Abay, Kibrom A.

Chamberlin, Jordan

 Amare, Mulubrhan

Tiberti, Luca

This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to quantify the overall and differential impacts of COVID-19 on household food security, labor market participation and local food prices in Nigeria. We exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that those households exposed to higher COVID-19 cases or mobility lockdowns experience a significant increase in measures of food insecurity. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that COVID-19 significantly reduces labor market participation and increases food prices. We find that impacts differ by economic activities and households. For instance, lockdown measures increased households' experience of food insecurity by 12 percentage points and reduced the probability of participation in non-farm business activities by 13 percentage points. These lockdown measures have smaller impacts on wage-related activities and farming activities. In terms of food security, households relying on non-farm businesses, poorer households, those with school-aged children, and those living in remote and conflicted-affected zones have experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food insecurity. These findings can help inform immediate and medium-term policy responses, including social protection policies aiming at ameliorating the impacts of the pandemic, as well as guide targeting strategies of governments and international donor agencies by identifying the most impacted sub-populations.

Impacts of COVID-19 on food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria

Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.

The participation of smallholder farmers in high-value and profitable value chains as well as contract farming remains low in Africa. This paper aims to identify observable and unobservable constraints that explain joint participation in profitable value chains and contract farming. We use a multivariate probit model to estimate potential complementarities between the cultivation of these various value chains (vegetables, fruits, spices, herbs, and cereals), and participation in contract farming. We identify several important observable factors that reinforce and hence limit smallholders’ participation in both low and high value chains as well as contract farming. For example, we find suggestive evidence that smallholders in Egypt face a trade-off between ensuring food security to their households and maximizing profit, and land plays a major factor in moderating this trade-off. We find that farmers with limited land resources are more likely to devote a larger share of their land to low-value crops such as cereals while this pattern weakens with increasing land size and slightly reverses for high-value crops such as spices and herbs. This suggests until some level of land resources, food security goals may dominate profit motives while this reverses after ensuring that food security goals are achieved. Younger and wealthier farmers are more likely to participate in the cultivation of high-value crops such as spices and herbs as well as contract farming. We also document strong complementarities between participation in high-value value chains and contract farming. Particularly, farmers who cultivate high-value crops are more likely to be engaged in contract farming. Intuitively, this implies that addressing smallholders’ binding constraints, including risk and access to land, can encourage participation in profitable value chains and contract farming. Our findings offer suggestive evidence that may serve in targeting smallholders to join profitable value chains in Egypt and other comparable contexts.

Smallholder farmers’ participation in profitable value chains and contract farming: Evidence from irrigated agriculture in Egypt

Spielman, David J.

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse

Kassim, Yumna

This paper presents results from a framed field experiment in which participants make decisions about extraction of a common-pool resource, a community forest. The experiment was designed and piloted as both a research activity and an experiential learning intervention during 2017-2018 with 120 groups of resource users (split by gender) from 60 habitations in two Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. We examine whether local beliefs and norms about community forest, gender of participants, within-experiment treatments (non-communication, communication, and optional election of institutional arrangements (rules)) and remuneration methods affect harvest behaviour and groups’ tendency to cooperate. Furthermore, we explore whether the experiment and subsequent community debriefing had learning effects. Results reveal a “weak” Nash Equilibrium in which participants harvested substantially less than the Nash prediction even in the absence of communication, a phenomenon stronger for male than female participants in both states. For male groups in both states, both communication and optional rule election are associated with lower group harvest per round, as compared to the reference non-communication game. For female groups in both states, however, communication itself did not significantly slow down resource depletion; but the introduction of optional rule election did reduce harvest amounts. For both men and women in Andhra Pradesh and men in Rajasthan, incentivized payments to individual participants significantly lowered group harvest, relative to community flat payment, suggesting a possible “crowding-in” effect on pro-social norms. Despite the generally positive memory of the activity, reported actual changes are limited. This may be due to the lack of follow-up with the communities between the experiment and the revisit. The fact that many of the communities already have a good understanding of the importance of the relationships between (not) cutting trees and the ecosystem services from forests, with rules and strong internal norms against cutting that go beyond the felling of trees in the game, may have also meant that the game did not have as much to add. Findings have methodological and practical implications for designing behavioral intervention programs to improve common-pool resource governance.

Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there?

Abay, Mehari Hiluf

Amare, Mulubrhan

Berhane, Guush

Aynekulu, Ermias

Lack of accurate information about soil nutrient requirements coupled with limited access to appropriate fertilizers could lead to mismatch between soil nutrient requirements and fertilizer applications. Such anomalies and mismatches are likely to have important implications for agricultural productivity. In this paper we use experimental (spectral soil analysis) data from Ethiopia to examine farmers’ response to soil nutrient deficiencies and its implications for yield responses. We find that farmers’ response to macronutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) deficiencies is not always consistent with agronomic recommendations. For instance, we find that farmers in our sample are applying nitrogen fertilizers to soils lacking phosphorus, potentially due to lack of information on soil nutrient deficiencies or lack of access to appropriate fertilizers in rural markets. On the other hand, farmers respond to perceivably poor-quality soils and acidic soils by applying higher amount of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers per unit of land. We further show that such mismatches between fertilizer applications and soil macronutrient requirements are potentially yield-reducing. Those farmers matching their soil nutrient requirements and fertilizer application are likely to enjoy additional yield gains and the vice versa. Marginal yield responses associated with nitrogen (phosphorus) application increases with soil nitrogen (phosphorus) deficiency. Similarly, we find that farmers’ response to acidic soils is not yield-enhancing. These findings suggest that such mismatches may explain heterogeneities in marginal returns to chemical fertilizers and the observed low adoption rates of chemical fertilizers in sub-Saharan Africa. As such, these findings have important implications for improving input management practices and fertilizer diffusion strategies.

Mismatch between soil nutrient requirements and fertilizer applications: Implications for yield responses in Ethiopia

Abay, Kibrom A.

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