Roads and Farming: The Effect of Infrastructure Improvement on Agricultural Input Use, Farm Productivity and Market Participation in Kenya.

Using longitudinal data together with geo-referenced roads data, we implement a dierence-in-dier ence(D-I-D) estimation to assess the impact of the change in road access from 2004 to 2012 on the change in technology adoption, fertilizer intensification, farm productivity and market participation by smallholder farmers in Kenya in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We construct time distance variables by motor-vehicle to the nearest market and to the nearest big town as measurements of road access. Our results show that land allocated to hybrid maize, inorganic fertilizer intensification, maize yield and milk market participation increase more in areas with better road access improvement. It suggests that, since road access improvement occurs more in poorer road access areas in the initial period, the recent infrastructure investment contributes to the productivity enhancement especially in remote areas.

[1]  Elma de Vera Garcia.  The Impact of Rural Roads , 1984 .

[2]  Bo E. Honoré,et al.  Trimmed LAD and Least Squares Estimation of Truncated and Censored Regression Models with Fixed Effects , 1992 .

[3]  Martin Ravallion,et al.  Are There Dynamic Gains from a Poor-Area Development Program? , 1996 .

[4]  Hanan G. Jacoby,et al.  Access to Markets and the Benefits of Rural Roads , 1998 .

[5]  M. Ravallion.  The Mystery of the Vanishing Benefits: Ms. Speedy Analyst's Introduction to Evaluation , 1999 .

[6]  M. O. Owango,et al.  Dairy systems characterisation of the greater Nairobi milk shed , 2001 .

[7]  Martin Ravallion,et al.  Geographic poverty traps? A micro model of consumption growth in rural China , 2002 .

[8]  J. Escobal,et al.  The benefits of rural roads: enhancing income opportunities for the rural poor , 2002 .

[9]  M. Waithaka,et al.  Characterization of dairy systems in the western Kenya region , 2002 .

[10]  H. Freeman,et al.  Fertilizer market liberalization and private retail trade in Kenya , 2003 .

[11]  Evaluating the Impact of Infrastructure Rehabilitation Projects on Household Welfare in Rural Georgia , 2003 .

[12]  S. Rozelle,et al.  Poverty and Access to Roads in Papua New Guinea* , 2003, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[13]  Thijs Knaap,et al.  Spatial economic impacts of transport infrastructure investments , 2003 .

[14]  S. Fan,et al.  Infrastructure and regional economic development in rural China , 2004 .

[15]  K. Otsuka,et al.  The Possibility of a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Kenya , 2005 .

[16]  P. Freeman.  A Decade of Action in Transport: An Evaluation of World Bank Assistance to the Transport Sector, 1995-2005 , 2007 .

[17]  Daniel O. Gilligan,et al.  The impact of roads and agricultural extension on consumption growth and poverty in fifteen Ethiopian villages , 2007 .

[18]  Hanan G. Jacoby,et al.  On Measuring the Benefits of Lower Transport Costs , 2008 .

[19]  M. Fafchamps,et al.  Determinants of the Choice of Migration Destination , 2008 .

[20]  David Stifel,et al.  Isolation and agricultural productivity , 2008 .

[21]  Tomoya Matsumoto,et al.  Soil Fertility, Fertilizer, and the Maize Green Revolution in East Africa , 2009 .

[22]  Dominique van de Walle,et al.  Impact evaluation of rural road projects , 2009 .

[23]  Shahidur R. Khandker,et al.  The Poverty Impact of Rural Roads: Evidence from Bangladesh , 2006, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[24]  Antonio Estache,et al.  A survey of impact evaluations of infrastructure projects, programs and policies , 2010 .

[25]  Cecilia M. Briceno-Garmendia,et al.  Kenya's Infrastructure: A Continental Perspective , 2010 .

[26]  Ren Mu,et al.  Rural Roads and Local Market Development in Vietnam , 2011 .

[27]  C. Kingombe,et al.  The impact of a feeder road project on cash crop production in Zambia's Eastern province between 1997 and 2002 , 2012 .

[28]  Nancy Qian,et al.  On the Road: Access to Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Growth in China , 2012, Journal of Development Economics.

[29]  Liangzhi You,et al.  Road connectivity, population, and crop production in Sub‐Saharan Africa , 2012 .

[30]  E. Miguel,et al.  The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya , 2013 .

[31]  M. Gachassin.  Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Role of Roads in Migration Decisions , 2013 .

[32]  Richard Rogerson,et al.  Productivity, transport costs and subsistence agriculture ☆ , 2014 .

[33]  G. Alemu,et al.  Road Infrastructure and Enterprise Dynamics in Ethiopia , 2015 .