RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON POVERTY REDUCTION THROUGH AGRICULTURE :A STUDY ON NAADS AT VILLAGE LEVEL

Research problem

It is quite remarkable that just a few years after the initiative was launched, the new poverty reduction programs now channel all official development assistance to low-income countries; that is, all these countries' external resources. This is a major change, given that interventions from the donor countries and organizations were traditionally criticized for their incoherency. Given the enormous scope of the efforts made to introduce the programs, their increasing importance for the countries concerned and the strong mobilization of the international community, people believe that it is now very important to make a first critical assessment of the new international poverty reduction strategies applied in developing countries (Nickum & Oya 2001). The launching of the new international poverty reduction strategies is an enormous challenge for the international community. The initiative is based on two key observations: the scale of poverty and the progression of the affliction, with the deterioration of living conditions in many countries. Apart from being able to stir people into action, global statements of this sort are of little interest, particularly as some of the results are marred by uncertainties. Up until now, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that, if appropriate strategies are to be drawn up, they must be based on a precise description of the current state of affairs, drawing lessons from thinking on the nature and evolution of poverty and from past poverty reduction policies. Decision-makers act as if they had a wide range of effective measures at their disposal and that there is no question of their ability to fight against poverty (Cling, Razafindrakoto & Roubaud 2003). This paper is a proposal to create a study on poverty reduction through agriculture. The study will focus on NAADS at village level.

Aims and objectives

1.    Understand the concept of poverty reduction.

2.    Know the strategies towards poverty reduction.

3.    Analyze how agriculture can be used against poverty reduction.

4.    Give some background on the NAADS at village level.

5.    Analyze how NAADS contribute to poverty reduction.

Literature review

Half of the world's population is poor, on the basis of the accepted international monetary indicators. In the long term, there is a close relationship between countries' macroeconomic performances in terms of GDP growth and the evolution of income poverty. But even with very favorable world growth forecasts, it is impossible to foresee any significant reduction   in poverty in low-income countries in the coming years, with the notable exception of China. The link between growth and poverty reduction can be analyzed in two different ways: first, on the global level, by studying the interrelationship between growth on a macroeconomic level and the different types of poverty; and second, by focusing on the sectoral, regional and functional make-up of growth, in relation to its impact on poverty. Growth is considered pro-poor when it offers a high level of elasticity between growth and a reduction in this type of poverty. It is most regrettable that the correlation between growth and non-income poverty, such as the synergies between human development and economic development, is only mentioned in passing: across countries, and across individuals within countries, there are strong correlations between health and education outcomes and incomes (Dowler & Mosley 2003). The majority of poor people lives in rural areas and makes their living out of farming; their most abundant factor of production is their labor force, and sometimes their land. Putting the accent on poverty reduction fixes obvious targets for the evaluation methods. They must be capable of providing satisfactory estimates of the policies' distributive impact, in terms of income distribution but also distribution of all the other primary factors of well-being. This is highly ambitious and implies that the heterogeneity of the different populations must be taken into account far more than in the past, both in terms of differences in resources and in terms of the economic agents' characteristic behavior and the environments in which they are immersed (Alkire 2002).

Methodology

Qualitative method will be used in the study. Qualitative method thrives on understanding data through giving emphasis on determining people’s words and actions.  Qualitative method has an orientation that it should gather data that can be acquired through quantitative methods. The tasks of understanding and presenting qualitative research can be very demanding and can be compared to the task of understanding statistics. In qualitative research, the researcher creates a natural setting which he/she can use to understand a phenomenon of interest. Even if the focus is on a smaller case, qualitative research usually unearths a very big amount of information from the respondent. . The research will make use of a descriptive research. Descriptive method of research attempts to describe a data that was gathered. Descriptive approach focuses on the questions regarding what things are like, not why they are that way. Descriptive research can be in the form of sociological studies which explains the social structure of a community, the changes that happened to society over the past years and an organization’s operation.

References

Alkire, S 2002, Sen's capability approach and poverty reduction,

Oxford University Press, Oxford.

 

Cling, J, Razafindrakoto, M & Roubaud, F 2003, New international

poverty reduction strategies, Routledge, New York.

 

Dowler, E & Mosley, P (eds.) 2003, Poverty and social exclusion

in North and South: Essays on social policy and global poverty reduction, Routledge, New York

 

Nickum, JE & Oya, K 2001, Environmental management, Poverty

reduction and sustainable regional development, Greenwood Press,

Westport, CT.