HighlightsWe examine gender differentials in technology adoption on individually managed cereal plots.Female plot managers are less likely to adopt yield-enhancing and soil-restoring strategy sets than male plot managers.The socio-cultural context and economic attributes of the technology set affect incentives to adopt.We demonstrate that plot manager characteristics do influence adoption decisions.Household resources affect male and female plot managers differently.

HighlightsIntrahousehold bargaining affects the adoption of fertilizer on farms in West Africa.Overall fertilizer use rates are low for cereals but less so for maize in Burkina Faso.Family members share agricultural inputs, including fertilizer.Bargaining does not achieve efficient fertilizer allocations.Inclusive policy should consider who within the household has access to inputs.

Increasing agricultural productivity while protecting natural resources depends on proper understanding of farmers' incentives to use intensification strategies, including fertilizer. Using a large-scale household dataset collected in rural Burkina Faso, we examined how the response of maize yield to fertilizer, and thus the economic incentives for its use, varied according to agroecological conditions. We employed a Control Function Approach with Correlated Random Effects in order to test and control for endogeneity of fertilizer use, measuring agro-ecological conditions at several scales. We investigated the profitability of fertilizer use with value-cost ratios. We found that productivity and marginal effects of fertilizer differ significantly according to agroecological conditions. Micro-variation appeared to be more critical than the definition of agro-ecological zone. Burkinabe soils are severely degraded and would benefit from greater application of fertilizer. However, at full market prices, fertilizer use was unprofitable. Though it was profitable with subsidized prices, transaction costs diminish the benefits of the subsidy. Profitability of fertilizer use with maize varied across agro-ecological conditions, even for field plots located in the same agro-ecological zone. Our results confirm that policy makers need to be cautious when generalizing across regions or drawing policy recommendations from a single agro-ecological zone because crop responses and economic incentives vary widely.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was established in 1975 to identify and analyze national and international strategies and policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world on a sustainable basis, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries. IFPRI is a member of the CGIAR Consortium.

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