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The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania

The expansion of agro-dealers into remote areas can be seen as conducive to more smallholders adopting new technologies and inputs, to include improved seed and fertilizer. However, lower travel costs may be offset by agro-dealer decisions on stocking and pricing, reflecting both travel time from wh...

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Autores principales: Rutsaert, Pieter, Chamberlin, Jordan, Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are, Kitoto, Victor Ochieng, Donovan, Jason
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8684549/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34976233
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01181-9
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author Rutsaert, Pieter
Chamberlin, Jordan
Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are
Kitoto, Victor Ochieng
Donovan, Jason
author_facet Rutsaert, Pieter
Chamberlin, Jordan
Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are
Kitoto, Victor Ochieng
Donovan, Jason
author_sort Rutsaert, Pieter
collection PubMed
description The expansion of agro-dealers into remote areas can be seen as conducive to more smallholders adopting new technologies and inputs, to include improved seed and fertilizer. However, lower travel costs may be offset by agro-dealer decisions on stocking and pricing, reflecting both travel time from wholesale markets as well as the level of competition in localized areas. This paper investigates the geographical distribution of agro-dealers and related patterns of local market competition on the availability and prices of maize seed and fertilizer. We use a unique census of agro-dealers in eight districts of Tanzania (n = 299) which maps distribution points for agricultural inputs in these areas. Results suggested that despite a high number of agro-dealers, almost 30% of farmers lived more than an hour travel time from at least one agro-dealer. Instead of wide geographical coverage, agro-dealers tended to be found in clusters, with strong variation in cluster sizes between different districts. Overall, more remote agro-dealers faced less competition, resulting in fewer stocked product choices and charging higher prices to customers, even after controlling for travel time from district headquarters. Remote farmers are disadvantaged in their uptake of new technologies and critical production inputs due to lack of competition among agro-dealers. Our results suggest that highly aggregated and/or simplified measures of market access fail to reflect important heterogeneity in the market access conditions faced by farmers; a better understanding of distribution networks and competition is needed.
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spelling pubmed-86845492021-12-29 The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania Rutsaert, Pieter Chamberlin, Jordan Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are Kitoto, Victor Ochieng Donovan, Jason Food Secur Original Paper The expansion of agro-dealers into remote areas can be seen as conducive to more smallholders adopting new technologies and inputs, to include improved seed and fertilizer. However, lower travel costs may be offset by agro-dealer decisions on stocking and pricing, reflecting both travel time from wholesale markets as well as the level of competition in localized areas. This paper investigates the geographical distribution of agro-dealers and related patterns of local market competition on the availability and prices of maize seed and fertilizer. We use a unique census of agro-dealers in eight districts of Tanzania (n = 299) which maps distribution points for agricultural inputs in these areas. Results suggested that despite a high number of agro-dealers, almost 30% of farmers lived more than an hour travel time from at least one agro-dealer. Instead of wide geographical coverage, agro-dealers tended to be found in clusters, with strong variation in cluster sizes between different districts. Overall, more remote agro-dealers faced less competition, resulting in fewer stocked product choices and charging higher prices to customers, even after controlling for travel time from district headquarters. Remote farmers are disadvantaged in their uptake of new technologies and critical production inputs due to lack of competition among agro-dealers. Our results suggest that highly aggregated and/or simplified measures of market access fail to reflect important heterogeneity in the market access conditions faced by farmers; a better understanding of distribution networks and competition is needed. Springer Netherlands 2021-06-26 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8684549/ /pubmed/34976233 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01181-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Rutsaert, Pieter
Chamberlin, Jordan
Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are
Kitoto, Victor Ochieng
Donovan, Jason
The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title_full The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title_fullStr The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title_full_unstemmed The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title_short The geography of agricultural input markets in rural Tanzania
title_sort geography of agricultural input markets in rural tanzania
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8684549/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34976233
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01181-9
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