Mobile technologies could help to improve service delivery to smallholder farmers, but whether such services are fulfilling their potential remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this article presents an exploratory literature review regarding the impact of mobile phone-enabled services on farmers in developing countries. The review highlights a dearth of empirical evidence in this area. Findings suggest that farmers benefited through improvements in production planning, management of weather-related risks, and greater ease in receiving money. The review also points to several methodological shortcomings, notably the reliance on perception data and the failure to assess impacts in relation to usage.

Land degradation is an important problem in Ethiopia, with more than 85 % of the land degraded to various degrees. Recent estimates using satellite imagery show that land degradation hotspots over the last three decades cover about 23 % of the land area in the country. The assessment of nationally representative household survey shows that important drivers of sustainable land management in Ethiopia are biophysical, regional and socio-economic determinants. Specifically, access to agricultural extension services and markets and secure land tenure are important incentives to adoption of sustainable land management practices. Thus, policies and strategies relating to securing tenure rights, building the capacity of land users through access to extension services, and improving access to input, output and financial markets should be considered in order to incentivize sustainable land management. Important local level initiatives and institutions to manage grazing lands and forests through collective action should also be encouraged. We use the Total Economic Value approach (TEV) to estimate the cost of land degradation in Ethiopia. The annual cost of land degradation associated with land use and cover change in Ethiopia is estimated to be about $4.3 billion. Only about 51 % of this cost of land degradation represents the provisioning ecosystem services. The remaining 49 % represent the loss of supporting and regulatory and cultural ecosystem services. Use of land degrading practices in maize and wheat farms resulted in losses amounting to $162 million-representing 2 % equivalent of the GDP in 2007. The costs of action to rehabilitate lands degraded during the 2001-2009 period through land use and cover change were found to equal about $54 billion over a 30-year horizon, whereas if nothing is done, the resulting losses may equal almost $228 billion during the same period. Thus, the costs of action against land degradation are lower than the costs of inaction by about 4.4 times over

Kenya is an agricultural nation, with over 12 million people residing in areas with degraded lands. Unfortunately, the food crop productivity growth in the country has failed to exceed the population growth. The growth of agricultural output in Kenya is constrained by many challenges including soil erosion, low productivity, agro-biodiversity loss, and soil nutrient depletion. Land exploitation devoid of proper compensating investments in soil and water conservation will lead to severe land degradation. This will translate to loss of rural livelihoods, diminished water supplies and threaten the wildlife habitat. This study explores the causes, extent and impacts of land degradation in Kenya, discusses the costs of action versus inaction in rehabilitating degraded lands, and proposes policy options for promoting sustainable land management (SLM). In order to appropriately support SLM, there is a need to account for the total economic value (TEV) of land degradation, i.e. including the value of both provisioning and indirect ecosystem services of land. Using such a TEV approach, findings show that the costs of land degradation due to land use and land cover changes (LUCC) in Kenya reach the equivalent of 1.3 billion USD annually between 2001 and 2009. Moreover, the costs of rangeland degradation calculated through losses in milk and meat production, as well as in livestock live weight decreases reach about 80 million USD annually. Furthermore, the costs of "soil nutrient mining" leading to lower yields for three crops, namely wheat, maize and rice in Kenya were estimated at about 270 million USD annually. The cost of taking action to rehabilitate lands degraded through LUCC is found to be lower than the cost of inaction by 4 times over a 30 year period, i.e. each dollar invested in land rehabilitation is likely to yield four dollars of returns. This may strongly justify the urgent need for taking action against land degradation. Addressing land degradation involves investments in SLM. Our econometric results show that improving access to information on SLM and to the markets (input, output, financial) may likely stimulate investments into SLM by agricultural households.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AcknowledgmentsThe research leading to this publication has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic AbstractHealthy land ecosystems are essential to sustainable development, including food security and improved livelihoods. Yet, their key services have usually been taken for granted and their true value underrated, leading to land degradation becoming a critical global problem. This pattern of undervaluation of lands is about to change in view of the rapidly rising land prices, which is the result of increasing shortage of land and high output prices. Despite the urgent need for preventing and reversing land degradation, the problem has yet to be appropriately addressed. Policy actions for sustainable land management are lacking, and a policy framework for action is missing. Such a framework for policy action needs to be supported by evidence-based and action-oriented research. The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative seeks to develop such a science basis for policy actions to address land degradation.The purpose of this methodological paper is to provide with sound and feasible standards for ELD assessment at global and national levels. Only if some basic standards are identified and adhered to, comparative assessments can be conducted between countries and useful aggregation of findings, based on these case studies, can be achieved. Therefore, using the Total Economic Value (TEV) framework, the paper identifies minimum core standards that need to be adhered to in all country case studies to generate comparable material for international assessment and ELD policy guidance. It also identifies additional and desirable areas of information and analyses that would add value to the country case study material. The proposed framework is also intended as a forward-looking agenda which can guide future research.

