Martey Edward
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI), Ghana.
Heliyon. 2018 Oct 9;4(10):e00844. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00844. eCollection 2018 Oct.
Most soils in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are substantially degraded and are in need of restoration to enhance sustainable food production. This is a harder problem given that population is projected to increase with a corresponding increase in demand for food. Organic fertilizer can improve soil health by reducing the rate of nutrient leaching. However, there are limited studies on the economic effect of organic fertilizer use in SSA. Lack of in-depth understanding of the economics of organic fertilizer use and the welfare effect has the tendency to mislead policy. This paper employs the double selection and propensity score matching techniques to analyze the welfare impacts of organic fertilizer use. The results show that organic fertilizer use significantly increases the log of productivity and crop income by 1.43 and US$132 respectively and reduce total household expenditure, food expenditure and poverty by US$174, US$58, and 8% respectively. Disaggregation of the results based on landholdings and household size suggest that adopters of organic fertilizer with large farm size and household members recorded the lowest probability of being poor. Findings of this study demonstrate that the gains in the use of organic fertilizer can be consolidated with complementary input support and increased market participation.
撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）的大多数土壤已严重退化，需要进行修复以提高可持续粮食产量。鉴于预计人口将增加，对粮食的需求也会相应增加，这是一个更棘手的问题。有机肥料可以通过降低养分淋失率来改善土壤健康。然而，关于撒哈拉以南非洲使用有机肥料的经济影响的研究有限。对有机肥料使用的经济学和福利效应缺乏深入了解往往会误导政策。本文采用双重选择和倾向得分匹配技术来分析使用有机肥料的福利影响。结果表明，使用有机肥料分别使生产率对数和作物收入显著提高1.43和132美元，并使家庭总支出、食品支出和贫困率分别降低174美元、58美元和8%。根据土地持有量和家庭规模对结果进行分类表明，农场规模大且家庭成员多的有机肥料使用者陷入贫困的概率最低。本研究结果表明，使用有机肥料的收益可以通过补充投入支持和增加市场参与来巩固。
