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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Emily Schmidt

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

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Development Strategies and Governance

Ben Belton

Research Fellow

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Ben Belton

Bio

Ben Belton is a Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Dhaka. He is an applied interdisciplinary social scientist with more than 15 years’ field experience living and working in South and Southeast Asia, in countries including Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam, India, Cambodia, and Malaysia. Ben is a leading global scholar on aquaculture and fisheries development. His research interests are broad, spanning value chains, food systems, livelihoods, rural transformation, agrarian change, and their links to food and nutrition security, poverty, well-being, and the environment. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles on these subjects, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to develop an evidence base for effective policy actions. In addition to his role at IFPRI, Ben holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor, International Development at the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University.

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Publications

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Journal Article

Does rural non-farm employment relieve or exacerbate the agricultural diversification-farm efficiency tradeoff: The case of aquaculture in Bangladesh

2025Abaidoo, Eric; Belton, Ben; Reardon, Thomas; Jin, Songqing; Malone, Trey
Details

Does rural non-farm employment relieve or exacerbate the agricultural diversification-farm efficiency tradeoff: The case of aquaculture in Bangladesh

This paper studies how rural non-farm employment conditions the relationship between agricultural diversification and fish production efficiency. Competition for scarce productive resources typically implies a compromise between agricultural diversification and efficiency. Yet, the potential for non-farm income to resolve this tradeoff remains understudied. Cash from non-farm sources may support productivity-enhancing input purchase, thereby improving efficiency. On the other hand, by diversifying both on- and off-farm, household resources such as labor may be stretched too thin, lowering fish production efficiency. Using micro-level data on fish farming households in Southern Bangladesh, we show that at higher levels of the non-farm income share, diversification into crops results in significant allocative inefficiencies. Results are inconclusive for the technical efficiency measure.

Year published

2025

Authors

Abaidoo, Eric; Belton, Ben; Reardon, Thomas; Jin, Songqing; Malone, Trey

Citation

Abaidoo, Eric; Belton, Ben; Reardon, Thomas; Jin, Songqing; and Malone, Trey. Does rural non-farm employment relieve or exacerbate the agricultural diversification-farm efficiency tradeoff: The case of aquaculture in Bangladesh. Aquaculture Economics and Management. Article in press. First available online January 5, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2024.2446142

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Rural Employment; Agriculture; Diversification; Aquaculture; Efficiency; Labour Allocation

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2024.2446142 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Wholesalers and the transformation of Myanmar’s maize value chains

2025Belton, Ben; Cho, Ame; Hall, Michael; Minten, Bart; Reardon, Thomas
Details

Wholesalers and the transformation of Myanmar’s maize value chains

Wholesalers of agricultural crops have historically received limited attention in the literature on agricultural development, which has a strongly productivist focus. When wholesalers are considered, they are often framed as exploitative, taking advantage of information asymmetries, market failures, and unequal power relations to extract heavy surpluses from farmers. However, there is a growing appreciation that wholesalers may play important roles in facilitating agricultural development and rural transformation. This paper evaluates wholesaler conduct and performance using a survey of 218 maize wholesalers in 12 of the major maize-growing and trading townships of South Shan State, Myanmar and the cities of Lashio and Muse in North Shan. Hybrid maize emerged very rapidly in Myanmar over the past two decades to become a major cash crop, supplying domestic animal feed mills and becoming one of Myanmar’s most important exports to China and Thailand. Wholesalers have been central to the development of this supply chain and the sector. Contrary to recent literature from Myanmar that has cast maize wholesalers as exploitative, the survey finds that the rapidly growing wholesaler segment of the maize value chain is highly competitive, rapidly changing with respect to technology, and functions efficiently. Farmers obtaining maize inputs from wholesalers in the form of tied output credit sell their maize at prevailing market rates. The emergence of clusters of maize wholesalers and allied actors such as third-party logistics services occurred spontaneously and symbiotically with the expansion of hybrid maize cultivation, and with each set of actors essential to the emergence of the others.

Year published

2025

Authors

Belton, Ben; Cho, Ame; Hall, Michael; Minten, Bart; Reardon, Thomas

Citation

Belton, Ben; Cho, Ame; Hall, Michael; Minten, Bart; and Reardon, Thomas. 2025. Wholesalers and the transformation of Myanmar’s maize value chains. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 47(1):125-153. https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13489

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Agricultural Development; Maize; Wholesale Markets; Value Chains; Small and Medium Enterprises

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13489 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Report

The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh

2024Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo
Details

The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh

Clustering farming has often been proposed as an effective way to overcome the significant transactions costs faced by downstream buyers in interacting and negotiating with many small farmers, while making it easier for extension workers and governments to dispense advice, provide upstream services and inputs. In this study, we evaluate the impact of a set of three initiatives in Bangladesh, implemented by a government department, a private sector processing firm and a not-for-profit industrial advocacy body, all involving clustering contiguous shrimp farm ponds to enable group certification necessary for global market access. We implement a canonical difference-in-differences model using two rounds of surveys of a sample of over 1,222 farmers in 2023 and 2024 to assess the impacts on pond management practices, net profits and any unintended impacts on food security and dietary diversity. Our results suggest that the cluster interventions had impressive impacts on adoption of better farm management practices. However, these do not appear to translate into significant gains in net profits, perhaps because these interventions are still relatively new. Further, it appears that cluster farmers pay a penalty on account of a shift to more intensive cultivation, represented by a loss in species diversity and lower incomes from fish and vegetables. We find that there are no significant spillover effects as yet on shrimp farmers in the same village as the clusters. This study reflects critically on the efficacy of clustering that is presumed to enhance access to global markets.

Year published

2024

Authors

Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo

Citation

Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; and Hernandez, Ricardo. 2024. The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh. CGIAR Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets Technical Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/172964

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Transaction Costs; Farmers; Shrimp Culture; Food Security; Profit

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Report