23 research outputs found
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The ecological limits of poverty alleviation in an African forest-agriculture landscape
Cocoa yields in Ghana remain low. This has variously been attributed to low rates of fertilizer application, pollinator limitation, and particularly dry growing conditions. In this paper we use an African forest-agriculture landscape dominated by cocoa (Theobroma cacao) to develop an ecological production function, allowing us to identify key ecological and management limits acting on cocoa yields simultaneously. These included more consistent application of fertilizers inter-annually, distributing rotting biomass throughout the farm and reducing the incidence of capsid attacks. By relaxing these limits, we estimate plausible increases in yields and, by extension, farm incomes. Our analysis reveals that resulting increases in cocoa yields requiring both ecological and intensive management interventions could be significant (113 ± 60%); however, benefits are disproportionately realized by the wealthiest households. We found that wealthier households benefited proportionally more from ecological intensification methods (e.g., leaving more rotting biomass in their farms) and the poorest households benefited proportionally more from capital-intensive intensification methods (e.g., pesticide and fertilizer applications). We treated poverty as multi-dimensional, and show that only certain dimensions of poverty (school attendance, assets, and food security) are significantly related to cocoa incomes, while several other dimensions (access to clean water, sanitation and electricity, and infant mortality) are not. We explore how increased household cocoa incomes could impact different dimensions of poverty. Our findings suggest, that if all households adopted the optimal level of each of these management options, and in so doing had similar poverty profiles to those households already managing optimally, we would see the community-averaged probability: a child of a household misses school decrease from 47 to 31%, a household would be able to acquire assets increase from 40 to 59% and a household would have access to an adequate amount of food increase from 62 to 79%
Impact of drought-tolerant maize and maize–legume intercropping on the climate resilience of rural households in Northern Uganda
Seventy percent of all economic losses in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are solely attributed to droughts and floods. A considerable challenge for policy in SSA, therefore, relates to identifying and promoting options that could address climatic shocks. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA)—an approach seeking to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and enhance resilience of households while reducing emissions of greenhouse gases—is an appropriate option. Using a panel dataset from 655 rural households in northern Uganda, this study assessed the effect of two increasingly promoted CSA technologies (drought-tolerant (DT) varieties of maize and maize–legume (M-L) intercropping) on resilience to climatic shocks (drought and unpredictable rainfall). Resilience was estimated using a theory-based approach consistent with recent literature. Two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression with limited information on maximum likelihood was then employed to infer causal effects. Using the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke analogy of head count index, we estimate that approximately 10% of the sample households were resilient to climatic shocks in 2017. Estimates from the 2SLS showed that resilience increased by about 9% points, on average, for adopters of DT maize in isolation and 28% points for adopters of a combination of DT maize and M-L intercropping but decreased by about 10% points when farmers practiced M-L intercropping in isolation. Kinship networks increased the likelihood to implement the CSA technologies, whereas prolonged periods of food shortage discouraged adoption. The study discusses policy implications of the results