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HighlightsWe study the impact of improved chickpea adoption using three rounds of panel data.Adoption is instrumented using a control function approach and double hurdle model.Improved chickpea increased household income and reduced $2.00 (median) poverty.We find strong impacts for the three lower landholding quartiles.Improved chickpea are a promising pathway for rural development in Ethiopia.

Agricultural productivity growth is vital for economic and food security outcomes which are threatened by climate change. In response, governments and development agencies are encouraging the adoption of ‘climate-smart’ agricultural technologies, such as conservation agriculture (CA). However, there is little rigorous evidence that demonstrates the effect of CA on production or climate resilience, and what evidence exists is hampered by selection bias. Using panel data from Zimbabwe, we test how CA performs during extreme rainfall events - both shortfalls and surpluses. We control for the endogenous adoption decision and find that use of CA in years of average rainfall results in no yield gains, and in some cases yield loses. However, CA is effective in mitigating the negative impacts of deviations in rainfall. We conclude that the lower yields during normal rainfall seasons may be a proximate factor in low uptake of CA. Policy should focus promotion of CA on these climate resilience benefits.

Recent agricultural development policies have begun to shift focus from the promotion of a few staple crops toward encouraging crop diversity. The belief is that crop diversification is an effective strategy for dealing with a variety of issues, including poverty alleviation. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to justify these positions. We contribute to filling this research gap by providing quantitative evidence on the impact of diversity in crop cultivation on household poverty. Using household panel data from Ethiopia we develop a diversity index to measure the effect of crop diversity on poverty status. To control for endogeneity and selection bias resulting from unobserved heterogeneity we utilize a recently developed parametric method for estimating dynamic binary response models with endogenous contemporaneous regressors. Our results provide evidence that households which grow a diverse set of crops are less likely to be poor than households that specialize in their crop production. Additionally, crop diversity reduces the probability that a non-poor household will fall into poverty and the probability that a poor household will remain in poverty. We conclude that crop diversification is a viable way to deal with the exigencies of being poor.

Blanket advice on optimal fertilizer application rates has failed to achieve potential yield gains for crop production in much of Sub‐Saharan Africa. However, digital technology now makes it possible to deliver personalized extension services to farmers at a much lower cost. We present results from a randomized control trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a mobile application that provides personalized advice on rice nutrient management. We find that households who were just given the personalized advice increase their yield by 7% and increase their profit by 10%. On average, personalized advice increases yields without increasing the overall quantity of fertilizer used. We conclude that the scaling of personalized extension services could improve productivity and livelihoods in Sub‐Saharan Africa without necessarily increasing the total amount of fertilizer in use.

Despite the growing attention to technology adoption in the economics literature, knowledge gaps remain regarding why some valuable technologies are rapidly adopted, while others are not. This paper contributes to our understanding of agricultural technology adoption by showing that a focus on yield gains may, in some contexts, be misguided. We study a technology in Ethiopia that has no impact on yields, but that has nonetheless been widely adopted. Using three waves of panel data, we estimate a correlated random coefficient model and calculate the returns to improved chickpea in terms of yields, costs, and profits. We find that farmers’ comparative advantage does not play a significant role in their adoption decisions and hypothesize that this is due to the overall high economic returns to adoption, despite the limited yield impacts of the technology. Our results suggest economic measures of returns may be more relevant than increases in yields in explaining technology adoption decisions.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

This article tests the relationships among formalised property rights, land tenure contracts and productive efficiency in farming. Using four rounds of panel data from 230 rice farms in the Philippines, we measure the effects of land tenure arrangements on farm efficiency using a stochastic production frontier model. We test for the allocative efficiency of observed land rental markets. We also test how land tenure security affects farmers' investment decisions. Results suggest that, despite the presence of formalised titles, the rental market remains inefficient at allocating land. In contrast, the unformalised tenure contracts used by farmers appear to provide tenure security.