Narrowing yield gaps does not guarantee a living income from smallholder farming–an empirical study from western Kenya

Marinus, Wytze; Descheemaeker, Katrien; Ven, G.W.J. van de; Vanlauwe, Bernard

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0283499

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Also the neem oil and legume inoculant were not locally available. Ollenburger, 2019;Marinus et al, 2023). The results of Koutiala confirmed this.…”

Section: On Farm: Suitable Si Options Matching Farmers' Coping Strate...supporting

confidence: 68%

Not wrapped up in cotton wool : how risk influences farming in southern Mali

Huet

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West African farmers are exposed to a variety of risks, including climate variability. Moreover, trends of population growth, declining natural resources and climate change increase the probability of hazards and extreme events. In this environments, farmers are often struggling to be food selfsufficient or escape poverty. We focused on the area of Koutiala, southern Mali, as an illustrative region for the challenging farming conditions in West Africa.The aim of this thesis was to understand farmers' strategies to cope within a variable and hazardous environment. A parallel objective was to analyse which sustainable intensification options could increase productivity and/or reduce risks within the socio-economic and biophysical context. Risk was defined as the combination of the probability of a hazard taking place and the impact this induces. To analyse risk perception and suitability of on-farm options several data sources were combined: responses from individual surveys and focus group discussions, outputs from crop model simulations, long-term weather data and evaluations of trials and try-out fields embedded within a long-term participatory process.Risks related to health of family members were perceived as the highest, followed by risks related to health of livestock. Farmers managed those risks by maintaining flexibility and diversity in the farm management which allowed them to limit the impact and react quickly when hazards happened.Farmers overcame losses by relying on social interactions and using productive assets, e.g. selling cattle. Hence, they lost capital. Within households, differences in risk perception were related to decision-power, not to gender. Between farms, risk perception was related to resource endowment to a limited extent. The frequency and impact on yield of some hazards were quantified using crop simulation data. Weather hazards occurred at least every five years and reduced cereal yields. The impact of hazards on cereal yields (maize, sorghum, millet) interacted with the cereal management (early sowing, increasing N fertilisation and/or introducing a short duration variety). Increasing maize yields through management did not affect relative yield losses in case of hazards. Adapted millet management caused a trade-off between yield and hazard impact. Adapted sorghum management increased yield and mitigated hazard impacts simultaneously. Further, I demonstrated that on-farm diversification of crop land allocation had the potential to increase stability. The combination of cotton and a cereal had a relatively strong stabilisation benefit, as cotton and the cereals responded differently to weather. While the majority of diversification strategies enabled farmers to meet the food sufficiency requirements, farmers had to target combinations with a high mean return and large variability in order to surpass the poverty line. Within this environment, an iterative and participatory co-learning cycle facilitated a learning environment for researchers and farmers. This process yielded a diver...

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“…Also the neem oil and legume inoculant were not locally available. Ollenburger, 2019;Marinus et al, 2023). The results of Koutiala confirmed this.…”

Section: On Farm: Suitable Si Options Matching Farmers' Coping Strate...supporting

confidence: 68%

Not wrapped up in cotton wool : how risk influences farming in southern Mali

Huet

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“…But current yields would need at least to be raised with 30% in most crops for reaching the living income benchmark. Marinus et al (2023) show that maize yields are mainly limited by cash constraints and not by technological limitations. Providing input vouchers to smallholders to support narrowing of yield gaps was mainly helpful to larger and male-headed farm-households that could get access to additional rented land.…”

Section: Local Opportunities and Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Digging deeper into living income: policies and strategies for poverty reduction in tropical value chains

Ruben

2023

Preprint

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Rural poverty alleviation programs have adopted living income benchmarks as major strategic focus. Much of the discussion centres around appropriate measurement procedures, while far less attention is usually given to concrete policies for reducing living income gaps. This article digs deeper into possible strategies for smallholder farmers and midstream value chain agents to reduce living income gaps. It identifies the determinant of living income differences between countries, and discusses policy options to create better prospects for improving living incomes. We rely on comparative cross-country data on living incomes and poverty lines combined with structural country-level characteristics and stylized farm-household models to identify major leverage points for mitigating registered living income gaps. This analyses combines case study material from agri-food value chains in sub-Sahara Africa with statistical analysis on income gaps, drawing on theoretical discussions on the structural causes of income differentiation. Increasing our insights on the drivers of income differences and income gaps might enable us to bring the discussion on living income from principle to practice.

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Farmer responses to an input subsidy and co-learning program: intensification, extensification, specialization, and diversification?

Marinus,

van de Ven,

Descheemaeker

et al. 2023

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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Sustainable intensification aims to increase production and improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Many farmers, however, are caught in a vicious cycle of low productivity and lack of incentives to invest in agricultural inputs. Moving towards sustainable intensification therefore requires support such as input subsidies and learning about new options through, for instance, co-learning approaches. Yet such support is not straightforward as agricultural developments often diverge from the envisaged pathways: extensification may occur instead of intensification and specialization instead of diversification. Understanding of farmers’ responses to incentives such as input subsidies and new knowledge is lacking. Our overarching aim was to improve this understanding, in order to better support future pathways for agricultural development in smallholder farming. Over five seasons, we compared the responses of farmers in western Kenya taking part in a novel co-learning program we developed, which included provision of an input voucher, with the responses of farmers who only received a voucher. We also assessed the differences before and during the program. We used diverse indicators that were related to the different agricultural development pathways. Farmer responses were mainly a result of the input voucher. Farmers increased maize yields (intensification) and maize area (specialization) for maize self-sufficiency. Increased farm and maize areas in combination with relatively low N application rates also pointed to extensification coupled with the risk of soil N mining. Diversification by increasing the soybean and groundnut area share was facilitated by the integrated co-learning approach, which thereby supported relatively complex farm management changes. Our results highlight the difficulty of enabling yield and production increases, while also meeting environmental and economic goals. The diversity of farmer responses and constraints beyond the farm level underlined the importance of wider socio-economic developments in addition to support of sustainable intensification at farm level.

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Narrowing yield gaps does not guarantee a living income from smallholder farming–an empirical study from western Kenya

Cited by 3 publications

References 56 publications

Not wrapped up in cotton wool : how risk influences farming in southern Mali

Not wrapped up in cotton wool : how risk influences farming in southern Mali

Digging deeper into living income: policies and strategies for poverty reduction in tropical value chains

Farmer responses to an input subsidy and co-learning program: intensification, extensification, specialization, and diversification?

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