Table 9: Percent of cultivating households using agro-chemicals (pesticide, herbicide, fungicide)

||% of cultivating<br>households using<br>any agro-chemical|By type<br>Pesticide|(if full set p<br>Herbicide|rovided)<br>Fungicide|1<sup>st</sup>-most<br>important<br>type|2<sup>nd</sup>- most<br>important<br>type|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Ethiopia|30.5|8.4|27.2|3.5|-|-|
|Malawi|3.0|-|-|-|Insecticide|Herbicide|
|Niger|7.8|1.9|0.7|5.5|-|-|
|Nigeria|33.0|18.2|21.9|-|-|-|
|Tanzania|12.5|-|-|-|Herbicide|Pesticide|
|Uganda|10.7|-|-|-|Insecticide|Herbicide|
|_Average _|_16.3_|_-_|_-_|_-_|_-_|_-_|

Notes: First and second most important types are household-reported in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda where use rates by type are not provided (observed at plot level). The “average” row includes simple (unweighted) averages across the statistics reported at the country level.

Application rates of these agro-chemicals are very difficult to compute since some are purchased in concentrate while others are ready for application. Despite these differences, we attempt to create comparable kg/ha statistics by assuming liters and kilograms are equivalent and treat other units accordingly.<sup>12</sup> If it is the case that some of what we observe is agro-chemical amount in concentrated form, then we would expect our applications rates to be lower than the actual mixed agro-chemical volumes. Like inorganic fertilizer levels, we limit extreme values by winsorizing application rates at the 99th percentile. Because very high values still exist after applying this standard cleaning rule, we also replace values above 500 kg/ha with that value. The average unconditional rates of use are estimated to be less than 1 kilogram per hectare in all countries where we can observe these data (all but Ethiopia) except Nigeria (8.8 kg/ha) and Tanzania (1.2 kg/ha). Conditional rates of use, however, show relatively high levels for agro-chemical users, including 26.8 kg/ha in Nigeria, 10.0 kg/ha in Malawi, and 9.3 kg/ha in Uganda. Application rates are higher than expected, especially considering the caveats previously explained.

# <u>Irrigation</u>

Like the other inputs, the way we observe irrigation incidence is different across surveys and may better be defined as “water control.” In Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Uganda, we observe a binary variable for whether or not the plot was irrigated, meaning it is up to the household and/or enumerator to decide if a plot is irrigated or otherwise. In the remaining three countries (Niger, Malawi, and Tanzania), we infer from the source of water whether or not a plot was irrigated. If a plot is any more than rainfed, we qualify the plot as irrigated, although the level of sophistication can vary dramatically between plots with different types of irrigation technologies and methods (see Appendix 2).

Table 10 displays the range of irrigation statistics we can tally from the LSMS-ISA data. Across the six countries, we find that about 5 percent of households use some form of irrigation, covering about 2 percent of land under cultivation. While slightly higher than the AQUASTAT/FAO numbers presented in Table 4, the estimates still show a very low incidence of irrigation across these countries. Moreover, households that are observed with some water

> 12 A large number of other assumptions were made to standardize agro-chemical application rates. In Niger, most people purchase agro-chemicals in “bags” which we assumed were also equivalent to 1 kilogram. In Nigeria, there are several “other ” units (e.g., bottles, cans) that we assume are equivalent to liters and, therefore, also kilograms.

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