Soil fertility decline and economic policy reform in Sub-Saharan Africa

Heerink, Nico

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2003.08.002

Cited by 35 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Likewise, some countries experienced decline in research and development funding leading to negative growth in productivity (Thirtle et al 2003). Decline in soil fertility over time is another major problem (see Heerink 2005) but levels of fertilizer use in Africa have remained very low (see Michael et al 2007). Our view is that ruling out technical regress would be a misrepresentation of agricultural production realities in Africa.…”

Section: A Malmquist Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macroeconomic Policy Reforms and Productivity Growth in African Agriculture

Ojede¹,

Mugera²,

Seo³

2013

Contemporary Economic Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article employs a two‐stage procedure to investigate the impact of macroeconomic policy reforms on the agricultural productivity growth of 33 African countries from 1981 to 2001. In the first stage, we measure agricultural productivity using a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index. In the second stage, we build a generalized method of moments (GMM) model with a measure of structural adjustment program (SAP) intensity as a key instrument for macroeconomic policy reforms. We also control for the effects of globalization, civil violence, level of development of physical and financial infrastructure, and other economic variables as well as natural resource factors that directly affect agricultural productivity. Our results indicate a strong positive correlation between the extent of SAP intensity and agricultural productivity, suggesting that the macroeconomic policy reforms improved agricultural productivity growth in the sample countries. (JEL E6, O13, O41)

show abstract

Section: A Malmquist Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macroeconomic Policy Reforms and Productivity Growth in African Agriculture

Ojede¹,

Mugera²,

Seo³

2013

Contemporary Economic Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The issues of land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and soil fertility problem in the African farming systems have attracted the attentions of many researchers and have raised to top policymakers in the recent years (Heerink 2005;Teka et al 2013). Population growth is commonly blamed for widespread land-use change and environmental degradation (Cleaver & Schrieber 1994;Ramankutty et al 2002) although several interacting factors are involved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and socioeconomic conditions of local community in the central highlands of Ethiopia

Desalegn

Souza

Kindu

et al. 2014

International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ec

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a case study of land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes from 1975 to 2014 in the central highlands of Ethiopia and traces out its impact on socioeconomic conditions of the local community in the study area. We used four time series Landsat satellite images, that is, Landsat MSS (1975), Landsat Thematic Mapper (1986), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (2000, and Landsat 8 OLI scenes (2014), to investigate the changes in LULC. In addition, individual interviews with 51 randomly selected households, discussions with focus group and key informants, and field observations were also incorporated for the study. The image classification indicated four categories of LULC classes: Natural forest, eucalyptus plantations, cropland/settlements, and grasslands. Between 1975 and 2014, cropland/settlements and eucalyptus plantations considerably increased, whereas grassland cover drastically decreased. According to the results, the area under cropland/ settlements and eucalyptus plantations increased by 62 and 335%, respectively, with 74% concomitant decrease in the area of grasslands in the same period. Survey results showed that deterioration of soil fertility (41.2%) followed by shortage of land (35.3%) is the major constraint for crop production for poor farmers in the study area. However, better-off farmers ranked deterioration of soil fertility (64.7%) followed by lack of credit (17.6%) as priority constraints for crop production. Interviews mainly focused on selected women group revealed that the expansion of eucalyptus in the area greatly curbed the burdens of collecting fuel woods from long distances in the past. The availability of too many religious holidays (on average 16 days/month) directly or indirectly contributes to the current seasonal food shortages of the community. Generally, our results show that the community in the study area is beset with a host of social, economic, and institutional challenges. As a result, majority of the farming households are destitute, unable to make a livelihood from their small plot of land and live in absolute poverty. Therefore, in light of these finding, it is imperative that timely interventions by government and other development stakeholders are needed to come to grips with problems of soil fertility, land-use change, and food insecurity in the study area.

show abstract

“…The low amount of fertilizer used by smallholder farmers in Africa is associated with the high price of fertilizer, which results from inadequate transportation and distribution infrastructure (Mosier et al, 2005). Despite the implementation of structural adjustment programs to enhance agricultural production, the slow increase in yield per hectare in agricultural production is not enough to keep pace with the rapid population growth in SSA (Heerink, 2005). With the increasing demand for maize grain and expansion of production into marginal areas, maize germplasm improvement using effective breeding technologies is critical (Wen et al, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic Analysis of Grain Yield of IITA and CIMMYT Early‐Maturing Maize Inbreds underStriga‐Infested and Low–Soil‐Nitrogen Environments

Ifie

Badu‐Apraku²,

Gracen

et al. 2015

Crop Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Breeding maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids resistant to Striga and tolerant to low soil nitrogen (low‐N) will reduce grain yield losses due to stresses in West Africa (WA). Studies were conducted to determine if selection for Striga resistance and/or drought tolerance in early‐maturing maize populations improved low‐N tolerance in hybrids derived from selected inbreds from International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) under Striga‐infested, low‐N and optimum environments in Nigeria. One hundred and fifty hybrids developed from crosses involving 30 lines using North Carolina Design II plus six checks were evaluated at two locations each under low‐N, artificial Striga infestation, and optimum environments for 2 yr. Lines with combined resistance or tolerance to Striga as well as low‐N were identified. Striga‐resistant– as well as low‐N–tolerant hybrids with outstanding performance under both stress environments could be obtained through the accumulation of favorable alleles for resistance or tolerance in both parental lines. Although selection for Striga resistance and/or drought tolerance resulted in improved performance of genotypes under low‐N, it is important to test genotypes under low‐N to identify those with outstanding performance under the target stress. ENT 11 × TZEI 4 and TZEI 65 × ENT 11 were identified as the most stable and high‐yielding hybrids.

show abstract

Soil fertility decline and economic policy reform in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 35 publications

References 11 publications

Macroeconomic Policy Reforms and Productivity Growth in African Agriculture

Macroeconomic Policy Reforms and Productivity Growth in African Agriculture

Land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and socioeconomic conditions of local community in the central highlands of Ethiopia

Genetic Analysis of Grain Yield of IITA and CIMMYT Early‐Maturing Maize Inbreds underStriga‐Infested and Low–Soil‐Nitrogen Environments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About