Improving The Targeting Of Fertilizer Subsidy Programs In Africa South Of The Sahara Perspectives From The Ghanaian Experience

Author : Houssou, Nazaire,Asante-Addo, Collins,Andam, Kwaw S.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 44 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Improving the targeting of fertilizer subsidy programs in Africa south of the Sahara: Perspectives from the Ghanaian experience by Houssou, Nazaire,Asante-Addo, Collins,Andam, Kwaw S. Pdf

This paper assesses whether fertilizer subsidy programs can be better targeted to resource-poor farmers using the case of Ghana and proxy means test approaches. Past fertilizer subsidy programs in the country have not been particularly targeted to the poor, even as targeting poor and smallholder farmers has become key in the program implementation guidelines. As a result, many poor farmers have not benefited from past programs. Our results show that targeting approaches based on proxy means tests that use the correlates of poverty to select beneficiary farmers can potentially improve the poverty outreach and costeffectiveness of Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy programs. Therefore, we propose that the proxy means test approach should be considered for implementing Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy programs, first in a pilot project involving a few communities, and later, if found successful, in a full-scale program.

Author : Houssou, Nazaire,Andam, Kwaw S,Collins, Asante-Addo
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 36 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2017-02-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Can better targeting improve the effectiveness of Ghana's Fertilizer Subsidy Program? by Houssou, Nazaire,Andam, Kwaw S,Collins, Asante-Addo Pdf

Despite improvements to the implementation regime of Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy program, this paper shows that considerable challenges remain in ensuring that the subsidy is targeted to farmers who need fertilizer the most. Currently, larger-scale and wealthier farmers are the main beneficiaries of subsidized fertilizer even though the stated goal is to target smallholder farmers with fertilizer subsidies. The experience of other African countries suggests that the effectiveness of fertilizer subsidies can improve with effective targeting of resource-poor smallholders. However, targeting smallholder farmers entails significant transaction costs and may even be infeasible in some cases. Faced with such challenges, Ghanaian policy makers must ponder the question of how to improve the targeting of input subsidy programs in the country. Further research is needed to identify more cost-effective approaches for achieving the goal of targeting.

Author : Abate, Gashaw T.,Bernard, Tanguy
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 44 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2017-03-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Farmers’ quality assessment of their crops and its impact on commercialization behavior: A field experiment in Ethiopia by Abate, Gashaw T.,Bernard, Tanguy Pdf

Adoption of quality-enhancing technologies is often driven largely by farmers’ expected returns from these technologies. Without proper grades, standards, and certification systems, however, farmers may remain uncertain about the actual financial return associated with their quality-enhancing investments. This report summarizes the outcomes of a short video-based randomized training intervention on wheat quality measurement and collective marketing among 15,000 wheat farmers in Ethiopia. Our results suggest that the intervention led to significant changes in farmers’ commercialization behaviors—namely, it prompted farmers to adopt behaviors geared toward assessing their wheat’s quality using easily implementable test-weight measures, assessing the accuracy of the equipment used by buyers in their kebeles (scales, in particular), and contacting more than one buyer before concluding a sale. The training also led to improvements in share of output sold, price received, and collective marketing, albeit with important limitations. First, farmers who measured their wheat quality received a higher price, but only if their wheat was of higher quality. Second, farmers who found that their wheat was of higher quality were more reluctant to aggregate their wheat (that is, sell their products through local cooperatives) than those who found that their wheat was of lower quality. Lastly, the training intervention led to better use of fertilizer in the following season. Our discovery that a short training intervention can significantly change farmers’ marketing and production behavior should encourage the development of further interventions aimed at enhancing farmers’ adoption of improved technologies and commercialization.

Author : Ragasa, Catherine,Lambrecht, Isabel,Kufoalor, Doreen S.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 54 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2017-03-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Limitations of contract farming as a pro-poor strategy: The case of maize outgrower schemes in upper West Ghana by Ragasa, Catherine,Lambrecht, Isabel,Kufoalor, Doreen S. Pdf

The focus in this paper is on two relatively large maize-based contract farming (CF) schemes with fixed input packages (Masara and Akate) and a number of smaller and more flexible CF schemes in a remote region in Ghana (Upper West). Results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases. In addition, a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to CF participation had high gross margins. However, on average, yields were not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and cost of capital. On average, households harvest 29–30 bags (100 kg each), or 2.9–3.0 metric tons, of maize per hectare, and the required repayment for fertilizer, seed, herbicide, and materials provided under the average CF scheme is 21–25 bags (50 kg each) per acre, or 2.6–3.0 tons per hectare, which leaves almost none for home consumption or for sale. Despite higher yields, the costs to produce 1 ton of maize under CF schemes remain high on average—higher than on maize farms without CF schemes, more than twice that of several countries in Africa, and more than seven times higher than that of major maize-exporting countries (the United States, Brazil, and Argentina). Sustainability of these CF schemes will depend on, from the firms’ perspective, minimizing the costs to run and monitor them, and from the farmers’ perspective, developing and promoting much-improved varieties and technologies that may lead to a jump in yields and gross margins to compensate for the high cost of credit.

