Impact of metal silos on households’ maize storage, storage losses and food security: An application of a propensity score matching

The Impact of Agricultural Extension on Farmer Nutrient Management Behavior in Chinese Rice Production: A Household-Level Analysis

“…Researchers have proposed various methods to avoid selection bias [19]: (1) an experimental study in which participants can be randomly assigned to either control or treatment groups, but this is not possible for ex post studies; (2) the instrumental variables (IV) approach, in which a major limitation is that it normally requires a valid instrument that determines the treatment status but not the outcome variable, which is an arduous task in empirical studies [20]. Moreover, the IV procedure assumes that the treatment variable only induces a parallel shift (intercept effect) on the outcome variable, implying that the interactions between extension participation and other covariates does not exist; (3) Heckman's two-step method; however, this two-step procedure depends on the restrictive assumption that the unobserved variables are normally distributed [21]; (4) a difference-in-differences estimation, which examines the effect before and after a treatment and between treated and untreated groups; therefore, this method is limited to studies with longitudinal data; and (5) a propensity score-matching method, which, unlike the methods mentioned above, requires no assumption about the functional form specifying the relationship between outcomes and outcome predictors.…”

Analysis of Technical Efficiency of Small Holder Maize Growing Farmers of Horo Guduru Wollega Zone, Ethiopia: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

“…This fuels the hope that closing the maize yield gap could help improve agricultural productivity and lift millions more out of poverty across SSA. The main outstanding issues that constrain maize productivity growth include (Hanjra and Culas, 2011): poor infrastructure such as roads, bridges and transport fleet and low market participation under high transactions costs (Alene et al, 2008); inadequate storage facilities (Gitonga et al, 2013), marketing policies and institutions (Dadi et al, 1992), price regulation (Traub and Jayne, 2008), market liberalization (Pinckney, 1993;Jayne and Argwings-Kodhek, 1997), and inter-regional trade issues (Myers, 2013); poor access to microcredit; past low national funding and priority given to the agriculture sector; inadequate research support for new drought-tolerant maize varieties (Byerlee and Heisey, 1996) and for integrating the crop sector with livestock; high input prices, low input use (Sheahan et al, 2013) and low maize productivity and returns (Jayne et al, 2006); challenges of public-private interventions in maize seed industry to promote growth (Langyintuo et al, 2010), poor adoption of improved maize varieties (Feleke and Zegeye, 2006;Langyintuo and Mungoma, 2008); macroeconomic instability and high inflation etc. For instance, augmenting investments in maize-vegetable crop rotations at the expense of irrigation schemes focussed singularly on maize can boost returns to investments in irrigation and reduce government's financing burdens for maize.…”

Do Trees on Farms Matter in African Agriculture?

“…PHL is then low, exactly because farmers deliberately avoid it, not because it is not an issue. If so, farmers could potentially benefit substantially from better postharvest handling techniques, especially when the seasonal price gaps are substantial (Gitonga et al 2013).…”