Smallholder farmers' access to markets has traditionally been constrained by lack of market information. The desire to strengthen farmer access to market has seen the emergence of a number of projects that employ ICT tools in the provision of market information. This study assesses the conditioners of the use of ICT tools in general and mobile phones in particular by smallholder farmers for agricultural transactions. The study finds that several farmer, farm and capital endowment factors affect the use of ICT tools and mobile phones. Specifically, age, occupation, nearness to output market, number of crop enterprises, farming experience literacy and crop income explain the use of tools while gender, nearness to output market, household size, owning a phone, level of literacy, crop income and value of assets explain the intensity of use of the mobile for agricultural transaction purposes. It discusses the implications of these findings for policy.

Agricultural mechanization is on the rise in Africa. A widespread replacement of manual labor and animal traction will change the face of African agriculture. Despite this potentially transformative role, only a few studies have looked at the effects of mechanization empirically, mostly focusing on yields and labor alone. This is the first paper that explores perceived agronomic, environmental, and socioeconomic effects together, thereby revealing linkages and trade-offs, some of which have been hitherto unknown. Data were collected using a novel data collection method called “participatory impact diagrams” in four countries: Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, and Mali. In 129 gendered focus group discussions, 1330 respondents from 87 villages shared their perceptions on the positive and negative effects of agricultural mechanization, and developed causal impact chains. The results suggest that mechanization is likely to have more far-reaching agronomic, environmental, and socioeconomic consequences than commonly assumed. Most perceived effects were positive, suggesting that mechanization can help to reduce poverty and enhance food security but other effects were negative such as deforestation, soil erosion, land-use conflicts, and gender inequalities. Accompanying research and policy efforts, which reflect variations in local agro-ecological and socioeconomic conditions, are needed to ensure that mechanization contributes to an African agricultural transformation that is sustainable from a social, economic, and environmental perspective.

This paper examines the state, drivers and, consequently, the impacts of agricultural mechanization in eleven countries in Africa. Using representative multistage stratified household survey data and robust analytical approaches, findings show light hand-held tools and equipment remain the main type of machinery in most countries -about 48% of the sampled households have access to light machinery compared to 35% that have access to animal-powered machinery, and only about 18% that use tractor-powered machinery. Significant drivers of agricultural mechanization include the size of the household, gender of the household head, participation in off-farm economic activities, distance to the input and output markets, farm size, land tenure, type of farming system, and access to extension services. This study finds that after controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and regional determinants, agricultural mechanization, significantly increases the amount of cropland cultivated and is also accompanied by input intensification especially in countries where land expansion is limited. We further find significant but mixed impact of agricultural mechanization on use of household and hired labor. The mixed evidence points to a need to carry out national rather than regional assessment to better inform policy. Finally, agricultural mechanization significantly raises the productivity of maize and rice. These findings point to the importance of developing favorable arrangements that would avail mechanization to small and medium scale farmers either through animal power or tractors. This would involve providing incentives for private sector to scale agricultural mechanization initiatives and targeting and engaging both male and female farmers by investing in supportive infrastructure and farmer training at scale.

Land degradation is a serious impediment to improving rural livelihoods in Eastern Africa. This paper identifies major land degradation patterns and causes, and analyzes the determinants of sustainable land management (SLM) in three countries (Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania). The results show that land degradation hotspots cover about 51%, 41%, 23% and 23% of the terrestrial areas in Tanzania, Malawi and Ethiopia respectively. The analysis of nationally representative household surveys shows that the key drivers of SLM in these countries are biophysical, demographic, regional and socio-economic determinants. Secure land tenure, access to extension services and market access are some of the determinants incentivizing SLM adoption. The implications of this study are that policies and strategies that facilities secure land tenure and access to SLM information are likely to incentivize investments in SLM. Local institutions providing credit services, inputs such as seed and fertilizers, and extension services must also not be ignored in the development policies.