Author : Tang, Xiaoyang
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 32 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Chinese investment in Ghana’s manufacturing sector by Tang, Xiaoyang Pdf

This paper uses Ghana as a case study to illustrate the extent to which Chinese manufacturing firms are driving manufacturing in an African country. Through a combination of desktop and field research, the author finds that the total number of Chinese manufacturing investments in Ghana indeed increased during past decade, but quite a few projects have been abandoned or not implemented because of the unfavorable investment environment. Small and large manufacturing projects can be found in different sectors, such as plastics, steel, pharmaceuticals, and others. All of the manufacturing investments target local or regional markets, either taking advantage of local raw materials or seeing opportunities in a market with little competition. Transitioning from trading to manufacturing investment and clustering are identified as the main patterns by which Chinese investors establish themselves in Ghana. Chinese firms source simple raw materials from local suppliers but import industrial supplies from abroad. Learning from Chinese business models, a few local businessmen have started their own manufacturing projects, mostly in the plastics recycling sector, but a lack of capital appears to keep some local players from moving up the value chain. Ghana’s weak economy itself is limiting technology transfer and local linkages between Chinese firms and Ghanaians.

Author : Delavallade, Clara,Griffith, Alan,Shukla, Gaurav,Thornton, Rebecca
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Participation, learning, and equity in education: Can we have it all? by Delavallade, Clara,Griffith, Alan,Shukla, Gaurav,Thornton, Rebecca Pdf

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have set a triple educational objective: improving access to, quality of, and gender equity in education. This study is the first to document the effectiveness of policies targeting all these objectives simultaneously. We examine the impact of a multifaceted educational program—delivered to 230 randomly selected primary schools in rural India—on students’ participation and performance. We also study the heterogeneity of this impact across gender and initial school performance, and its sustainability over two years. Although the program specifically targeted outof-school girls for enrollment, the learning component of the program targeted boys and girls equally. We find that the program reduced gender gaps in school retention and improved learning during the first year of implementation. However, targeting different educational goals (access, quality, and equity) did not yield sustained effects on school attendance or learning, nor did it bridge gender inequalities in school performance over the two-year period.

Author : Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie,Sheu Salau
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 32 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2013-04-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Spillover Effects of Targeted Subsidies by Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie,Sheu Salau Pdf

Though there is increasing evidence of the availability and potential of new agricultural technologies in Africa south of the Sahara, effective demand for them is still low. A recent refocus on increasing farmers’ use of modern technologies such as improved seed and chemical fertilizer has led to a resurgence of input subsidies for these products in many developing countries. One popular mechanism currently in use is input vouchers. Targeted input vouchers are intended to simultaneously improve the targeting of subsidies and develop demand in private markets. While there is growing evidence of the impact of targeted subsidies on private input demand, as far as we are aware no empirical studies have examined the spillover effects of targeted subsidies for just one input on the use of other complementary inputs with which there is low substitutability. Consequently, this study begins to fill this gap by exploring the effect of increasing access to subsidized fertilizer on farmers’ use of improved seed in Nigeria. Using a control function approach within a limited dependent variable framework, we explore the effect of receiving subsidized fertilizer on a farmer’s likelihood of using improved seed. The study finds evidence that increased access to subsidized fertilizer increased the likelihood of farmers using improved seed in Kano, Nigeria. This indicates that farmers are re-optimizing their use of other inputs in response to increasing availability of one input. This complicates the ability to isolate the returns to any one input when evaluating programs targeted at just one input. Our results were robust to various model specifications and indicate that there is a clear link between farmers’ use of improved seed and fertilizer in Kano, which could be leveraged in the development of input subsidy programs across Africa south of the Sahara.

