Drivers of transformation of the maize sector in Nigeria

Maize is widely used for food, animal feed, and industrial raw material in Nigeria. This paper documents the important changes that characterize Nigeria's maize production and area expansion along with contributing factors that have transformed maize from a backyard food crop to a dominant food security and commercial crop. Using both secondary and primary data on maize production and varietal adoption over the last six decades, we found that Nigeria now produces ten times more maize than it did in 1960 and four times more maize than it did in 2005. Our findings further suggested that government policies and institutional arrangements that promoted access to and use of modern inputs and increased demand of maize grain for food, feed, and other industrial uses have played major roles in transforming maize from a backyard crop to a dominant staple and commercial crop in Nigeria. Considering the impeding climate change threats to food security in Nigeria, policy interventions should be tailored towards further scaling-up of stress resilient and climate-smart maize varieties to improve the productivity, income, and resilience of smallholder farmers. This requires strong support not only to get recently released superior improved varieties into the hands of smallholder farmers but also to accelerate varietal turnover.

Ex-ante evaluation of promising soybean innovations for sub-Saharan Africa

This study undertakes an ex-ante evaluation of the effects of alternative technology and policy options on soybean supply and demand in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to 2050. Current soybean consumption in SSA is dominated by cooking oil followed by soybean cake used as animal feed. Due to weak processing sectors and low soybean yields, the region is currently importing about 70% of its consumption requirements. Based on the results from a geospatial bio-economic modeling framework, soybean consumption in SSA is projected to more than double by 2050 compared to 2010 due in part to a rising population and rising incomes. On the other hand, supply from domestic production is projected to increase by 80% over the same period. Hence, by 2050, net imports into SSA would be nearly 4 times higher than supply from domestic production. Under a future drier climate, some of the production gains achieved through soybean research and extension would be lost and this would further worsen the soybean demand gap in SSA relative to the baseline. This study shows that relying on conventional breeding alone to increase soybean yields in SSA would not be enough to substantially reduce the future demand gap. A combination of promising innovations affecting the soybean value chain across SSA would be needed to close the soybean demand gap in SSA by 2050 under a drier future climate.

Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence

Previous studies on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties have relied on self-reported adoption status of the surveyed households. However, in the presence of weak variety maintenance and poorly functioning seed certification system, measurement errors in self-reported adoption status can be considerable. This paper investigates how such measurement errors can lead to biased welfare estimates. Using DNA-fingerprinting based varietal identification as a benchmark, we find that misclassification in self-reported adoption status is considerable, with significant false negative and positive response rates. We empirically show that such measurement errors lead to welfare estimates that are biased towards zero and substantially understate the poverty reduction effects of adoption. While the empirical evidence suggests attenuation bias, our theoretical exposition and simulations demonstrate that upward bias and sign reversal effects are also possible. The results point to the need for improved monitoring of the diffusion process of improved varieties through innovative adoption data collection approaches to generate robust evidence for prioritizing and justifying investments in agricultural research and extension.

Measuring the impacts of adaptation strategies to drought stress: The case of drought tolerant maize varieties

This study measured the impacts of drought tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) on productivity, welfare, and risk exposure using household and plot-level data from rural Nigeria. The study employed an endogenous switching regression approach to control for both observed and unobserved sources of heterogeneity between adopters and non-adopters. Our results showed that adoption of DTMVs increased maize yields by 13.3% and reduced the level of variance by 53% and downside risk exposure by 81% among adopters. This suggests that adoption had a "win-win" outcome by increasing maize yields and reducing exposure to drought risk. The gains in productivity and risk reduction due to adoption led to a reduction of 12.9% in the incidence of poverty and of 83.8% in the probability of food scarcity among adopters. The paper concluded that adoption of DTMVs was not just a simple coping strategy against drought but also a productivity enhancing and welfare improving strategy. The results point to the need for policies and programs aimed at enhancing adoption as an adaptation strategy to drought stress in Nigeria and beyond.

Productivity and Welfare Effects of Nigeria's e-Voucher-Based Input Subsidy Program

In an attempt to go beyond the so called "smart" subsidies, Nigeria has embarked on a potentially innovative mobile phone-based input subsidy program that provides fertilizer and improved seed subsidies through electronic vouchers. In this article, we examined the productivity and welfare effects of the program using household-level data from rural Nigeria. The article employed instrumental variable regression approach to control for the potential endogeneity of the input subsidy program. Our results suggest that the program is effective in improving productivity and welfare outcomes of beneficiary smallholders. The size of the estimated effects suggests a large improvement in productivity and welfare outcomes. Moreover, the distributional effects of the program suggest no heterogeneity effects based on gender and farm land size. These results are robust to using alternative measurements of program participation. The benefit-cost ratio of 1.11 suggests that the program is marginally cost-effective. Overall, our results suggest that while improving average productivity is a good outcome for improving food security, improving the distributional outcome of the program by targeting the most disadvantaged groups would maximize the program's contribution to food security and poverty reduction.

Impacts of extension access and cooperative membership on technology adoption and household welfare

This paper examines the impacts of access to extension services and cooperative membership on technology adoption, asset ownership and poverty using household-level data from rural Nigeria. Using different matching techniques and endogenous switching regression approach, we find that both extension access and cooperative membership have a positive and statistically significant effect on technology adoption and household welfare. Moreover, we find that both extension access and cooperative membership have heterogeneous impacts. In particular, we find evidence of a positive selection as the average treatment effects of extension access and cooperative membership are higher for farmers with the highest propensity to access extension and cooperative services. The impact of extension services on poverty reduction and of cooperatives on technology adoption is significantly stronger for smallholders with access to formal credit than for those without access. This implies that expanding rural financial markets can maximize the potential positive impacts of extension and cooperative services on farmers' productivity and welfare.