TY  - JOUR
AU  - Foltz, Jeremy D
AU  - Aldana, Ursula T
AU  - Laris, Paul
TI  - The Sahel's Silent Maize Revolution: Analyzing Maize Productivity in Mali at the Farm-level
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17801
PY  - 2012
Y2  - February 2012
DO  - 10.3386/w17801
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17801
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17801.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeremy D. Foltz
Dept. of Ag. & Applied Economics
University of Wisconsin, Madison
427 Lorch St.
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: (608) 262-6871
E-Mail: jdfoltz@wisc.edu

Ursula T. Aldana
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Lima, Peru
E-Mail: utaldana@gmail.com

Paul Laris
Department of Geography
California State University
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840
Tel: (562) 985-1862
E-Mail: plaris@csulb.edu
M1  - published as Jeremy Foltz, Ursula Aldana, Paul Laris. "The Sahel's Silent Maize Revolution: Analyzing Maize Productivity in Mali at the Farm Level," in Sebastian Edwards, Simon Johnson, and David N. Weil, editors, "African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth" University of Chicago Press (2016)

M3  - presented at "African Development Successes", August 3-5, 2011
AB  - Since independence a quiet revolution has taken place in maize production in the Sahel with Mali increasing production more than ten-fold and yields going up ~2% a year.  This research work uses farm level panel data from southern Mali's maize growing regions to demonstrate this success in agricultural production and technological change. We analyze the determinants of production to unpack increases in input use from technological change.  The estimations show that farmer adoption of increased fertilizer use has driven much of the productivity growth rather than the adoption of improvements in seeds and management.  Additionally, we find strong evidence of observed and unobserved heterogeneity, which affects both the choice of fertilizer amounts and the marginal returns to fertilizer use.  The results demonstrate the key changes behind this silent maize revolution and point to the importance of taking into account farmer heterogeneity in estimating productivity and returns to fertilizer.
ER  -