Are Women Less Productive Farmers? How Markets and Risk Affect Fertilizer Use, Productivity, and Measured Gender Effects in Uganda

Donald Larson (), Sara Savastano, Siobhan Murray and Amparo Palacios-Lopez

No 212032, 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: African governments and international development groups see boosting productivity on smallholder farms as key to reducing rural poverty and safeguarding the food security of farming and non-farming households. Prompting smallholder farmers to use more fertilizer has been a key tactic. Closing the productivity gap between male and female farmers has been another avenue toward achieving the same goal. The results in this paper suggest the two are related. Fertilizer use and maize yields among smallholder farmers in Uganda are increased by improved access to markets and extension services, and reduced by ex ante risk-mitigating production decisions. Standard ordinary least squares regression results indicate that gender matters as well; however, the measured productivity gap between male and female farmers disappears when gender is included in a list of determinants meant to capture the indirect effects of market and extension access.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-eff and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/212032/files/A ... ctive_farmers_1_.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are women less productive farmers ? how markets and risk affect fertilizer use, productivity, and measured gender effects in Uganda (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae15:212032

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.212032

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().