Small Farmer Agricultural Productivity: Soils, Supply Chains, and Commercial Prospects

Transcription

1 Small Farmer Agricultural Productivity: Soils, Supply Chains, and Commercial Prospects Hope Michelson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign April 4, 2017

2 Important lessons from agricultural transitions in Latin America, South Asia: Among farmers, some will benefit, some will be left behind Design and implementation of services to support small farmers will influence who can profit from commercial opportunities coming to the region Big questions: 1 What farmer-level variation will determine who benefits? 2 Can existing public and private systems respond to anticipated new demands from farmers?

3 Important farmer-level variation Access to roads, cell networks decreases production transactions costs, associated with increased participation in commercial ag markets (Barrett, 2008; Aker, 2010; Michelson, 2013). Evidence of agronomically and economically important variation in soil nutrient limitations in East and Southern Africa

4 Within a 120 square mile area, fields exhibit eight different combinations of nutrient limitations. Soil variation is large within regions Figure 1: Nutrient limitations on primary maize plots of 1001 randomly-selected farmers located in 47 villages in Morogoro District, Tanzania.

5 Soil variation is large within regions Nutrient deficiency Number of farms Share of farms N only NP NK NS NPK NPS NKS NPKS Total Table 1: Nutrient limitations on primary maize plots of 1001 randomly-selected farmers located in 47 villages in Morogoro District, Tanzania. Government recommended application for maize growers in the region is NP, highlighted in red. Intra-cluster correlation coefficient is low for active carbon (0.004) and ph (0.02). Emerging evidence suggests similar variation in Central Malawi (Michelson et al., 2017), Western Kenya (Tjernstrom, 2016).

6 Why does sub-regional soil variation matter? Information: Sub-regional calibration of fertilizer and management recommendations will be necessary. Extension: Within-village farmer learning about technologies related to underlying agronomic heterogeneity (Munshi, 2004) Inputs: Need capable agricultural input supply chains to deliver the type, quantity, and quality of inputs that farmers will need Evidence of soil variation across farmers in the same region means that input dealers have to be BETTER than they otherwise would, especially in context of limited public extension Need to provide information, recommendations, quality inputs, special fertilizer blends, smaller packaged quantities, credit

7 Figure 2: Histogram of the Nitrogen content of 303 Urea fertilizer samples with the red vertical line indicating the 46% nitrogen Urea manufacturer standard. The problem: agricultural inputs supply chains are under-resourced and under-performing in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa Results (Fairbairn et al., 2017) find 10% Nitrogen missing from mineral fertilizer in Morogoro District Nutrients may be missing due to adulteration but also from degradation due to capital-limited input supply chains

8 Figure 3: Map of share of missing Nitrogen in purchased Urea (Fairbairn et al., 2017).

9 Closing thoughts Small farmer participation in new market opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa will require solving established problems: credit, infrastructure, incentives, storage, aggregation new attention to: the importance of soil variation to management recommendations, farmer learning, and crop yields agro-dealer capacity and constraints and associated input quality problems

10 Thank you. Tanzania soil information research team: Dr. Aurelie Harou (McGill), Dr. Malgosia Madajewicz (Columbia), Kevin Tschirt (Columbia), Dr. Cheryl Palm (University of Florida), Dr. Johnson Semoka (Sokoine University), Dr. Nyambi Amuri (Sokoine), Dr. Chris Magomba (Sokoine) Tanzania fertilizer quality research team: Anna Fairbairn (University of Illinois), Dr. Brenna Ellison (University of Illinois), Dr. Victor Manyong (IITA Dar es Salam) Funding: USAID AMA CRSP grant, US Borlaug Fellows Program, UIUC ACE Office of International Programs, Columbia University