This paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households (700 in Ethiopia and 613 in Tanzania). The causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression. This helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions. Our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure (in per adult equivalent terms) in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty, higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk. An analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed, access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption.

There is exhaustive literature on technology adoption rates and the relationship between technology adoption and relevant socioeconomic and policy variables. Yet adoption estimates derived from the application of standard techniques such as the probit and tobit yield biased estimates. This paper applies the modern evaluation technique: the counterfactual outcome framework to data from about 400 households in Malawi to assess the patterns of diffusion and adoption of improved pigeonpea varieties and their determinants. We find the sample adoption rate of improved varieties to be 14 % while the potential adoption rate if the improved varieties were widely disseminated is estimated at 41 %. The adoption gap resulting from the incomplete exposure to the improved pigeonpea is 27 %. Moreover, adoption is also found to be high among female-headed households, older farmers and those with access to credit. The findings suggest that for increased adoption, there is need for increased involvement of extension workers is the dissemination of information about improved pigeonpea varieties, a robust pigeonpea seed system to increase seed availability to farmers as well as the need for improved access to credit.

Sole-cropped, unfertilized maize is the dominant cropping system throughout southern Africa. Yields have become stagnant and legumes are frequently advocated as an affordable option for resource poor farmers, to enhance productivity. Farmer participatory research was employed to test legume intensification as a means to improve maize-based systems in Malawi. A range of options were evaluated, from grain/legume intercrops of long-duration pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) and groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) rotated with maize (Zea mays), to a relay green manure system of maize with Tephrosia vogelii (Fishbean). Two years of on-farm experimentation indicated that under on-farm conditions legume-intensified systems produced residues that contained about 50 kg N/ha per year, two-fold higher than sole-cropped maize residues. Grain yields from legume-intensified systems were comparable to yields from continuous sole maize, even in a dry lakeshore ecology. These preliminary findings were linked to farmer assessment, where farmers participating in the trials expressed strong interest in the technologies. Yet the probability of adoption remains uncertain. Associated surveys outlined constraints and trade-offs underlying technology choice, information that is not usually considered in conjunction with on-farm trials. Although the legumes were highly productive, farmers expressed worries about the marginal loss of maize production. While the trial performance was similar across regions, differences in market condition, farm resources and household composition appears to stimulate different technology choices. Farmers weigh the benefits of weed suppression and potential cash earnings, against the costs of seed, problems of seed access, labor requirements and problems of grain market access and price. Surveyed farmers commonly manage residues by burning. Promotion and experimentation with more efficient use of legume residues may offer higher short-term impacts than efforts to promote adoption of another cash crop. Ultimately, adoption and soil fertility benefits may depend on market returns to legume production. This study documents the value of researchers and farmers partnering in evaluation of technologies, adoption constraints and competing technology choices.

This article evaluates the impact of adoption of improved pigeonpea technologies on consumption expenditure and poverty status using cross-sectional data of 613 households from rural Tanzania. Using multiple econometric techniques, we found that adopting improved pigeonpea significantly increases consumption expenditure and reduces poverty. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving household welfare as higher incomes translate into lower poverty. This study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges. Reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts, access to seeds and market outlets that stimulate adoption.

This paper examines the occurrence and impact of gender discrimination in access to production resources on the income, productivity, and technical efficiency of farmers. Through an empirical investigation of farmers from Koussin-Lélé, a semi-collective irrigated rice scheme in central Benin, we find that female rice farmers are particularly discriminated against with regard to scheme membership and access to land and equipment, resulting in significant negative impacts on their productivity and income. Although women have lower productivity, they are as technically efficient as men. The findings suggest that there is considerable scope for improving the productivity of women through increasing their access to production resources.

Frequent droughts in sub-Saharan Africa imply water stress for rainfed agriculture and, ultimately, food insecurity, underlining the region's vulnerability to climate change. Yet, in the maize-growing areas, farmers have been given new droughtcoping options following the release and availability of drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs). These varieties are being disseminated through the National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems in collaboration with seed companies; however, their adoption still appears somewhat modest, and empirical studies on their adoption potential and associated drivers are scarce. We use empirical data from Uganda to estimate the actual and potential adoption rates and the adoption determinants of DTMVs under information and seed access constraints. Adoption rates for DTMVs could have been up to 22% in 2015 instead of the observed sample adoption rate of 14% if the whole population had been exposed to them. The adoption rate could increase to 30% if seed were availed to the farming population and to 47% if seed were sold at a more affordable price to farmers. The observed adoption rate of 14% implies gaps in the potential adoption rates of 8%, 16%, and 33% because of a lack of awareness, a lack of seed access, and high seed prices, respectively. The findings underscore the role of both market and non-market-based approaches and the potential to further scale the cultivation of DTMVs in Uganda.

The limited nature of poverty assistance funds for credit implies that only a few can benefit from such funds at a time. Considering the complexity of designing credit contracts with incentives that are constraint compatible, microfinance institutions are continuously exploring strategies for identifying and targeting credit constrained households as a way of improving efficiency in the delivery of financial services. The objective of this paper is to examine factors that influence a household's likelihood of facing credit constraints in Malawi. The data used in the study was collected in Malawi by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in collaboration with the Rural Development Department (RDD) of Bunda College of Agriculture. The survey was conducted in three rounds and covered 404 households in the three regions of Malawi. This paper, however, uses data from the first round only. The households credit constraint status was established by using the direct elicitation approach. The analysis on determinants of credit constraints was done using probit. The study reveals that characteristics of a household head as well as the supply side factors such as the remoteness of the location in which the household is based, significantly increase the likelihood that a household will face credit constraints. Participants in credit programs are less likely to report credit constraints, an indication that barriers to participation in credit markets continue to exist. Results suggest an urgent need for formal financial institutions to expand their outreach in order to address the huge and ever growing unmet demand for financial services among rural peasants and women in particular.

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