Author : Lambrecht, Isabel,Schuster, Monica,Asare, Sarah,Pelleriaux, Laura
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Changing gender roles in agriculture ?: Evidence from 20 years of data in Ghana by Lambrecht, Isabel,Schuster, Monica,Asare, Sarah,Pelleriaux, Laura Pdf

At a time when donors and governments are increasing efforts to mainstream gender in agriculture, it is critical to revisit long-standing wisdom about gender inequalities in agriculture to be able to more efficiently design and evaluate policy interventions. Many stylized facts about women in agriculture have been repeated for decades. Did nothing really change? Is some of this conventional wisdom simply maintained over time, or has it always been inaccurate? We use longitudinal data from Ghana to assess some of the facts and to evaluate whether gender patterns have changed over time. We focus on five main themes: land, cropping patterns, market participation, agricultural inputs, and employment. We add to the literature by showing new facts and evidence from more than 20 years. Results are varied and highlight the difficulty of making general statements about gender in agriculture.

Author : Bernard, Tanguy,Hidrobo, Melissa,Le Port, Agnès,Rawat, Rahul
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 44 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2017-04-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Nutrition incentives in dairy contract farming in northern Senegal by Bernard, Tanguy,Hidrobo, Melissa,Le Port, Agnès,Rawat, Rahul Pdf

Health-related incentives to reward effort or commitment are commonplace in many professional contracts throughout the world. Typically absent from small-scale agriculture in poor countries, such incentives may help overcome both health issues for remote rural families and supply issues for firms. Using a randomized control design, we investigate the impact of adding a micronutrient-fortified product in contracts between a Senegalese dairy processing factory and its seminomadic milk suppliers. Findings show significant increases in frequency of delivery but only limited impacts on total milk delivered. These impacts are time sensitive and limited mostly to households where women are more in control of milk contracts.

Author : Hill, Ruth Vargas,Kumar, Neha,Magnan, Nicholas,Makhija, Simrin,de Nicola, Francesca,Spielman, David J.,Ward, Patrick S.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2017-04-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Insuring against droughts: Evidence on agricultural intensification and index insurance demand from a randomized evaluation in rural Bangladesh by Hill, Ruth Vargas,Kumar, Neha,Magnan, Nicholas,Makhija, Simrin,de Nicola, Francesca,Spielman, David J.,Ward, Patrick S. Pdf

It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based crop insurance programs. Yet many index insurance programs that have been piloted around the world have met with rather limited success, so the potential for insurance to foster more intensive agricultural production has yet to be realized. This study assesses both the demand for and the effectiveness of an innovative index insurance product designed to help smallholder farmers in Bangladesh manage risk to crop yields and the increased production costs associated with drought. Villages were randomized into either an insurance treatment or a comparison group, and discounts and rebates were randomly allocated across treatment villages to encourage insurance take-up and to allow for the estimation of the price elasticity of insurance demand. Among those offered insurance, we find insurance demand to be moderately price elastic, with discounts significantly more successful in stimulating demand than rebates. Farmers who are highly risk averse or sensitive to basis risk prefer a rebate to a discount, suggesting that the rebate may partially offset some of the implicit costs associated with insurance contract nonperformance. Having insurance yields both ex ante risk management effects and ex post income effects on agricultural input use. The risk management effects lead to increased expenditures on inputs during the aman rice-growing season, including expenditures for risky inputs such as fertilizers, as well as those for irrigation and pesticides. The income effects lead to increased seed expenditures during the boro rice-growing season, which may signal insured farmers’ higher rates of seed replacement, which broadens their access to technological improvements embodied in newer seeds as well as enhancing the genetic purity of cultivated seeds.

Author : Kyle, Jordan,Resnick, Danielle,Karkee, Madhab
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 58 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2017-12-06
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Improving the equity and effectiveness of Nepal’s fertilizer subsidy program by Kyle, Jordan,Resnick, Danielle,Karkee, Madhab Pdf

This paper examines the fertilizer subsidy program in Nepal from two different angles, both important for policy makers in the country. First, it analyzes who is benefiting from the program, and second, it examines how farmers rank the importance of public spending on fertilizer subsidies compared with other potential public investments. Whereas the former question is important for judging whether the program is meeting its objectives, the latter is essential to understanding the scope for reform, in particular the extent to which we could expect citizens to resist reforms to the subsidy program. We draw on these analyses as well as on examples from other countries to make policy recommendations to improve program implementation.

