Agricultural Growth and Poverty Pockets (Agropop)

Several countries in Asia have experienced rapid growth and diversification of agricultural production due to combined demand from both the domestic and the global markets. The growth and diversification processes take place in agricultural growth regions, where state policies (infrastructural expansion, institutional strengthening, etc.) and private commercial activities (creation and development of agriculturally-based value chains) have favourably interacted. Interestingly, however, such agricultural growth regions often embed geographically concentrated areas (‘pockets’) where poverty prevails. The main objective of the project is to understand this co-existence of high agricultural growth and poverty pockets. The project aims to develop robust technical methods to identify and assess poverty pockets and to produce policy guidelines for alleviating the local poverty. The project is implemented in the Mekong River Delta (MRD) in Vietnam where production of rice has dominated for centuries but now is being supplemented by production of fruit and cocoa. The MRD has experienced high agricultural growth for a prolonged period resulting in an impressive poverty reduction. Even so, poverty rates vary greatly across the provinces and even within the provinces. This makes the MRD an ideal place to study the co-existence of local growth miracles and poverty pockets.