Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

Ouémé presents an unusual case: just 18 percent of the farmers use fertilizer and the overall
intensity of fertilizer use is low (24 kg /ha). Nonetheless, those farmers that use fertilizer use large
quantities, resulting in an application rate of 135 kg/ha on these farms. This appears to be related to
the intensive use of fertilizer on vegetable crops.
It is sometimes argued that female-headed households are at a disadvantage in the use of modern
inputs such as fertilizer, but this does not appear to be the case in Bénin. According to the IFPRI-
LARES Small Farmer Survey, female-headed households are just as likely to use fertilizer as maleheaded
households (50 percent) and the quantities they use are similar. Given that female-headed
households have somewhat smaller farms, the application rate is actually somewhat higher on these
farms (see Table 4.1.57).
A somewhat surprising result is that fertilizer purchases are no more common among high-income
households than among low-income households. The proportion of farmers using fertilizer is
roughly constant (42-59 percent) across expenditure categories. On the other hand, richer farmers
buy larger quantities of fertilizer. In fact, farms in the highest expenditure category use twice as
much fertilizer as those in the lowest category. This largely reflects the larger size of these farms.
The application rate among users rises only modestly from 88 kg/ha in the lowest expenditure
category to 97 kg/ha in the highest (see Table 4.1.58). One reason for the weak relationship
between income and fertilizer use may be the fact that much of the fertilizer in Bénin is available on
credit.
Fertilizer use is strongly correlated with farm size. The proportion of farmers using fertilizer rises
from 31 percent among households in the smallest farm-size category to 75 percent among those in
the largest category 7 , while the average quantity used rises 12-fold from the first group to the
second. On the other hand, the overall application rate lies in the range of 42-73 kg/ha with no
consistent pattern across groups. Furthermore, the application rate among fertilizer users falls
dramatically from 251 kg/ha to 83 kg/ha . In other words, among small farmers, only a small
number use fertilizers but they use it very intensively. In contrast, among large farmers, a large
majority use fertilizer, but they use it at a much lower application rate (see Table 4.1.59).
7
Each farm size category includes 20 percent of the farm households. Thus, the smallest farm size
category includes the smallest 20 percent of the farms in Bénin, while the fifth and largest farm-size category
includes the largest 20 percent of the farms.
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