Judith Chamberlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 1265738 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Judith Chamberlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Judith |
| FAMILY NAME | Chamberlin |
| SIGNATURE | CHAMBERLIN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9522-3001 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 242 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Economic and environmental impacts of sustainable wheat intensification: Insights from the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains
Sustainable intensification is a promising way to improve agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. However, limited studies to date have focused on its impacts on productivity, profitability, and environmental outcomes. Using survey data from 1179 households in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains of Nepal and an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model, we assess the impact of zero tillage (ZT) wheat on productivity, cost, prof…
Smallholder farm management under evolving land institutions: Evidence from Zambia
In Zambia, clearing land for cultivation is a reported mechanism for making land claims in contexts of uncertain rights and expropriation risk, and leaving land fallow is less common for those with weaker land rights. When only some farmers in a village obtain land title, the land security of untitled landholders, particularly women, can become less secure in contexts where there are fears that chiefs can reallocate land away from untitled smallh…
Fertilizer, soil health, and economic shocks: A synthesis of recent evidence
Realizing soil health for food security in Africa
Insights for climate change adaptation from early sowing of wheat in the Northern Indo-Gangetic Basin
The Role of Spatial Inequalities on Youth Migration Decisions: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria
We combine nationally representative data from Nigeria with spatiotemporal data from remote sensing and other sources to study how young migrants respond to observable characteristics of potential destinations, both in absolute terms and relative to origin locations. Migrants prefer destinations with better welfare, land availability and intensity of economic activity. We also find that migrants prefer shorter distances and those destinations wit…
Spatially differentiated nitrogen supply is key in a global food–fertilizer price crisis
A regional geopolitical conflict and sudden massive supply disruptions have revealed vulnerabilities in our global fuel–fertilizer–food nexus. As nitrogen (N) fertilizer price spikes threaten food security, differentiated responses are required to maintain staple cereal yields across over- and underfertilized agricultural systems. Through integrated management of organic and inorganic N sources in high- to low-input cereal production systems, we …
Near-real-time welfare and livelihood impacts of an active war: Evidence from Ethiopia
Ethiopia recently experienced a large-scale war that lasted for more than two years. Using unique High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) data, which span several months before and after the outbreak of the war, this paper provides evidence on the immediate impacts of the conflict on households’ food security. We also assess potential mechanisms and evaluate impacts on proximate outcomes, including on livelihood activities and access to food markets. …
Sustainable maize intensification through site-specific nutrient management advice: Experimental evidence from Nigeria
There is growing evidence on the impacts of site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) from Asia. The evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where SSNM developments are more recent and where conditions concerning soil fertility and fertilizer use differ importantly from those in Asia, is extremely scarce. We evaluate a SSNM advisory tool that allows extension agents to generate fertilizer recommendations tailored to the specific situation of an ind…
Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there
Despite enthusiasm for the potential of digital innovations to transform agricultural markets in Africa, progress made thus far has been limited to small-scale experiments that often fail to scale up. Realizing the full potential of digital innovations – tools, technologies, applications, and services – in Africa requires not just further development of these solutions at meaningful scales, but also more nuanced evidence from both successful and …
Access to health services, food, and water during an active conflict: Evidence from Ethiopia
Civil conflict began in Ethiopia in November 2020 and has reportedly caused major disruptions in access to health services, food, and related critical services, in addition to the direct impacts of the conflict on health and well-being. However, the population-level impacts of the conflict have not yet been systematically quantified. We analyze high frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank, which included measures of access to basic se…
Social protection and resilience: The case of the productive safety net program in Ethiopia
Improving household resilience is becoming one of the key focus and target of social protection programs in Africa. However, there is surprisingly little direct evidence of the impacts of social protection programs on household resilience measures. We use five rounds of panel data to examine rural households’ resilience outcomes associated with participation in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP). Following Cissé and Barrett (2018), …
Absentee tenants and farmland transfers in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi
We use a unique dataset from Malawi that matches tenants and their landlord counterparts to document the role played by absentee tenants, i.e. tenants who reside outside the area where the rented land is located. We found that non-local tenants made up 22% of the tenants in our sample. A significant subset of them had higher off-farm income and significantly more assets than did other tenants. Conversely, we found that 76% of landlords rented lan…
The role of active soil carbon in influencing the profitability of fertilizer use: Empirical evidence from smallholder maize plots in Tanzania
We use recent plot‐level panel data from Tanzanian smallholder farmers to investigate maize yield responses to inorganic fertilizer under variable soil carbon conditions. Unlike many prior studies which consider total carbon measurements, we focus on active soil carbon, which is a component strongly related to key soil functions, such as nutrient cycling and availability. Active soil carbon is found to be a strong predictor of maize yield respons…
Farm- and community-level factors underlying the profitability of fertiliser usage for Ethiopian smallholder farmers
