Off-farm Employment and Input Intensification among Smallholder Maize Farmers in Kenya

Mary K. Mathenge, Melinda Smale () and David Tschirley ()

Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2015, vol. 66, issue 2, 519-536

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="jage12093-abs-0001">

We derive input demand functions for fertiliser and hybrid seed, testing for the combined and separate effects of income from non-farm sources and agricultural wage labour among smallholder maize farmers in Kenya. More income from off-farm sources, and specifically non-farm sources, competes with maize intensification, particularly in more productive areas where use rates are higher. In less productive areas, where households rely more on off-farm income and input use in maize is extremely low, agricultural wage labour reduces the likelihood that fertiliser is applied, but when used, has a positive effect on quantities purchased of both seed and fertiliser.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/jage.2015.66.issue-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:bla:jageco:v:66:y:2015:i:2:p:519-536

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-857X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by David Harvey

More articles in Journal of Agricultural Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().