The Fate of Nitrogen During Agricultural Intensification in East Africa: Nitrogen Budgets in Contrasting Agroecosystems

Abstract

The technological transformations of smallholder agricultural systems that took place as part of the Green Revolution in Asia and Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century have been slow to take hold in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A history of low fertilizer use in SSA has led to widespread depletion of soil nitrogen (N) and other nutrients (Cobo et al., 2010;Vitousek et al., 2009), limiting crop productivity and contributing to the inability of many smallholders to break out of poverty (Barrett & Bevis, 2015). New efforts at agricultural intensification became a focus of international development and national policy in multiple African countries during the 2000s (Jayne & Rashid, 2013;Jayne & Sanchez, 2021). Many agricultural development practitioners have focused on restoring soil nutrients, increasing productivity, and alleviating poverty through the intensification of smallholder agriculture (AGRA, 2009). Although there is some debate about the