Can agricultural households farm their way out of poverty ?

Andrew L. Dabalen, Kevin Robert Mcgee, Gbemisola Oseni Siwatu, Andrew L. Dabalen, Kevin Robert Mcgee and Gbemisola Oseni Siwatu
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Gbemisola Oseni and Kevin McGee

No 7093, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper examines the determinants of agricultural productivity and its link to poverty using nationally representative data from the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel, 2010/11. The findings indicate an elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural productivity of between 0.25 to 0.3 percent, implying that a 10 percent increase in agricultural productivity will decrease the likelihood of being poor by between 2.5 and 3 percent. To increase agricultural productivity, land, labor, fertilizer, agricultural advice, and diversification within agriculture are the most important factors. As commonly found in the literature, the results indicate the inverse-land size productivity relationship. More specifically, a 10 percent increase in harvested land size will decrease productivity by 6.6 percent, all else being equal. In a simulation exercise where land quality is assumed to be constant across small and large holdings, the results show that if farms in the top land quintile had half the median yield per hectare of farms in the lowest quintile, production of the top quintile would be 10 times higher. The higher overall values of harvests from larger land sizes are more likely because of cultivation of larger expanses of land, rather than from efficient production. It should be noted that having larger land sizes in itself is not positively correlated with a lower likelihood of being poor. This is not to say that having larger land sizes is not important for farming, but rather it indicates that increasing efficiency is the more important need that could lead to poverty reduction for agricultural households.

Keywords: Inequality; Food Security; Crops and Crop Management Systems; Climate Change and Agriculture; Educational Sciences; Child Labor Law; Labor Standards; Child Labor; Labor Markets; Rural Labor Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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