Farmers' demand for fertiliser in Sub-Saharan Africa

Agricultural productivity growth in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) is currently well below that required to meet food security and poverty reduction goals. This paper contributes to the debate about what the role of fertiliser should be in SSA and what types of policies and programmes will be most likely to help farmers realise the benefits of fertilisers.

The underlying assumption of the authors is that SSA needs to increase fertiliser application if it is to meet both agricultural productivity growth and environmental objectives. Potential economic demand for this input can be increased through agricultural research that identifies more fertiliser responsive crop varieties and land husbandry practices. Additionally, increases in effective demand require transmission of the knowledge about fertiliser response to farmers, along with the skills to use it efficiently on their own farms. Beyond noting the poor performance of SSA agricultural extension services, the paper finds:

• weaknesses in the ability of researchers as a group to effectively communicate consistent, financially sound recommendations for extension
• an apparent lack of strategy for targeting fertiliser technologies and land husbandry knowledge and skills to appropriate agro-ecological and socio-economic situations
• limited effort to diffuse fertiliser technologies beyond farmers participating in research trials or contact farmers in extension programmes
• poor or non-existent monitoring and evaluation of the diffusion process permitting research and extension to work together on understanding the process of adoption and adaptation
• inconsistency in agricultural policies that makes it difficult for farmers to assess benefits from year to year and sustain fertiliser adoption

The paper concludes that knowledge diffusion is a complex issue and often locally-specific, and that cost-effective collaboration between all the stakeholders in the agricultural transformation process will be needed. Governments and stakeholders need to identify public goods and policies that are most likely to stabilise high crop price variability in SSA, otherwise risk-averse behaviour by farmers will result in a sub-optimal level of fertiliser demand. The constraint of limited funds will force governments to make choices about which farmers and which crop sectors are given priority for fertiliser promotion programmes. These choices should be based on a well defined strategy with clearly defined objectives, these taking consideration of the different ways in which fertilisers can contribute to broader goals such as GDP growth, soil conservation, and poverty alleviation.