Can agricultural subsidies reduce gendered productivity gaps? Panel data evidence from Zambia

Abstract Motivation Farmer input support programmes (FISPs) have been implemented in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) since the 1970s in order to improve agricultural productivity and production. Whether FISPs are effective is much debated in the region. This article assesses whether FISPs can reduce gendered productivity gaps in agriculture, which in theory they should, by improving access to productive inputs for all farmers. Purpose Because FISPs improve access to productive inputs for women as well as men, this article asks whether subsidy programmes can reduce the gendered productivity gaps in agriculture. We assess the direct impacts of accessing FISP on maize productivity and whether these impacts are heterogeneous between women‐ and men‐managed plots. Approach and methods We combine the control function and the correlated random approaches to control for the endogeneity of access to FISPs and unobserved heterogeneity, and use the two‐wave panel of the Rural Agricultural Livelihoods Survey data collected in 2012 and 2015 in Zambia. The analysis is done at the level of farm plots. Findings Access to FISPs does not disproportionately raise maize productivity for women‐managed plots. This implies that a FISP alone is insufficient to address the gendered productivity gaps in agriculture. On average, FISPs were associated with average yield gains between 35 and 105 kg/ha in our sample, with larger gains for men‐managed subsamples. However, the use of fertilizers at these low rates of return is unlikely to be profitable for smallholder farmers. Policy implications Given that FISPs are likely to remain an important part of agricultural development policies in the region, there are reasons to believe they may have a role to play in reducing gendered gaps. However, reducing gendered productivity gaps in agriculture requires other non‐input factors that constrain women’s access to productive resources such as insecure land tenure and factors that limit the responsiveness of soils to fertilizer use among smallholder farmers to be addressed concomitantly.