Crop yields fail to rise in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa

Philip Wollburg, Thomas Bentze, Yuchen Lu, Christopher Udry and Douglas Gollin ()
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Philip Wollburg: b Development Economics Group, Wageningen University and Research , Wageningen 6706KN , The Netherlands
Thomas Bentze: a Living Standards Measurement Study, Development Data Group, World Bank , Rome 00184 , Italy
Yuchen Lu: c Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University , Houston , TX 77005

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024, vol. 121, issue 21, e2312519121

Abstract:

Drawing on a harmonized longitudinal dataset covering more than 55,000 smallholder farms in six African countries, we analyze changes in crop productivity from 2008 to 2019. Because smallholder farmers represent a significant fraction of the world’s poorest people, agricultural productivity in this context matters for poverty reduction and for the broader achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our analysis measures productivity trends for nationally representative samples of smallholder crop farmers, using detailed data on agricultural inputs and outputs which we integrate with detailed data on local weather and environmental conditions. In spite of government commitments and international efforts to strengthen African agriculture, we find no evidence that smallholder crop productivity improved over this 12-y period. Our preferred statistical specification of total factor productivity (TFP) suggests an overall decline in productivity of −3.5% per year. Various other models we test also find declining productivity in the overall sample, and none of them finds productivity growth. However, the different countries in our sample experienced varying trends, with some instances of growth in some regions. The results suggest that major challenges remain for agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. They complement previous analyses that relied primarily on aggregate national statistics to measure agricultural productivity, rather than detailed microdata.

Keywords: agriculture; agricultural productivity; Africa; agricultural productivity growth; smallholder agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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