Africa Papers and Presentations

Presentation: Heterogeneous Constraints and Incentives and the Uptake of Agricultural Innovations by Smallholder Farmers

Observations of smallholder farmer inefficiency often reflect failure to control for nature. An example would be Ivorien rice farmers effected on their production frontier once inconsistent control for soils, rain, and pests are involved.  So perhaps a non-uptake adoption is optimal as well? This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects for the Mind the Gap Workshop.

Presentation: Beliefs and Behavior

This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects for the Mind the Gap Workshop. This workshop was designed to allow for discussion of the pressing problem of the “yield gap” and the constraints to technology adoption that cause it. 

Presentation: Mind the Gap Workshop

This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects throughout Africa. This research seeks to explore the growing gap between the rural poor farmers of Africa and their barriers relating to adopting new technologies. 

Presentation: Scaling Foundational and Adapted Yield Gap Strategies

It is possible to utilize a combination of breeder input, meteorological data, farmer preference data and distributed yield data to develop are-specific variety recommendations.  Through ground-truth findings, trained field staff can provide fairly effective variety recommendations tailored to the farmers. This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects for the Mind the Gap Workshop.

Paper: Targeted Social Protection in a Pastoralist Economy: Case Study from Kenya

Social protection programs are designed to help vulnerable populations—including pastoralists—maintain a basic level of wellbeing, manage risk, and cope with negative shocks. The research team uses evidence-based to understand the poverty dynamics in the pastoralist-based economy of northern Kenya’s arid and semi arid lands as a case study to discuss and compare the observed impacts of two different social protection schemes on heterogeneous pastoralist households.