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In an effort to unlock the productive potential of the agricultural sector in Nigeria, in 2011
the government implemented the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) in all the
thirty six states of Nigeria including Abuja Federal Capital Territory. GESS is an
innovative input subsidy programme that uses phone technology to reach farmers directly
with subsidized fertilizer and improved maize seeds. The overall objective of GESS
programme was to raise the productivity of millions of smallholder farmers and bring
them out of poverty while providing wider food security. Available empirical evidence on
the effectiveness of GESS in achieving these objectives across the country is mixed,
suggesting more empirical studies. This study contributes to literature on impact of farm
input subsidy programme’s by examining the impact of GESS on productivity, welfare
and income distribution of smallholder maize farmers in Kano state. The study adopted a
cross-sectional research design and a two-stage sampling with stratification was used to
draw a representative sample of GESS participants and non-GESS participants for the
study. A total of 170 GESS participants and 220 non -participants were sampled across the
state to address three objectives: (i) to examine the impact of GESS on maize productivity
of smallholder farmers in Kano state, (ii) to examine the impact of GESS subsidy
programme on welfare of the smallholder maize farmers in Kano State and finally, (iii) to
examine the impact of GESS on income distribution of smallholder maize farmers in
Kano state. The study employed Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Instrumental
Variable (IV) method to address objective one, while Propensity Score Matching and
Binary logistic Regression with Instrumental Variable Method were used to address
objective two and conditional Instrumental Variable Quantile Treatment Effect Model (IV-
QTE) was used to address objective three. The result from the impact of GESS on maize
productivity indicated that GESS significantly increased maize yield of participants by
37.7% (p ≤ 0.05¿ . Other factor that were positive and significantly correlates with
maize productivity were membership to commodity associations, years of education,
household size and age of household head while distance to farm correlates negatively
with maize productivity. The results from the impact of GESS on household welfare show
that the incidence of multidimensional poverty of the sampled population was high (64%).
Implying that on average, 64% of the sampled population were multidimensional poverty
index poor (MPI poor). While the incidence of multidimensional poverty of GESS
participants was 59%, the mean MPI intensity was 0.45 and multidimensional poverty
index was 0.29. The result from PSM indicates that GESS significantly decreased
household multiple deprivation within the range of -0.05 to -0.06 depending on the
matching method used. While the result from the binary logistic regression with
instrumental variable method indicates that GESS subsidy decreased the probability of
households to be MPI poor by 16.8 percentage points at
p≤ 0.1, indicating that the
impact of GESS programme on MPI was weak. The findings also show that off farm
income, market participation, age of household head, education level and membership of
commodity association negatively influence MPI. These factors ought to be accorded
priority in subsequent design of poverty reduction programmes in the future. The results
from IV-QTE shows that the impact of GESS subsidy was statistically higher at the lower
tail of income distribution and the fraction of the poor who benefited more from the GESS
programme vary by age, years of education, market participation and area cultivated. The
results suggest that GESS subsidy was pro-poor with respect to farmers’ income. Overall,
the findings of the study suggest that although GESS subsidy improved average
productivity, it had little effect on farmers’ welfare. Improving the distributional outcome
of the programme by effective targeting of vulnerable and poorer households would
maximize programme’s contribution to food security, farmers’ income and poverty
reduction. The study recommends that further research should focus on the estimation of
overall increase in maize production as a result of GESS and to determine whether total
benefits outweighs the costs. |
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