Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a...

Modern technologies are often not widely adopted among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several adoption constraints have been discussed in the literature, including limited access to information. Using survey data from farmers in Tanzania and the average treatment effect framework, we...

Productivity and efficiency are key performance indicators of improved seeds. Efficiency differences explain part of the variation in productivity. Improved seeds may affect efficiency because farmers often do not apply inputs at optimum. Improved seeds therefore not only directly affect...

In the wake of resource constraints faced by farmers in developing countries in using external farm inputs, sustainable agricultural production practices that rely on local or farm renewable resources present desirable options for enhancing agricultural productivity. In this paper we use...

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. Using plot and farm level panel data from the central Highlands of Ethiopia matched with...

Organic farming practices, in as far as they rely on local or farm renewable resources, present desirable options for enhancing agricultural productivity for resource-constrained farmers in developing countries. In this paper we use plot-level data from semi-arid area of Ethiopia to investigate...

This paper evaluates the ex-post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and rural poverty in rural Uganda. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household data collected in 2006 in seven districts of Uganda. We estimated the average adoption premium using propensity...

In countries where insurance and credit markets are thin or missing, production and consumption risks play a critical role in the choice and use of production inputs and adoption of new farm technologies. In this paper, we investigated impacts of chemical fertilizer and soil and water...

This study measures the impact of fanya juu bunds (an important soil and water conservation technology and the most popular type of contour bund in east Africa) on the value of crop production in a high-rainfall area in the Ethiopian highlands using cross-sectional multiple plot observations. We...

In the wake of the resource constraints for external farm inputs faced by farmers in developing countries, sustainable agriculture that relies on renewable local or farm resources presents desirable options for enhancing agricultural productivity. In this study, we used plot-level data from the...