Testing the Capital Constraint: designing policies to promote small farmer organic fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa

DESCRIPTION: The project explored how to better adopt economically viable policies to improve soil fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa. Though the use of fertilizers can bring near-term improvement in yields and household food security while replenishing soil nutrients critical for future productivity gains, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have made chronically scant use of these critical inputs.

OUTCOMES: The analysis looked at several hypotheses that are critical to the design and implementation of policy interventions to improve agricultural technology adoption and design and implement a set of experiments to be conducted with groups of farmers that will elicit farmers’ preferences over adoption incentive packages and assess farmers’ willingness to accept payment for the adoption of organic fertilizer methods. The data collected on farmer soil quality, risk preferences, discount rates, and household demographics will permit study of the relationship between starting soil health, risk, wage rates, wealth, and the expected profitability of farmer adoption of organic fertilizers.