Great article! Ethiopia has recently experienced agricultural productivity gains ever since the TPLF took over. Part of this is due to the genius woman behind Ethiopia’s Modern Commodity Exchange - Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin.
I'm skeptical of the data. I went to the USDA website, downloaded the data and analyzed. For example, according the the data, there has been no (zero) increase in irrigated in land in Kenya over the last 10 years. But considering all the work of Davis and Shirtliff, Futurepump and SunCulture that seems unlikely.
Furthermore, the summary seems to imply that all productivity has gone down. But actually productivity is up for crops. When you dive into the details, it's only animal productivity that is down. And where did that come from? nearly all the decreased efficiency came about due to increased capital stock, a 113% increase in capital formation in Kenya from 2011 to 2021. But when I go to the FAO website the increased capital formation in agriculture is about 35% over the same period.
'TFP can increase through cultivating new lands and/or boosting inputs, like fertiliser and irrigation."
"Can" may be doing a lot of work here, but TFP in principle does NOT mean cultivating more land or using more inputs. Inputs like fertilizers and irrigation make productivity of land and labor more productive. Even measuring TFP is quite tricky. I think it makes more sense to aim at changing practices that lead to higher net incomes and very often that is not obvious.
Lack of irrigation seems to be one of the main things holding back African agricultural productivity. Lots of potential employment for Chinese agrotech graduates.
The question is, how do you get more irrigation? the usual solution is more water pumps. But it turns out that boreholes/wells are 10-20x more expensive than a low cost pump. Thus the constraint is bolehole costs. The water resource authorities and borehole drilling companies have created a cartel around this to limit supply and increase prices of boreholes so they are more expensive than even boreholes in the US.
I am reminded of how Americans drained the tall grass prairie in their Midwest like Illinois. I know there were brick making plants. I imagine they used similar tech to make drain pipe.
Great article! Ethiopia has recently experienced agricultural productivity gains ever since the TPLF took over. Part of this is due to the genius woman behind Ethiopia’s Modern Commodity Exchange - Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-yield?tab=chart&country=OWID_AFR~Northern+America~ETH~NGA
I wrote about this here and Tyler Cowen shared my article on Ethiopia's agricultural growth below:
https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/ethiopias-economy-in-the-modern-day
It would be a great endeavor for other African countries to copy!
I'm skeptical of the data. I went to the USDA website, downloaded the data and analyzed. For example, according the the data, there has been no (zero) increase in irrigated in land in Kenya over the last 10 years. But considering all the work of Davis and Shirtliff, Futurepump and SunCulture that seems unlikely.
Furthermore, the summary seems to imply that all productivity has gone down. But actually productivity is up for crops. When you dive into the details, it's only animal productivity that is down. And where did that come from? nearly all the decreased efficiency came about due to increased capital stock, a 113% increase in capital formation in Kenya from 2011 to 2021. But when I go to the FAO website the increased capital formation in agriculture is about 35% over the same period.
I'm skeptical.
'TFP can increase through cultivating new lands and/or boosting inputs, like fertiliser and irrigation."
"Can" may be doing a lot of work here, but TFP in principle does NOT mean cultivating more land or using more inputs. Inputs like fertilizers and irrigation make productivity of land and labor more productive. Even measuring TFP is quite tricky. I think it makes more sense to aim at changing practices that lead to higher net incomes and very often that is not obvious.
Africa needs a great deal more irrigation: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan-Siebert-2/publication/264974329/figure/fig3/AS:295832256565250@1447543314243/Global-Map-of-Irrigation-Areas-Version-4-Percentage-of-5-minute-grid-cell-area-that.png
Lack of irrigation seems to be one of the main things holding back African agricultural productivity. Lots of potential employment for Chinese agrotech graduates.
Also, do you know of any global irrigation map with more recent data? That one is from 2000.
The question is, how do you get more irrigation? the usual solution is more water pumps. But it turns out that boreholes/wells are 10-20x more expensive than a low cost pump. Thus the constraint is bolehole costs. The water resource authorities and borehole drilling companies have created a cartel around this to limit supply and increase prices of boreholes so they are more expensive than even boreholes in the US.
I am reminded of how Americans drained the tall grass prairie in their Midwest like Illinois. I know there were brick making plants. I imagine they used similar tech to make drain pipe.