how remote sensing products compare to each other. MERRA-2 and ERA5 tend to report more rainfall than the other three products. Differences between products can be more pronounced when comparing across warm/cool zones or when comparing across semi-arid/sub-humid/humid sub-regions, depending on which weather metric one adopts. The takeaway is that one may end up with very different outcomes depending on what precipitation product one selects, what metric is used to measure precipitation, and what region of Africa is being studied.

The mismeasurement we see in rainfall is not as pronounced when we look at temperature. Here the three temperature products tend to agree with each other on what the temperature was in a given location on a given day. That is not to say that there is no mismeasurement in remotely sensed temperature, since all three products could be off in the same way. Short of knowing the actual temperature, what we can say is that one would expect results to be similar when using temperature, regardless of the temperature products or region of Africa is being studied.

# **2.4.2 Household Descriptives**

We seek to provide systematic evidence on mismeasurement in remote sensing data by modeling the relationship between weather and smallholder agricultural productivity. Because of this, our focus within the LSMS-ISA household data is on variables relevant to crop production. We examine both total farm production and production of the primary cereal crop within a country. The primary crop is maize in all countries except for Niger, where millet is the primary crop.

We present summary statistics of our dependent variables and controls by country, aggregated across all households for all waves in Table 6. Panel A presents summary statistics on output and inputs for the total farm (aggregating across all seasonal crops). The average value of total farm production varies from a low of $168 (Uganda) to a high of $664 (Nigeria), with most countries falling in the $100 to $300 range.<sup>8</sup> The value of total farm production is not particularly informative given the large differences in farm size. On average, farms in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania tend to be small - less than two hectares (ha). By comparison, the average farm in Uganda is over five ha and the average farm in Niger is 11 ha. Because of these variations, farms in Niger are, on average, the least productive among the LSMS-ISA countries, with a per ha value of only $60. By comparison, farms in Nigeria, on average, produce $680 in value per ha. Labor also varies substantially across countries, with farms in Ethiopia using an average of 434 days per ha, while farms in Niger use less than 100 days of labor per ha. Similarly, fertilizer use rates vary across countries, with less than one kg per ha used, on average, in Uganda compared to nearly 100 kg per ha used, on average, in Nigeria. In terms of other purchased inputs, Nigerian farms tend to apply more than the other countries. About 20% of farmers in Nigeria apply pesticide and herbicide, while less than 10% of farmers in most of the other countries apply these chemicals. Across all

> 8All monetary values are converted to U.S. dollars at current exchange rates and then appreciated/depreciated to 2010 dollars. We use data from the World Bank World Development Indicators, last updated on 9 April 2020, to make the exchange rate and inflation conversions.

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