While adoption rates for inorganic fertiliser are relatively high in Ethiopia, application rates are generally considered agronomically suboptimal. Using recent data on Ethiopian smallholder maize producers, we showed that maize response to nitrogen, and the profitability of fertiliser use depended on maize agronomy. The agronomic optimum ranged from 0 to 344 kg/ha with a mean value of 209 kg/ha. The actual nitrogen application rates were only ab…
Landscapes of opportunity: Patterns of young people’s engagement with the rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa
While much has been said in recent years about the importance of engaging rural youth in sub-Saharan Africa’s development, the factual data about how African youth currently engage in rural economies remain sparse. We use recent nationally representative household survey data from six countries to describe the patterns of such engagement. We find that young people participate in agriculture at similar rates to older people. However, participation…
Do more Vibrant Rural Areas have Lower Rates of Youth Out-Migration? Evidence from Zambia
How accurate are yield estimates from crop cuts? Evidence from smallholder maize farms in Ethiopia
Agricultural statistics and applied analyses have benefitted from moving from farmer estimates of yield to crop cut based estimates, now regarded as a gold standard. However, in practice, crop cuts and other sample-based protocols vary widely in the details of their implementations and little empirical work has documented how alternative yield estimation methods perform. Here, we undertake a well-measured experiment of multiple yield estimation m…
Covid-19 and food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria
This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to examine the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security and labor market participation outcomes in Nigeria. To examine these relationships and implications, we exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures, along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest,…
Site-specific agronomic information and technology adoption: A field experiment from Ethiopia
Smallholder farmers in Africa typically only have access to blanket fertilizer recommendations which are defined over very broad areas and may not be optimal for local production conditions. The response to such recommendations has generally been poor. Using a randomized control trial in Ethiopia, we explore whether targeted extension advice leads farmers to align fertilizer usage to the recommended levels and whether this impacts productivity. W…
Are land rental markets responding to rising population pressures and land scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa
Although still at incipient stages in most areas, agricultural land markets in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are growing rapidly. While the literature on the region’s land markets is expanding, there has been little attention thus far paid to the drivers of land rental prices. We know quite little about whether and how land markets and land contracts respond to meso-scale factors such as spatial variations in land abundance, or to micro-level factors,…
Is land certification pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
Does farm structure affect rural household incomes? Evidence from Tanzania
Many African countries have recently experienced rapid growth in the numbers of medium- and large-scale farms. These developments have generated considerable speculation about the impacts of farmland concentration and inequality on smallholder households and communities. This study exploits inter-district variation in farm landholding patterns in Tanzania to determine how differences in localized farmland structure affect rural household incomes …
Africa’s Unfolding Economic Transformation
Despite the continued deep challenges that the region is facing, mounting evidence points to profound economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa since the early 2000s. The contributions in this special issue highlight three aspects of Africa’s unfolding economic transformation since 2000: remarkable progress for the region as a whole, highly uneven progress across countries, and unresolved questions about the sustainability of the transformati…
A comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern Africa
Land pressures, the evolution of farming systems, and development strategies in Africa: A synthesis
Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study synthesizes how people, markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in Africa, drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this spe…
Predictors of patient satisfaction
Does Smallholder Land Titling Facilitate Agricultural Growth: An Analysis of the Determinants and Effects of Smallholder Land Titling in Zambia
How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Malawi
This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real agricultural wage rates, and higher real maize prices. Any input intensification that occurs seems to be going to increasing maize yields, as we find no evidence th…
Scarcity amidst abundance? Reassessing the potential for cropland expansion in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is typically regarded as land abundant, and previous efforts to estimate the true extent of potentially available cropland (PAC) have largely affirmed this perception. Such efforts, however, have largely focused on production potential and have underemphasized economic profitability and other constraints to expansion. This paper re-estimates PAC for Africa in a more explicit economic framework that emphasizes the returns to agr…
Covid-19 and food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria
This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to examine the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security and labor market participation outcomes in Nigeria. To examine these relationships and implications, we exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures, along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest,…
Unpacking the Meaning of ‘Market Access’: Evidence from Rural Kenya
An investigation of the spatial determinants of the local prevalence of poverty in rural Malawi
Site-specific agronomic information and technology adoption: A field experiment from Ethiopia
Smallholder farmers in Africa typically only have access to blanket fertilizer recommendations which are defined over very broad areas and may not be optimal for local production conditions. The response to such recommendations has generally been poor. Using a randomized control trial in Ethiopia, we explore whether targeted extension advice leads farmers to align fertilizer usage to the recommended levels and whether this impacts productivity. W…
