We are pleased to announce the publication of a new NSSP Policy Note entitled The role of the locations of public sector varietal development activities on agricultural productivity. The Policy Note is co-authored by Hiroyuki Takeshima, a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington DC and Abdullahi Mohammed Nasir, a Senior Technical Officer at the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, based in Abuja.
The Policy Note, which is number 39 in the Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP) Policy Note series, by using panel data for agricultural households in northern Nigeria, as well as spatial data on agroecological factors, empirically shows that agricultural productivity and technical efficiency at farm household level is significantly and positively affected by similarity between the agroecological conditions of the locations of these households and where major crop breeding institutes are headquartered in Nigeria, namely Maiduguri, Kano, Zaria, Badeggi, Ibadan, and Umudike, after controlling for the agroecological conditions and various relevant household characteristics of these households. These findings suggest that where improved varieties are developed or evaluated affects agricultural productivity and technical efficiency in different locations. Overall agricultural productivity in Nigeria can be significantly increased not simply by increasing support for public sector varietal development, but by doing so in a manner that increases the similarity in agroecological conditions between areas where crop breeding is conducted and the areas where farm households produce those crops.
This publication is one of the outputs of the Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project, a joint effort between the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP) and Michigan State University which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Nigeria).
You can access the policy note via the following link: http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/131412
