Author : Laura Anne Paul
Release : 2019
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 337/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Drought-tolerant Maize in East Africa by : Laura Anne Paul

Download or read book Drought-tolerant Maize in East Africa written by Laura Anne Paul. This book was released on 2019. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crop failure from drought has severe economic and welfare consequences for farmers, particularly in Eastern and Southern Africa. The vulnerability of households without resources exacerbates the consequences of crop failure. Improved crop varieties, such as Drought-Tolerant (DT) maize, can increase yield levels while decreasing yield variability. Yet farmers are slow to adopt DT maize varieties despite the potential for increased yield stability and income security. Chapter 1 introduces the research questions, focused on why DT adoption is low, Chapter 2 provides a literature review on maize, drought, and DT technologies, and Chapter 3 describes the data from On-Farm Trials, weather data, and household survey data. These set up the analysis in Chapter 4 of DT maize yield outcomes, and in Chapter 5 on the role of availability bias in adoption decisions. Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation, suggesting the limitations of DT maize as a solution to food insecurity in East Africa. In the first of two analytical chapters, Chapter 4 identifies the unconditional and stochastic advantages of the DT trait using high resolution climate data, while also demonstrating heterogeneity among farms. DT maize has a significant unconditional yield advantage over comparison varieties in the On-Farm Trials. Further, there is a stochastic benefit, or protective effect, to the DT trait: it is indeed a more resilient variety under drought conditions. The DT maize has an average yield gain of 10% over comparison varieties under normal rainfall levels, and that benefit increases to 12% in drought conditions. There is significant heterogeneity in returns from the DT maize seed technology--lower-productivity farms experience the weakest unconditional and stochastic benefits. Variation in realized advantages might reduce the large expected benefits from the DT maize technology. Chapter 5 analyzes the adoption of DT maize in the context of expectations of the stochastic and heterogeneous benefits to the technology. A farmer's adoption decision is based on subjective beliefs about the likelihood of drought and the crop response to drought stress. Farmers' expectations of drought likelihood depend on experience and on common cognitive biases. The adoption decision model gives insight into the limited uptake of DT maize due to the role of information and expectations. Detailed household survey data combined with high-resolution climate and yield data show that adoption patterns indicate only a limited comprehension of how the DT trait actually works. Additionally, cognitive biases, such as recency and salience bias, might encourage adoption of DT among farmers.