015

Project end: 30.11.2018

Description

The ongoing processes of urbanization, population expansion and sustained income growth in many parts of the developing countries point to the potential of the livestock sector in providing meaningful pro-poor growth. Particularly in Africa, the meat consumption is expected to increase to 34.8 million tons by 2050 from about 10.5 million tons in 2005/07. This increase in demand creates a host of opportunities for smallholder farmers who have largely been excluded from the growth process. However, this opportunity is often underutilized, and this raises a critical question: Under what conditions can smallholder farmers benefit from the development of livestock value chains? This study uses the case of Zambia to address this analytical question by i) identifying the factors affecting the moving into and out of livestock production, ii) by determining the competitiveness of smallholder livestock production, and iii) by uncovering the governance challenges and the political economy of livestock policy.

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner
• Mary Lubungu

Involved institutions

• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development

Sponsors

• DAAD

Project begin: 01.10.2015

Project end: 30.11.2018

Description

With the passing of the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA), India appears to be making a renewed commitment to tackling the food and nutrition insecurity that have plagued the country. While recent data shows overall improvement in the levels of wasting and stunting among children under the age of 5 years, the variation between states in the country remains high. Between public shaming, individual state initiatives for reform, and a rights-based movement that culminated in the passing of the NFSA, this study aims to examine how the delivery of food and nutrition entitlements is unfolding at different levels. First, how has this bill led to institutional reforms to ensure appropriate grievance redressal and vigilance of the targeted programs? Second, how have different states handled the implementation of the two core programs of this bill, the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)? Finally, this study will highlight severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in India, and examine how households perceive the escalation in their child’s health and whether they are able to better manage the various factors that contribute to such a condition after the child’s recovery at nutrition rehabilitation centers (NRCs).

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner
• Sandhya Kumar

Involved institutions

• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development

Sponsors

• DAAD

Linking Development and Conservation: the Role of Community Forestry and Carbon Neutral Coffee under Climate Change in Central Costa Rica

Project begin: 01.01.2014

Project end: 31.12.2016

Description

The PhD dissertation will focus on observed synergies between development and conservation, investigating the case of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) applied in community forestry and carbon neutral coffee production. The research will be undertaken in two coffee cooperatives (Coopedota and Coopetarrazú) and in a community forestry receiving PES from the Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal (FONAFIFO). In order to analyze synergy effects, PES participants will be compared with non-participants. Ostrom’s socio-ecological system (SES) framework will be adapted, as it offers the opportunity to analyze the sustainability of a system and to get an overview on complex interactions. Its measures allow for the investigation of a system’s performance in terms of socio-economy and environment. Qualitative (among them the innovative methods Net-Map and Photo-Voice) as well as quantitative methods from socio-economy will be used in this research and will be complemented by ecological methods. Three output papers are planned in order to complete the doctoral study: 1) Governance in the system of Costa Rica’s PES, 2) The ecological effect of PES in the studied systems, 3) The socio-economic effect of PES in the studied systems and the linkage between development and conservation.

Involved persons

• Athena Birkenberg
• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner

Involved institutions

• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development

Payments for Ecosystem Services, Gender and Governance

Project begin: 01.10.2012

Project end: 31.10.2019

Sponsor mark: DAAD

Keywords: climatic change, gender

Description:

The past few decades have witnessed various paradigm shifts in conservation policy and practice. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), which create a market for the supply and demand of ecosystem services, are among the most recent approaches to natural resource conservation. PES approaches are increasingly concerned with equity-related institutional processes as well as the distribution of impacts on resource users. However, despite gender inequities being characteristic of many developing countries, few studies compare the impacts from and limitations to men’s and women’s participation in PES schemes. The study proposes to investigate equity, and in particular gender equity, in PES schemes and the effects on household welfare outcomes like food security. Results are expected to provide recommendations for PES design and implementation that can increase women’s and men’s participation in and benefits from schemes, particularly in Kenya.

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner
• Juliet Kariuki

Involved institutions

• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development

Publications in the course of the project

• Using Participatory Impact Diagrams to Evaluate a Community Development Project in Kenya
  2013: Kariuki, J. and Njuki, J.
  
• Guidelines on integrating gender in livestock projects and programs.
  2013: Njuki, J., Waithanji, E., Bagalwa, N. and Kariuki, J.
  
