Abstract
Stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates. Yet robust stylized facts are hard to come by, and when available, often outdated. The 12 papers in this Special Issue revisit conventional wisdom on African agriculture and its farmers’ livelihoods using nationally representative surveys from the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture Initiative in six African countries. At times they simply confirm our common understanding of the topic. But they also throw up a number of surprises, redirecting policy debates while fine-tuning others. Overall, the project calls for more attention to checking and updating our common wisdom. This requires nationally representative data, and sufficient incentives among researchers and policymakers alike. Without well-grounded stylized facts, they can easily be profoundly misguided.
Highlights
Stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates
The second criterion holds that fertilizer use is profitable, when it is optimal or profit maximizing, i.e. as long as the value of the additional maize produced per kg of fertilizer equals the price of fertilizer; the marginal value cost ratio (MVCR) equals one
Application of these criteria to maize producers in the cerealroot crop farming system12 in Nigeria suggests that current application rates yield a negative return for almost half the plots (AVCR < 1) and that only about half the plots would gain from expanding fertilizer use (MVCR > 1)
Summary
Stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates. They provide a sense of importance, help frame the inquiry and are used to galvanize resources. The LSMS-ISA initiative presents a number of notable innovations on the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) surveys, which for some time provided important information on the lives of Africans, their income, their economic activities, and their wellbeing Most importantly, it strengthens the coverage of household agricultural activities—the Integrated-Surveys-on-A griculture part of LSMS-ISA. Individuals (not just households) are tracked across survey rounds, opening a host of new research areas such as the study of migration These four innovative features of the data (integration, individualization, ICT use and intertemporal tracking) help obtain a more refined insight in African agriculture and its rural livelihoods, they help scrutinize conventional views that have so far lacked an adequate information base to do so, such as the gender patterns in agricultural labor allocation or the application of joint input packages in practice, i.e. at the plot level. The studies reflect this complexity, and explore the nuances that any answer to the question ‘myth versus fact?’ has to exude
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