Developing country governments often launch new agricultural programmes without collecting pre-implementation survey data, making it difficult to evaluate the effects of such programmes. Leveraging the flexibility of granular pixel-level satellite panel data and a well-developed quasi-experimental policy evaluation design, we study a programme where pre-implementation data is unavailable. We estimate the effect of cash transfers on agricultural productivity in Telangana, India. Treatment and control regions are within 10 km on either side of the state border. They are identical in all respects except for the difference in exposure to policy treatment. Agricultural productivity increased in the major monsoon cropping season due to the cash transfer programme. The findings also reveal that cash transfers helped reduce productivity gaps between irrigated and rainfed agricultural areas. Our results are robust to two different sources of satellite data, three alternative indicators of productivity, two rounds of full-scale resampling, 100 rounds of small-scale resampling and three alternative border designs. Placebo regressions of two previous years also confirm our results. This approach to policy evaluation is applicable anywhere satellite data are available in the world.

Authors: Muddasir Ahmad Akhoon, Abhishek Shaw, Vidya Vemireddy

In this paper, the researchers revisit the relevance of the agrarian question of capital and provide evidence of the dynamism in agriculture based on an empirical enquiry. They study the possibilities, channels and patterns of agrarian accumulation and its spillover on the nonagrarian accumulation dynamics in an agriculturally advanced region lying in central India. Based on this empirical study, they posit that the agrarian question of capital remains important at a regional scale in India. By bringing the focus back on the question of capital, the paper maps the contemporary agrarian change processes as being linked to the process of generation of agrarian surplus and contributes to the debate on the relevance of the agrarian question of capital in the Global South.

Authors: Sunit Arora, Deepak K Mishra

Biological invasions pose substantial economic threats globally, yet detailed cost assessments for many Global South nations, especially in Africa, remain scarce. This study presents the first comprehensive breakdown of the potential economic costs of biological invasions in Morocco. The researchers identified 343 invasive alien species, comprising approximately 1.11 percent of the country’s biodiversity. Using the InvaCost database, they retrieved cost estimates for 137 species with available records. They calculated the mean annual cost per species, adjusted these values both socio-economically (using World Bank Purchasing Power Parity) and climatically (via Köppen climatic regions), and extrapolated them based on species prevalence in Morocco. This yielded an estimated annual economic impact ranging from USD 1.14 billion (conservative adjusted value) to USD 5.13 billion (maximum scenario). Across all estimations, damage costs consistently exceeded management costs by one or two orders of magnitude. Despite challenges in extrapolating cost data from other regions, this study underscores the urgent need for more research and for targeted management and policy interventions to minimise the spread of invasive species and reduce their economic toll. Proactive measures in Morocco, coupled with international collaboration, will be critical to mitigating this socio-ecological crisis and ensuring long-term sustainability.

Authors: Jazila El Jamaai, Ahmed Taheri, Liliana Ballesteros-Mejia, Danish A. Ahmed, Alok Bang, Christophe Diagne, Franck Courchamp and Elena Angulo