Measurement Study (LSMS) surveys and is representative at the national, zonal and rural/urban levels. The total sample consists of about 5,000 households covering all 36 states in the country and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The sample is a subsample of the larger GHS crosssection survey that was fielded by NBS at the same time. These 5,000 panel households were revisited in 2012/2013 for the second wave of the survey and will be visited a third time in 2014/2015 for the third wave of the GHS-Panel.

One of the main objectives of the GHS-Panel is to improve agriculture data collection in Nigeria by collecting information at disaggregated levels (crop, plot, and household levels), and linking such data to non-agricultural aspects of livelihoods. To this end, the GHS-panel is unique as it combines very detailed information on farming with consumption-based poverty measures, nonfarm income sources, and other socioeconomic conditions of households in Nigeria. All households were visited at two points in time: right after planting (post-planting visit) and right after harvest (post-harvest visit). During the visits, information was gathered on demographics, education, labor, assets, and farm and nonfarm income generating activities. Of the 5,000 households in the survey, just over 3,000 were agricultural households producing a wide variety of crops. For agricultural households, detailed data was collected on crops grown, land size, inputs, yields, and other plot characteristics.

The primary focus of the analysis is on rural agricultural production, and thus the sample is limited to rural farm households. The household is the primary unit of analysis in all instances and therefore all crop and plot level variables are aggregated to the household level. Table 1 lists the variables used in the analysis. The first column in Table 1 contains mean values for the full sample. The second and third columns contain sample means amongst households not in poverty<sup>2</sup> and households in poverty, respectively. The asterisks in the fourth columns of table 2 denote the significance of Wald (weighted mean) tests between mean values for poor and nonpoor households. The overall regression sample contains 2,086 rural agricultural households with 1,379 non-poor households and 707 poor households.

# **III. METHODOLOGY**

The central element of the analysis from the GHS-Panel is household agricultural productivity. Our measure of agricultural productivity is the value of all crops _per harvested hectare_ in Naira.<sup>3</sup> All input amounts will also be in per hectare form. According to Table 1, the average total value of household harvests was about ₦160,000 and the average per hectare value is over ₦850,000 per hectare<sup>4</sup> . Both measures were lower for poor households indicating that poor households had

> 2Poverty status was determined using per adult equivalent household expenditures. The national poverty threshold value as determined in the Harmonized Nigeria Living Standards Survey (HNLSS) in 2009/2010 was 54,113.14 Nigerian Naira. Using this measure, the in-sample poverty rate is 33.8 percent.

> 3 Respondents were asked to estimate the value of each crop’s harvest. To arrive at an estimate of the total value, the crop level value estimates were aggregated to the household level. The total household harvest value was then divided by the total harvested area to obtain value per hectare.

> 4 The average value of total harvest per hectare is much larger than the average total value divided by average harvested hectares. This is largely a result of outliers caused by very small harvested areas in some southern states. The median value per hectare is a more reasonable 142,259 na/ha. After trimming the top and bottom 1% of yields the average drops to <mark>471,803 and then to 297,304 when trimming the top and bottom 5%.</mark>

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