• Intra-household access to livestock information and financial services in Kenya.
  2012: Mburu S, Njuki J and Kariuki J
  
• Greening livestock: Assessing the potential of payment for environmental services in livestock inclusive agricultural production systems in developing countries.
  2012: Silvestri, S., Osano, P., de Leeuw, J., Herrero, M., Ericksen, P., Kariuki, J., Njuki, J., Bedelian, C. and Notenbaert, A.
  

Underutilized or unprotected? New methods for analyzing diverging perspectives on the large-scale conversion of tropical grassland eco-systems

Project begin: 23.02.2016:

Project end: 31.12.2018

Sponsor mark: Ellrichshausen-Stiftung

Keywords: coupled biophysical and socio-economic modeling, governance research, livestock, Savanna land use, sustainability

Description

The project aims at developing a new methodology for an integrated economic, environmental,and social assessment of land use options for African savanna regions. Itis motivated by the fact that future land use options for the grasslandregionsworldwide, and 4particularly for the African Guinea savannazone,are subject to unresolved scientific controversies: Economic research has identified this regionas underutilized and having a large potential for increasing global biomass supply, while environmental research indicatesthat such a large-scale land use change may have far-reaching negative environmental consequenceswith regard to soil fertility, plant and animal biodiversity, hydrology,and carbon sequestration.These controversies remain unresolved because there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding the fundamental aspects of the biophysical dynamics in tropical grassland ecosystems, which are characterized by a complex interaction of climate, grassland vegetationand grazing animals. At the same time, there are major knowledge gaps regarding the governance of land use in the African Savanna region, which is subject to a complex interaction of customary and modern land tenure systems. The expansion of crop farming by smallholders hasresulted in crop-livestock conflictsand outbursts of violence. Furthermore, one can observe an increasing number oflarge-scale land acquisitionsin savanna regions, often associated withnegative social and environmental consequences.An important toolfor analyzing land use changein savanna ecosystemsare coupled biophysical and socioeconomic models.TheUniversity of Hohenheim has special expertisein this area.The proposed projectwill build uponcurrent researchactivitiessuch asthe coupling ofthe landuse change impact assessmentmodel LUCIAwith theagent-based socioeconomic model MPMAS, both of which have been developed in Hohenheim. To analyze potential impacts of land use change in savanna ecosystems, a livestock modelwill be developed and linked with theLUCIA model, which will capturethe biophysical dimensions of plant-animal interactionsand which is suitable to assess different grassland use options. The MPMAS model will be expanded to capture the specific features of land use decisions in savanna regions, which depend on the prevailing governance conditions and involve collective decision-making as well as theinteraction of competing land users, including large-scale investors.The coupling of the two expanded models will make it possible to analyze feedback loopsbetween changes in biophysicalandsocioeconomic parameters and to simulate different scenariosof change in savanna ecosystems, such as degradation, intensification,and conversion.The modeling system will also be used to identify governance instruments and processes that will promote more sustainable land use options

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Folkard Asch
• Christian Bateki
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Berger
• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner
• Prof. Dr. Georg Cadisch
• Prof. Dr. Uta Dickhöfer
• Dr. sc. agr. Carsten Marohn
• Dr. Christian Troost
• M.Sc. Benjamin Warth

Involved institutions

• Land Use Economics in the Tropics and Subtropics (Josef G. Knoll Professorship)
• Agronomy in the Tropics and Subtropics
• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development
• Animal Nutrition and Rangeland Management in the Tropics and Subtropics
• Management of Crop Water Stress in the Tropics and Subtropics
• Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics (Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute)

Sponsors

• Ellrichshausen-Stiftung

Wastewater use in agriculture and its socio-economic, environmental and health impacts: a case study of Faisalabad

Project begin: 01.10.2013

Project end: 30.11.2016

Sponsor mark: DAAD

Keywords: Urbane Landwirtschaft

Description

Wastewater is widely used as a low-cost alternative to conventional irrigation water. The practice is old, but the level of risk has increased as new types of pollutants found their way into the system. Though pervasive, this practice is largely unregulated in poor countries, and the health and environmental costs and benefits are unknown or unacknowledged. Existing options to treat wastewater for reuse are beyond the means of municipalities and farmers in these countries. The current research will address this problem by quantifying the extent of wastewater irrigation and its health and environmental impacts in selected areas of Faisalabad city. This study will develop a framework to explore the impacts of this practice on agriculture, health and environment.

Involved persons

• Prof. Dr. Regina Birner
• Saima Jabeen

Involved institutions

• Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development