Year Published
- 2008 (0)
- 2009 (2) Apply 2009 filter
- 2010 (0)
- 2011 (0)
- 2012 (0)
- 2013 (1) Apply 2013 filter
- 2014 (0)
- 2015 (0)
- 2016 (0)
- 2017 (0)
- 2018 (0)
- 2019 (0)
- 2020 (0)
- 2021 (0)
Research Topics
Populations
- Countries/Governments (2) Apply Countries/Governments filter
- Rural Populations (0)
- (-) Remove Smallholder Farmers filter Smallholder Farmers
- Women (9) Apply Women filter
Types of Research
- Data Analysis (7) Apply Data Analysis filter
- Literature Review (14) Apply Literature Review filter
- Portfolio Review (0)
- (-) Remove Research Brief filter Research Brief
Geography
- East Africa Region and Selected Countries (0)
- Global (0)
- South Asia Region and Selected Countries (0)
- Southern Africa Region and Selected Countries (0)
- Sub-Saharan Africa (1) Apply Sub-Saharan Africa filter
- West Africa Region and Selected Countries (1) Apply West Africa Region and Selected Countries filter
Dataset
- ASTI (0)
- FAOSTAT (2) Apply FAOSTAT filter
- Farmer First (1) Apply Farmer First filter
- LSMS & LSMS-ISA (0)
- Other Datasets (1) Apply Other Datasets filter
Current search
- (-) Remove Research Brief filter Research Brief
- (-) Remove Agricultural Inputs & Farm Management filter Agricultural Inputs & Farm Management
- (-) Remove Smallholder Farmers filter Smallholder Farmers
- (-) Remove Risk, Preferences, & Decision-Making filter Risk, Preferences, & Decision-Making
Consumer attitudes are a key component in private sector market segmentation. Knowledge about consumers’ tastes can lead to better product design and more effective communication with target markets. Similarly, evidence suggests that farmers’ attitudes influence whether they adopt productivity-increasing technologies. Using consumer insights from the private sector, agricultural intervention programs can use market research, product development, and communication strategies to better understand farmers as consumers and best target interventions. This brief provides an overview of how farmers' attitudes affect their willingness to adopt new technology, and how knowledge of farmer attitudes can improve program design and implementation.
EPAR’s Political Economy of Fertilizer Policy series provides a history of government intervention in the fertilizer markets of eight Sub-Saharan African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. The briefs focus on details of present and past voucher programs, input subsidies, tariffs in the fertilizer sector, and the political context of these policies. The briefs illustrate these policies’ effect on key domestic crops and focus on the strengths and weaknesses of current market structure. Fertilizer policy in SSA has been extremely dynamic over the last fifty years, swinging from enormous levels of intervention in the 1960s and 70s to liberalization of markets of the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, intervention has become more moderate, focusing on “market smart” subsidies and support. This executive summary highlights key findings and common themes from the series.
Nigeria’s experience with fertilizer subsidy programs has been different than that of other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria is one of the only African countries capable of producing fertilizer domestically. But Nigeria is also large and densely populated. This makes national agricultural policy difficult due to logistical problems with implementation and the unique fertilizer needs of the various agro-ecological zones. This research brief discusses the effects of Nigeria’s input subsidy programs on maize production and fertilizer consumption. It focuses on the years 2000 to 2007, but also includes a discussion of Nigeria’s subsidy history from the early 1970s to 2009. Researchers have had difficulty studying Nigeria’s subsidy schemes due to a lack of data. In spite of decades of authoritarian, centralized leadership, Nigeria’s states have significant power to implement their own subsidies. This complicates any evaluation of a program’s effectiveness, in part due to the variety of subsidies at any given time, as well as inconsistent accounting practices.