Malawi numbers are virtually identical, despite the huge time variation, which may signal that tractor use in Malawi has stagnated, as hypothesized about SSA more generally (Pingali 2007).

The incidence of farm machinery other than tractors varies tremendously across countries. Appendix 2 describes the different types of farm implements observed in the surveys that we deem suitable as an indication of on-farm mechanization. Across the six countries, about 32 percent of households own and 12 percent of households rent some type of farm equipment that could be used for mechanization. The use of other mechanized farm implements apart from tractors, therefore, is far greater in all countries apart from Malawi; however, differences in included equipment type by survey likely contributes to some of the heterogeneity in percentages across countries.

Beyond ownership, in Nigeria we observe that 27 percent of cultivating households used animal traction on their plots while 25 percent used machines on their plots, where 47 percent of households use one or the other. Given both of these values are far more than the percent of households owning traction animals and mechanized equipment, this suggests that the rental market for both is at least fairly substantial in Nigeria where the government has dedicated significant resources to the promotion of agricultural mechanization in recent years (Takeshima, Nin-Pratt, Diao 2013). In Niger, we observe community tractor access in the community level surveys. When matching those variables to the household level, we find about 9 percent of households living in communities where a tractor is available. Because this value is far greater than the 0.2 percent of households that claim to rent a tractor, it must be the case that either these tractors go under-utilized or using the community tractor is not considered renting. In fact, none of the households in these communities with tractor access claim to rent. In Ethiopia, households are asked about the number of oxen they use to plow their fields. 42 percent of cultivating households claimed to use no oxen, 22 percent claimed to use only one, and 27 percent claimed to use two. Of the 64 percent of households with one or no oxen, about 30 percent said they applied manual labor to their fields instead with the remaining 70 percent saying they rented or borrowed another ox or used a different animal for plowing. Of these three countries with a fuller set of mechanization data, Nigeria and Ethiopia show signs that traction animals or mechanized inputs are being used in addition to or in replacement of human labor. Using the same data, Binswanger-Mkhize and Savastano (in review) find that mechanization in Nigeria does not appear to have been responsive to increases in population pressures.

# **_4.2. Regional level input use_**

In this section, we provide a lower level of geographic disaggregation to the national level statistics discussed previously. Here, we explore input use variability across geo-referenced agroecological zones and administrative regions.

# - <u>Agro ecological zones</u>

We explore within-country variability using cross-country comparable geo-referenced agroecological zones from Harvest Choice<sup>15</sup> in Table 12. These categories are constructed around

> 15 We utilize the 16-class agro-ecological zone data provided by Harvest Choice, following from the FAO/IIASA methodology: http://harvestchoice.org/data/aez16_clas.

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