Agricultural Technology Adoption under Climate Change in the Sahel: Micro-evidence from Niger

Abstract

In this article, we assess the determinants of adoption of agricultural technologies under climate risk and evaluate their impact on food security using data from Niger, together with a set of novel weather variation indicators. We employ multivariate probit and instrumental variable techniques to model adoption decisions and their impact. We find that the adoption of both modern inputs (inorganic fertiliser and improved seed) and organic fertiliser is positively associated with crop productivity and crop income. The use of crop residues does not seem to correlate positively with crop productivity and could even have a negative effect. We find a strong negative association on crop productivity among households reporting that they had experienced a delayed onset of the rainy season. We also find that factors driving modern input use are different from those of crop residues and organic fertiliser. While the latter can be characterised as low-investment capital requirements, more...