Author : Aberman, Noora-Lisa,Kufoalor, Doreen S.,Gilbert, Rachel
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 31 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2021-06-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Mapping the implementation process for subsidized fertilizer distribution under Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs Program by Aberman, Noora-Lisa,Kufoalor, Doreen S.,Gilbert, Rachel Pdf

Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) is Ghana’s flagship program for agricultural transformation and employment creation. Alongside other components, the program provides subsidized fertilizer, hybrid and open-pollinated seeds and other planting materials, improved extension services, and marketing support to smallholder farmers across the country. The objective of this study was to assess the implementation process of the PFJ input subsidy program in order to identify opportunities for strengthening the process. The study focused only on fertilizer distribution as a distinct complex process of importance, although some of the lessons will be applicable to other components of the PFJ program. The study applied the Process Net-Map method, a research approach that is particularly useful for assessing the coherence between formally prescribed procedures and how those procedures are implemented in practice, enabling the identification of inefficiencies and bottlenecks in a complex process. The implementation of the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program was mapped in interviews with key informants at national level and in six districts. Interviews with national-level stakeholders yielded important insights about the complex largely administrative process involved in the implementation of PFJ, which is generally unseen by beneficiaries. These administrative processes, however, have a considerable impact on the timeliness of the program and provide an outline of the intended implementation process at the local district level. The perspectives of farmers with regards to these processes were also investigated through in-depth interviews. Across the study districts we found some ambiguity and inconsistency in following the formally prescribed procedures for implementing the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program. While we found broad agreement among key informants and farmers that the program is meeting its objectives, some areas in which the implementation process for the PFJ fertilizer subsidy program could be improved are highlighted. These improvements will enhance the efficiency and impact of the program.

Author : Pauw, Karl
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 30 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2021-04-13
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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A review of the Ghana Planting for Food and Jobs program: 2017-2020: Implementation, impact, and further analysis by Pauw, Karl Pdf

This report examines the evolution of farm input subsidy programs in Ghana, with a focus on the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, which was introduced in 2017 and replaced the Fertilizer Subsidy Program (FSP) that was launched in 2008. A review of PFJ implementation reports and other official data sources reveal that information on general program features, such as beneficiary numbers, subsidized input quantities, and program budget is readily available and useful for understanding program design and implementation. National crop production estimates are also reported annually, and these provide evidence of rapid output growth in the agricultural sector, especially within the cereals subsector. However, the implementing agency, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), lacks a system for closely monitoring and reporting PFJ program impacts at farm-level. Consequently, most of the published information on the marginal contribution of PFJ to national crop output is based on simulations, which make strong assumptions about seeding rates, fertilizer use by crop, and input use efficiency on beneficiary farms. With this drawback in mind, these simulations show that PFJ contributed substantially to crop output growth, a result which is not implausible considering the quantities of inputs provided, but one that requires further on-farm validation. Recommendations are offered around beneficiary targeting, interpretation of employment impacts, and the need for regular monitoring of farm-level impacts, all of which will help improve transparency of the program.

Author : Ephraim Chirwa,Andrew Dorward
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2013-09-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780191506499

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Agricultural Input Subsidies by Ephraim Chirwa,Andrew Dorward Pdf

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Agricultural input subsidies have been adopted on a large scale across different African countries in the last few years. However global experience with input subsidies has been mixed, and there is considerable concern that current input subsidies will turn out to be expensive political programmes with very limited development benefits. There is, however, also considerable enthusiasm for new, 'smart' approaches in subsidies' delivery and for their potential to raise the productivity of millions of poor smallholder farmers and lift them out of poverty while promoting wider food security. This book takes forward our understanding of agricultural input subsidies in low income countries. A review and extension of current thinking on the potential roles of such subsidies provides the basis for a broad examination of recent documented experience in different African countries and then for: a detailed examination of Malawi's current agricultural input subsidy programme, the main focus of the book. This large programme has been the subject a very considerable international debate, much of it unfortunately little informed by the substantial amount of information available on the programme. Drawing on their extensive involvement with the programme over many years and on a wide range of information sources, the authors provide a detailed analysis of the historical, political and agro-economic roots and context of the programme, and its implementation and impacts from 2005 to 2011. Of interest in its own right, this also provides critical insights into the potential benefits and risks with such programmes, and on political and technical issues that are critical in success or failure,.

Author : Maria Wanzala,Porfirio Fuentes,Solomon Mkumbwa
Publisher : Ifdc
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Fertilizer industry
ISBN : 0880901721

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NEPAD Policy Study by Maria Wanzala,Porfirio Fuentes,Solomon Mkumbwa Pdf