This study contributes to the literature and policy on the impact of partial and package adoption of inorganic fertilizers and improved maize varieties on yields among smallholder households in Kenya. We use a blend of the quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach and propensity score matching to control for both time-variant and time-invariant unobservable household heterogeneity. Our findings show that inorganic fertilizers and improved maize varieties significantly improve yields when adopted as a package rather than as individual elements.

Farmers may adapt to climate change by substituting away from the crops most severely affected. In this paper we estimate the substitution caused by a moderate change in climate in the US Midwest. We pair a 10-year panel of satellite-based crop coverage with spatially explicit soil data and a fine-scale weather data set. Combining a proportion type model with local regressions, we simultaneously address the econometric issues of proportion dependent variables and spatial correlation of unobserved factors.

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.

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.

The authors investigated the impact of soil and water conservation (SWC) investment on farm productivity in Kenya. They focused on plots with and without SWC, testing whether increased SWC is beneficial for yield and affects input levels, input returns, and crop characteristics.

The Ethiopian live animal and meat export marketing system is operating in an environment characterized by several constraints that needs the attention and action of the government and other non-governmental development organizations.

Explaining soil capital facilitates a better understanding of constraints and opportunities for increased agricultural production and reduced land degradation. The diversity in farmers’ soil capital, production strategies, and general farming systems (including conservation investments) points to the value of internalizing these aspects in the formulation of the government’s policies and extension advice on sustainable agriculture.

This paper integrates traditional economic variables, soil properties, and variables on soil conservation technologies to estimate agricultural output among small-scale farmers in Kenya’s central highlands. The study finds that integrating traditional economics and soil science is invaluable, especially as omitting measures of soil capital can cause omitted-variable bias. The central policy implication is that while fertilizers are generally beneficial, their application is a complex art, and more is not necessarily better.

This study used the newly developed metafrontier approach to assess the technical efficiency of small-scale food production in the Ethiopian highlands at plot level, in order to investigate the role of soil conservation technology in enhancing agricultural productivity.

Stone bunds in the Ethiopian highlands showed statistically significant and positive impact on yield in low-rainfall areas, but not in high-rainfall areas, and they did not have a statistically significant impact on production risk in either area.

Stone bund performance varied by agro-ecology type, which implies the need for appropriate technologies that enhance productivity and are better adapted to local conditions.