College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Community Sustainability

Raul Pitoro is a PhD student in the Department. Before joining the department of Community Sustainability for a PhD in the fall semester 2011, he completed a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University in 2004, with a specialization in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics and worked for the Food Security II Project in Mozambique as research specialist. As an active member of the project, which aimed at building capacity for social science research of the Ministry of Agriculture, I fully participated in various departmental task forces such as Statistics, Policy Analysis, and the Institute of Agricultural research with roles mainly revolving around data collection and analysis. 

 

While working for the Food Security Project II as research specialist, Mr. Pitoro worked closely with several collaborators and partners to design and implement several research projects including adoption and socioeconomic impact of improved varieties and technologies developed by the National Agricultural Research Institute in Mozambique (IIAM) and its partners. As an Agricultural economist have particular interest in international development with a particular focus on design and implementation of development research projects, with emphasis on socioeconomic research. His expertise mainly focuses on technology adoption, impact assessment, income and poverty analysis, and value chain analysis. From a methodological standpoint, he is conversant with the use of household surveys as well as other methods to quantify, food security, livelihoods, resource management and evaluation of policies or projects and advanced econometric analysis (cross-section and panel data analysis) using statistical packages such as Stata, SPSS, and SYSTAT.

 

Interested on issues of agricultural development and poverty reduction, since 2004, Mr. Pitoro have conducted several consultancies for national and international organizations including ( but not limited ): International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), The World Vegetable Center (AVRDC); International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), KPMG, AUSTRAL-COWI, IFAD, IFAD, National Directorate of Women’s Affairs of Mozambique, and others. 

 

During his PhD studies, Mr. Pitoro was a graduate research assistant since 2011, engaged in several research projects including the impact evaluation of the land tenure service project, part of the four development projects under the compact signed by the government of Mozambique and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).