Ephraim Nkonya, Senior Research Fellow, Environment and Production Technology, IFPRI, USA

1. The Unholy Cross: Profitability
and Adoption of Climate-Smart
Agriculture Practices in SSA
Ephraim Nkonya, & J. Koo
International Food Policy Research Institute
ReSSAKS, Maputo
October 26, 2017

2. outline
• The CSA objectives and how land management practices achieve them
• Sustainably increase agricultural productivity
• Adapt to climate change
• Mitigate greenhouse emissions
• The Unholy cross: Inverse relationship between Profit and Adoption
rate of selected CSA practices
• Why the unholy cross?
• What can be done to undo the unholy cross?

3. Objective 1: Sustainably Increase
agricultural productivity

4. Integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) –
more sustainable than other practices
• ISFM is a combination of organic
inputs, improved seeds and judicious
amount of fertilizer.
• Fertilizer quantity required is about half
of recommended amount if applied
without organic input.
• Both yield and profit highest than
fertilizer only at recommended rates
• Kenya experiment show yield of all
treatments decline, but ISFM decline is
smallest
• Experiments involving agroforestry
have shown more sustainable yield
(Akinnifesi et al 2010)
Long-term soil fertility management
Experiment Kabete Kenya

5. Percentage decline in yield and soil organic carbon,
1972–1993, Kenya long-term experiment

6. Objective 2:
CSA practices increase adaptation to
climate change

7. Impact of soil management on maize & millet yield
variance, 30-year DSSAT simulation results, Mali
Note: MN=Manure
CR=crop residues

8. Objective 3:CSA contribute to
mitigation of climate change

9. ISFM & carbon sequestration: 40-year maize yield
crop simulation– on-farm & off-farm benefits
Statistic
Treatment
ISFM Fertilizer Organic No input
Yield (metric tons/ha) 3 2 2 1
Cost of prod. (US$/ha) 127 175 62 51
Profit (US$/ha) 1,350 855 891 654
Value of CO2 equivalent sequestered—net of value sequestered with no external inputs
 CO2-equiv. seq. (US$/ha) 2,701 584 1,095 n.a.
 As % of total profit 200 68 123 n.a.
 Off-farm benefit as % of total
benefit 67 41 55 n.a.

10. The unholy cross: Inverse relationship between
profit and adoption rate
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
ISFM Fertilizer Organic inputs Nothing
Adoptionrate(%);Profit(US$/ha/year)
Average adoption rate & returns of land management
practices, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Niger & Tanzania
Adoption rate (%) Profit (US$/ha/year)

11. Results above show ISFM achieves all CSA objectives, yet its
adoption is the lowest among land management practices.
Why?

12. Extension
messages on
organic inputs
is low – case of
Nigeria &
Uganda
12
Weak promotion of organic inputs by extension agents
Note: No extension agent promoted
adaptation to climate change or marketing

13. ISFM is labor intensive, requires livestock to
produce and transport organic inputs
• Land management practices using organic inputs are labor intensive
• Labor accounts for 50% of the production cost of combining chemical fertilizer
and organic inputs
• Manure production & other organic inputs need to be produced and
transported to crop plots

14. Contribution of labor to total production
costs, Mali
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Share of labor to total cost
Shareoflabortototalcost
Millet Cotton Rice Cowpea Maize
Assuming 40kgN/ha, & 1.7 tons/ha of manure or compost

15. High cost of fertilizer
• On average a kg of urea costs US$1 in SSA
• This is about 4x the cost in Europe

16. What can be done to
undo the unholy cross?

17. Increase Allocation of ag. budget to extension & market
Allocation of agricultural public expenditure by function
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Burkina Faso Kenya Mali Uganda Tanzania Average
percent
Subsidies Extension Marketing & regulation R&D irrigation
Source: Benin & Yu 2013

18. Provide short-term training to extension
agents & include CSA in ag college syllabus
• Short-term training for
in-service extension
agents & inclusion in
syllabus new topics on:
• CSA
• Climate change
• Adaptation to climate
change
• Marketing advisory services

19. Convert fertilizer subsidy to Payment for Ecosystem
Services (aka conditional fertilizer Subsidy)
• Given that over 60% of benefits of ISFM are off-site, there is
justification for providing PES to ISFM adopters
• Choice experiment in Malawi show that With no exception, all
farmers responded positively to subsidy given on condition that
they plant agroforestry trees (Marenya et al 2014)

20. Storage Facilities and
Other Market Value Chain
Investments
• Improvement of marketing
system will increase farmer
market participation & income
 purchasing power to invest in
CSA
• This includes storage and
processing facilities

21. Thank you