plots are more likely to make long term investments in the fertility of the soil than if the plot is going to be turned over in a season or two. Alternatively, unowned plots are often located further from the household and receive fewer inputs due to the higher transactions costs involved in fertilizing distant plots. On the other hand, no consistent pattern emerges with respect to inorganic fertilizer use. Beyond organic fertilizer and Nigeria, we find no consistent story across the inputs and countries, suggesting that land ownership is so prevalent that households do not make substantially different input use decisions between owned and unowned plots.

Table 24: Differences in input use between plots owned and not owned by the household

||% of<br>plots|% u|sing org<br>fertilizer|anic<br>|% u|sing inor<br>fertilizer|ganic<br>|Averag<br>fert|e total in<br>ilizer(kg/|organic<br>ha)|imp|% using<br>roved seed|%<br>c|using agro-<br>hemicals|% us|ing irri|gation|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||owned|No|Yes|sig|No|Yes|sig|No|Yes|sig|No|Yes<br>sig|No|Yes<br>sig|No|Yes|sig|
|Ethiopia|75|8|**20**|***|**36**|35||**51**|45||**9**|8|**22**|19|1|**2**|***|
|Malawi|91|9|**14**|***|67|**67**||**161**|126|***|**-**|-|**4**|2<br>**|<1|**<1**|*|
|Niger|85|29|**34**||**16**|10|*|**2**|2||**2**|2|**7**|6|**1**|1||
|Nigeria|78|2|**4**|***|27|**40**|***|51|**89**|***|-|-|**42**|41|2|**3**||
|Tanzania|93|7|**12**|***|13|**15**||**17**|10|*|-|-|9|**12**|2|**2**||
|Uganda|80|2|**13**|***|**5**|3||**2**|2||-|-|**13**|10|2|**4**||
|_Average _|_84_|_10_|_16_|_-_|_27_|_28_|_-_|_47_|_46_|_-_|_6_|_5_<br>_-_|_16_|_15_|_2_|_2_|_-_|

Note: A plot is classified as “owned” if categorized as follows: Ethiopia-granted by local leaders, inherited; Malawigranted by local leaders, inherited, bride price, purchased with title, leasehold; Niger-own, mortgage; Nigeriapurchased, distributed by community or family; Tanzania-owned, owned but shared; Uganda-all parcels in section on “owned” plots. *, **, and *** denote that difference in mean between groups is statistically significant using t- values of 1.645, 1.96, and 2.58 respectively. Inorganic fertilizer application rates are unconditional and represent total, not nutrient, values. The “average” row includes simple (unweighted) averages across the statistics reported at the country level.

# <u>Distance from the household</u>

A plot further from the household will require more transactions costs to manage. As such, we would expect that plots closer to the household would receive more attention and, as a result, more production-enhancing inputs. Where plots and households are geo-referenced, we observe the true (i.e., “as the crow flies”) distance from the household to the plot.<sup>18</sup> Figure 3 shows the non-parametric regression results of inorganic fertilizer application rates associated with plot distance from the household. In general, there is no common pattern across the countries. In Niger, there is a negative relationship, as would be expected, however Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania exhibit mostly flat relationships, suggesting that farmers fertilize plots the same way not matter how close they are to the household. In Ethiopia, two different local maximum points occur, both at a low value of 2 and higher value of 8, suggesting there might be some areas of the country where households frequently manage plots further from the household with the same level of management and oversight. Because this distance measure is coarse and may not accurately encapsulate travel time, terrain, or road conditions, the relationships reported here are necessarily coarse but do suggest that plot distance from the household may not be as strong of a driver of input application rates as is sometimes believed.

> 18 In some surveys, we also observe the farmer-reported estimate of the distance. We do not attempt to rectify any difference in those values here.

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