This study investigates the impact of package adoption of inorganic fertilizers and improved maize seed varieties on yield among smallholder households in Kenya. We used a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach combined with propensity score matching to control for both time-invariant and unobservable household heterogeneity.

The authors use panel data from rural Ethiopia to investigate if participation in a safety net program enhances fertilizer adoption. Using a difference-in-difference estimator and inverse propensity score weighting they find that participation in Ethiopia’s food-for-work program increased fertilizer adoption.

This paper integrates soil science variables into an economic analysis of agricultural output among small-scale farmers in Kenya's highlands. The integration is valuable because farmers’ choice of inputs depends on both the status of the soil and socioeconomic conditions. The study uses a stochastic production frontier in which the individual farm's distance to the frontier depends systematically on individual factors.

Inorganic fertilizer is one of a handful of agricultural technologies that have immense potential for raising the productivity of poor smallholders, enabling them to increase income, accumulate assets, and set themselves economically on a pathway out of poverty.

The new fertilizer subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa are intended to increase agricultural production and ensure development of a fertilizer market. Fertilizer adoption requires complementary inputs, such as investment in soil and water conservation (SWC), for efficient and optimal nutrient uptake, and many fertilizer subsidy programs implicitly assume that fertilizer subsidies crowd in such investments.

This is a chapter in a book entitled "Agricultural Investment and Productivity: Building Sustainability in East Africa" edited by Gunnar Köhlin and Randall Bluffstone, 2011.

This paper uses data from household- and plot-level surveys conducted in the highlands of the Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia to examine the contribution of sustainable land-management practices to net values of agricultural production in areas with low- and high-agricultural potential.

In this paper we use farmers' actual experiences with changes in rainfall levels and their responses to these changes to assess if patterns of fertilizer use are responsive to changes in rainfall patterns.

Soil fertility depletion is among the major impediments to sustained agricultural productivity especially in the less developed countries because of limited application of fertilizers. Soil fertility maintenance requires a balanced application of inorganic and organic nutrient sources.

Food-for-work (FFW) is the most widely used type of public works program in Ethiopia through which a high share of the food aid is distributed.

This paper assesses the impacts of FFW in Tigray, a chronically food insecure region in Ethiopia, in terms of relieving liquidity constraints and thereby improving input use in agriculture. A Heckman selection model on the adoption and intensity of fertilizer use demonstrated that FFW positively influenced the decision to adopt fertilizer and there was no evidence of disincentive effect.