Understanding the agricultural input landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa: recent plot, household, and community-level evidence

Christopher B. Barrett, Megan Britney Sheahan, Christopher B. Barrett and Megan Britney Sheahan
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Christopher B. Barrett

No 7014, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following several years of high food prices, concerted policy efforts to intensify fertilizer and hybrid seed use, and increased public and private investment in agriculture, how low is modern input use in Africa really? This paper revisits Africa's agricultural input landscape, exploiting the unique, recently collected, nationally representative, agriculturally intensive, and cross-country comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture covering six countries in the region (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda). The study uses data from more than 22,000 households and 62,000 plots to investigate a range of commonly held conceptions about modern input use in Africa, distilling the most striking and important findings into 10 key takeaway descriptive results.

Keywords: Climate Change and Agriculture; Crops and Crop Management Systems; Pest Management; Food Security; Fertilizers; Armed Conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (68)

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