The geography of Zambia’s customary land: Assessing the prospects for smallholder development
Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there
Despite enthusiasm for the potential of digital innovations to transform agricultural markets in Africa, progress made thus far has been limited to small-scale experiments that often fail to scale up. Realizing the full potential of digital innovations – tools, technologies, applications, and services – in Africa requires not just further development of these solutions at meaningful scales, but also more nuanced evidence from both successful and …
Social protection and resilience: The case of the productive safety net program in Ethiopia
Improving household resilience is becoming one of the key focus and target of social protection programs in Africa. However, there is surprisingly little direct evidence of the impacts of social protection programs on household resilience measures. We use five rounds of panel data to examine rural households’ resilience outcomes associated with participation in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP). Following Cissé and Barrett (2018), …
Are land rental markets responding to rising population pressures and land scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa
Although still at incipient stages in most areas, agricultural land markets in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are growing rapidly. While the literature on the region’s land markets is expanding, there has been little attention thus far paid to the drivers of land rental prices. We know quite little about whether and how land markets and land contracts respond to meso-scale factors such as spatial variations in land abundance, or to micro-level factors,…
Is land certification pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
Does farm structure affect rural household incomes? Evidence from Tanzania
Many African countries have recently experienced rapid growth in the numbers of medium- and large-scale farms. These developments have generated considerable speculation about the impacts of farmland concentration and inequality on smallholder households and communities. This study exploits inter-district variation in farm landholding patterns in Tanzania to determine how differences in localized farmland structure affect rural household incomes …
A comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern Africa
Spatially differentiated nitrogen supply is key in a global food–fertilizer price crisis
A regional geopolitical conflict and sudden massive supply disruptions have revealed vulnerabilities in our global fuel–fertilizer–food nexus. As nitrogen (N) fertilizer price spikes threaten food security, differentiated responses are required to maintain staple cereal yields across over- and underfertilized agricultural systems. Through integrated management of organic and inorganic N sources in high- to low-input cereal production systems, we …
Near-real-time welfare and livelihood impacts of an active war: Evidence from Ethiopia
Ethiopia recently experienced a large-scale war that lasted for more than two years. Using unique High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) data, which span several months before and after the outbreak of the war, this paper provides evidence on the immediate impacts of the conflict on households’ food security. We also assess potential mechanisms and evaluate impacts on proximate outcomes, including on livelihood activities and access to food markets. …
Do more Vibrant Rural Areas have Lower Rates of Youth Out-Migration? Evidence from Zambia
Fertilizer, soil health, and economic shocks: A synthesis of recent evidence
Sustainable maize intensification through site-specific nutrient management advice: Experimental evidence from Nigeria
There is growing evidence on the impacts of site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) from Asia. The evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where SSNM developments are more recent and where conditions concerning soil fertility and fertilizer use differ importantly from those in Asia, is extremely scarce. We evaluate a SSNM advisory tool that allows extension agents to generate fertilizer recommendations tailored to the specific situation of an ind…
Predictors of patient satisfaction
An investigation of the spatial determinants of the local prevalence of poverty in rural Malawi
Unpacking the Meaning of ‘Market Access’: Evidence from Rural Kenya
Scarcity amidst abundance? Reassessing the potential for cropland expansion in Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is typically regarded as land abundant, and previous efforts to estimate the true extent of potentially available cropland (PAC) have largely affirmed this perception. Such efforts, however, have largely focused on production potential and have underemphasized economic profitability and other constraints to expansion. This paper re-estimates PAC for Africa in a more explicit economic framework that emphasizes the returns to agr…
Land pressures, the evolution of farming systems, and development strategies in Africa: A synthesis
Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study synthesizes how people, markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in Africa, drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this spe…
How does population density influence agricultural intensification and productivity? Evidence from Malawi
This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real agricultural wage rates, and higher real maize prices. Any input intensification that occurs seems to be going to increasing maize yields, as we find no evidence th…
Does Smallholder Land Titling Facilitate Agricultural Growth: An Analysis of the Determinants and Effects of Smallholder Land Titling in Zambia
Africa's changing farm size distribution patterns: The rise of medium‐scale farms
This study assesses changes over the past decade in the farm size distributions of Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, drawing on two or more waves of nationally representative population‐based and/or area‐based surveys. Analysis indicates that much of Sub‐Saharan Africa is experiencing major changes in farm land ownership patterns. Among all farms below 100 hectares in size, the share of land on small‐scale holdings under five hectares has decli…
The geography of Zambia’s customary land: Assessing the prospects for smallholder development
A comparative political economic analysis of maize sector policies in eastern and southern Africa
Africa’s Unfolding Economic Transformation
