RESUMEN
There is growing evidence on the impacts of site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) from Asia. The evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where SSNM developments are more recent and where conditions concerning soil fertility and fertilizer use differ importantly from those in Asia, is extremely scarce. We evaluate a SSNM advisory tool that allows extension agents to generate fertilizer recommendations tailored to the specific situation of an individual farmer's field, using a three-year randomized controlled trial with 792 smallholder farmers in the maize belt of northern Nigeria. Two treatment arms were implemented: T1 and T2 both provide SSNM information on nutrient use and management, but T2 provides additional information on maize price distributions and the associated variability of expected returns to fertilizer use. We estimate average and heterogenous intent-to-treat effects on agronomic, economic and environmental plot-level outcomes. We find that T1 and T2 lead to substantial increases (up to 116%) in the adoption of good fertilizer management practices and T2 leads to incremental increases (up to 18%) in nutrient application rates, yields and revenues. Both treatments improve low levels of nutrient use efficiency and reduce high levels of greenhouse gas emission intensity, after two years of treatment. Our findings underscore the possibility of a more gradual and sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture in SSA, as compared with the Asian Green Revolution, through increased fertilizer use accompanied by improved fertilizer management.
RESUMEN
Despite the considerable soybean varietal improvement and dissemination efforts in Nigeria and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, empirical evidence on farm-level yield and revenue impacts of improved soybean varieties (ISVs) from a gender perspective are limited. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the adoption of ISVs on soybean yield and net revenue, and the associated gender differential effects in northern Nigeria. We use the endogenous and exogenous switching treatment effects regression frameworks to estimate the impacts. We find that the adoption of ISVs significantly increased soybean yield and net revenue of the soybean-producing households by 26% and 32%, respectively. In addition, we find that the gender gap in yield between male and female-headed soybean-producing households was small, with a yield gap of about 1%. However, we find a substantial gender gap in soybean net revenue, as the net revenue of female-headed households was lower by about 20%, as compared to male-headed households. Overall, our findings show that policymakers and their development partners can leverage varietal improvement to boost the yields of both male- and female-headed households. However, closing the gender gap in crop income necessitates reducing the disparity in market linkages so that the female farmers can equally have better market access.
RESUMEN
Given the marked heterogeneous conditions in smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a growing policy interest in site-specific extension advice and the use of digital extension tools to provide site-specific information. Empirical ex-ante studies on the design of digital extension tools and their use are rare. Using data from a choice experiment in Nigeria, we elicit and analyze the preferences of extension agents for major design features of ICT-enabled decision support tools (DSTs) aimed at site-specific nutrient management extension advice. We estimate different models, including mixed logit, latent class and attribute non-attendance models. We find that extension agents are generally willing to use such DSTs and prefer a DST with a more user-friendly interface that requires less time to generate results. We also find that preferences are heterogeneous: some extension agents care more about the effectiveness-related features of DSTs, such as information accuracy and level of detail, while others prioritise practical features, such as tool platform, language and interface ease-of-use. Recognising and accommodating such preference differences may facilitate the adoption of DSTs by extension agents and thus enhance the scope for such tools to impact the agricultural production decisions of farmers.
RESUMEN
Agricultural extension to improve yields of staple food crops and close the yield gap in Sub-Saharan Africa often entails general recommendations on soil fertility management that are distributed to farmers in a large growing area. Site-specific extension recommendations that are better tailored to the needs of individual farmers and fields, and enabled by digital technologies, could potentially bring about yield and productivity improvements. In this paper, we analyze farmers' preferences for high-input maize production supported by site-specific nutrient management recommendations provided by an ICT-based extension tool that is being developed for extension services in the maize belt of Nigeria. We use a choice experiment to provide ex-ante insights on the adoption potentials of site-specific extension services from the perspective of farmers. We control for attribute non-attendance and account for class as well as scale heterogeneity in preferences using different models, and find robust results. We find that farmers have strong preferences to switch from general to ICT-enabled site-specific soil fertility management recommendations which lend credence to the inclusion of digital technologies in agricultural extension. We find heterogeneity in preferences that is correlated with farmers' resource endowments and access to services. A first group of farmers are strong potential adopters; they are better-off, less sensitive to risk, and are more willing to invest in a high-input maize production system. A second group of farmers are weak potential adopters; they have lower incomes and fewer productive assets, are more sensitive to yield variability, and prefer less capital and labor intensive production techniques. Our empirical findings imply that improving the design of extension tools to enable provision of information on the riskiness of expected outcomes and flexibility in switching between low-risk and high-risk recommendations will help farmers to make better informed decisions, and thereby improve the uptake of extension advice and the efficiency of extension programs.