Resource information
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.