Despite the continued deep challenges that the region is facing, mounting evidence points to profound economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa since the early 2000s. The contributions in this special issue highlight three aspects of Africa’s unfolding economic transformation since 2000: remarkable progress for the region as a whole, highly uneven progress across countries, and unresolved questions about the sustainability of the transformati…
Does farm structure affect rural household incomes? Evidence from Tanzania
Many African countries have recently experienced rapid growth in the numbers of medium- and large-scale farms. These developments have generated considerable speculation about the impacts of farmland concentration and inequality on smallholder households and communities. This study exploits inter-district variation in farm landholding patterns in Tanzania to determine how differences in localized farmland structure affect rural household incomes …
The role of active soil carbon in influencing the profitability of fertilizer use: Empirical evidence from smallholder maize plots in Tanzania
We use recent plot‐level panel data from Tanzanian smallholder farmers to investigate maize yield responses to inorganic fertilizer under variable soil carbon conditions. Unlike many prior studies which consider total carbon measurements, we focus on active soil carbon, which is a component strongly related to key soil functions, such as nutrient cycling and availability. Active soil carbon is found to be a strong predictor of maize yield respons…
Farm- and community-level factors underlying the profitability of fertiliser usage for Ethiopian smallholder farmers
While adoption rates for inorganic fertiliser are relatively high in Ethiopia, application rates are generally considered agronomically suboptimal. Using recent data on Ethiopian smallholder maize producers, we showed that maize response to nitrogen, and the profitability of fertiliser use depended on maize agronomy. The agronomic optimum ranged from 0 to 344 kg/ha with a mean value of 209 kg/ha. The actual nitrogen application rates were only ab…
Landscapes of opportunity: Patterns of young people’s engagement with the rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa
While much has been said in recent years about the importance of engaging rural youth in sub-Saharan Africa’s development, the factual data about how African youth currently engage in rural economies remain sparse. We use recent nationally representative household survey data from six countries to describe the patterns of such engagement. We find that young people participate in agriculture at similar rates to older people. However, participation…
Do more Vibrant Rural Areas have Lower Rates of Youth Out-Migration? Evidence from Zambia
How accurate are yield estimates from crop cuts? Evidence from smallholder maize farms in Ethiopia
Agricultural statistics and applied analyses have benefitted from moving from farmer estimates of yield to crop cut based estimates, now regarded as a gold standard. However, in practice, crop cuts and other sample-based protocols vary widely in the details of their implementations and little empirical work has documented how alternative yield estimation methods perform. Here, we undertake a well-measured experiment of multiple yield estimation m…
Covid-19 and food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria
This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to examine the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security and labor market participation outcomes in Nigeria. To examine these relationships and implications, we exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures, along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest,…
Site-specific agronomic information and technology adoption: A field experiment from Ethiopia
Smallholder farmers in Africa typically only have access to blanket fertilizer recommendations which are defined over very broad areas and may not be optimal for local production conditions. The response to such recommendations has generally been poor. Using a randomized control trial in Ethiopia, we explore whether targeted extension advice leads farmers to align fertilizer usage to the recommended levels and whether this impacts productivity. W…
Are land rental markets responding to rising population pressures and land scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa
Although still at incipient stages in most areas, agricultural land markets in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are growing rapidly. While the literature on the region’s land markets is expanding, there has been little attention thus far paid to the drivers of land rental prices. We know quite little about whether and how land markets and land contracts respond to meso-scale factors such as spatial variations in land abundance, or to micro-level factors,…
Is land certification pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
Access to health services, food, and water during an active conflict: Evidence from Ethiopia
Civil conflict began in Ethiopia in November 2020 and has reportedly caused major disruptions in access to health services, food, and related critical services, in addition to the direct impacts of the conflict on health and well-being. However, the population-level impacts of the conflict have not yet been systematically quantified. We analyze high frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank, which included measures of access to basic se…
Social protection and resilience: The case of the productive safety net program in Ethiopia
Improving household resilience is becoming one of the key focus and target of social protection programs in Africa. However, there is surprisingly little direct evidence of the impacts of social protection programs on household resilience measures. We use five rounds of panel data to examine rural households’ resilience outcomes associated with participation in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP). Following Cissé and Barrett (2018), …
Absentee tenants and farmland transfers in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi
We use a unique dataset from Malawi that matches tenants and their landlord counterparts to document the role played by absentee tenants, i.e. tenants who reside outside the area where the rented land is located. We found that non-local tenants made up 22% of the tenants in our sample. A significant subset of them had higher off-farm income and significantly more assets than did other tenants. Conversely, we found that 76% of landlords rented lan…
Insights for climate change adaptation from early sowing of wheat in the Northern Indo-Gangetic Basin
Economics (28 works) · Agriculture (23 works) · Business (20 works) · Geography (20 works) · Agricultural Innovations and Practices (18 works) · Economic growth (14 works) · Agricultural economics (13 works) · Agricultural risk and resilience (11 works) · Land Rights and Reforms (11 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (9 works)