Project timeframe
03/2013 - 12/2016
Research Area(s)
Budget:
USD 715,029.00
Funding
World Bank
Partner(s)
Central Statistical Agency (CSA) of Ethiopia|National Research Partners - Ethiopia|SRP/Theme mapped into: Information Systems (SRP5)
Background
Building on the ongoing Living Standards Measurement Study- Integrated Surveys on Agriculture effort and as part of a broader World Bank research agenda by the Development Economics Research Group (DECRG), the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team is initiating a multi-faceted research project aimed at improving the quality and relevance of agricultural statistics. The research agenda includes seven distinct components: (1) land area measurement, (2) soil fertility, (3) water resources, (4) labor inputs, (5) skill measurement, (6) production of continued and extended-harvest crops, and (7) computer-assisted personal interviewing for agricultural data.
Measurement or monitoring of soil quality and land health are fundamental to developing a sound knowledge of problems and solutions for sustainable crop production and land management. Much of the current analysis on agricultural productivity is hampered by the lack of consistent, good quality data on soil health and how it is changing under past and current management. This is especially critical in the face of increased variability in weather conditions brought on by climate change. Renewed interest in increasing agriculture productivity to meet food security needs and increasing resilience of agricultural systems in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, makes understanding soil fertility constraints and trends ever more important.
Direct systematic measurement of soil fertility as part of household level data collection has rarely been attempted due to the high costs of soil sampling and analysis. Having panel samples of the soil of plots directly linked to the household panel survey of the LSMS-ISA provides an important opportunity for enhancing our understanding of trends in soil health and their impact on crop productivity among smallholders, as well as of the coping mechanisms adopted by farmers faced with deteriorating soil conditions.
New systematic surveillance frameworks for systematic and consistent monitoring of soil and land health have recently been developed based on new digital sensing technology (UNEP, 2012). In particular, new rapid low-cost technology for assessing soil characteristics using infrared spectroscopy has made soil fertility characterization feasible in large studies (Shepherd & Walsh, 2002, 2007). These techniques are now being supplemented by other light-based techniques using laser and x-ray spectroscopy and are being applied to large areas sampling schemes in sub-Saharan Africa under the Africa Soil Information Service project (www.africasoils.net).
Aims and Objectives
The LSMS project is a multi-faceted research project aimed at improving the quality and relevance of agricultural statistics under seven distinct components; land area, soil fertility, water resources, labour inputs, skill measurement, production of continuous and extended-harvest crops and computer-assisted personal interviewing for agricultural data.
An important output from this project is the establishment of soil catalogues and creation of a country-specific handbook for Ethiopia detailing a protocol of analysis of soil samples collected from household surveys. This will enable the mapping of self-reported measures of land quality at the agro-ecological level to help in better decision-making.
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