Agriculture

A blight on growth: The generational fallout of Brazil’s cocoa collapse

The witches’ broom disease in Brazil decimated cocoa plantations, resulting in disrupted livelihoods, altered labour contracts, and reduced educational and earnings outcomes in the long term.

Agriculture

Yuri Barreto Rodrigo Oliveira

Published

25.06.25

How will climate change shape land markets and farm sizes in the developing world?

Evidence from Colombia shows that weather shocks induce a fragmentation of the farm-size distribution and exacerbate the prevalence of small farms in an economy, shedding light on how climate change might lower agricultural productivity in developing...

Agriculture

Julian Arteaga Nicolás de Roux Margarita Gáfaro Heitor S. Pellegrina

Published

10.06.25

Lowering travel costs to agro-input retailers boosts fertiliser adoption

The most remote villages in Northern Tanzania pay 40–55% more for fertiliser than villages with better market access. Halving travel costs leads to a nearly fourfold increase in fertiliser adoption.

Agriculture

Shilpa Aggarwal Brian Giera Dahyeon Jeong Jonathan Robinson Alan Spearot

Published

10.06.25

How peer learning improved agricultural technology adoption in Tanzania

Previous research finds that peer-to-peer learning can successfully promote technology adoption, making participatory approaches that emphasise iterative, two-way communication now common in agricultural development. We examine whether this peer lear...

Agriculture

Violet Lasdun Aurélie Harou Christopher Magomba Davíd Guereña

Published

16.05.25

How misinformation and mismatched expectations reduce adoption of improved seeds

Often presented as game-changing solutions, agricultural technologies like improved seeds or fertilisers can lead farmers to adopt one at the expense of others, only to disadopt when the expected gains, based on overly optimistic assumptions about re...

Agriculture

Caroline Miehe Leocardia Nabwire Robert Sparrow David Spielman Bjorn Van Campenhout

Published

21.05.25

From risk to resilience: Increasing insurance uptake among farmers in rural Uganda

The majority of households in rural Uganda are involved in agriculture but have no insurance against crop failure or price shocks. Evidence suggests that awareness programmes that help farmers understand potential negative outcomes—perhaps through si...

Agriculture

Aisha Nanyiti

Published

29.05.25

Why bundled agricultural programmes may succeed where others fail

A bundled farm programme in western Kenya boosted yields and profits for smallholders by jointly tackling credit, information, and risk constraints.

Agriculture

Joshua Deutschmann Maya Duru Kim Siegal Emilia Tjernström

Published

29.04.25

How agricultural innovation affected female labour force participation in Brazil

New technologies in Brazil increased agricultural productivity, but also reduced economic opportunities for women and increased fertility rates.

Agriculture

Vivek Moorthy

Published

18.03.25

Displaced and divided: How some development projects undermine Africa’s pastoral communities, sparking violence

Pastoral regions of Africa are witnessing a sharp increase in armed civil conflict. Research has identified ‘mismatched’ agricultural development projects as one major factor driving this violence by displacing local pastoral groups. However, the evi...

Agriculture

Eoin McGuirk Nathan Nunn

Published

10.03.25