VoxDev Development Economics S7 Ep5: African agriculture's underappreciated supply side
Jan 28, 2026
Hope Michelson, a development economist at the University of Illinois who studies agricultural input markets, explores why better seeds, fertilisers and pesticides often fail to reach farmers. She discusses supply-side frictions like logistics, finance and seasonality. She highlights the critical role of agri-dealers, data gaps about sellers, and how fixing input markets could help reverse falling yields in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Streetlight Bias Skews Research
- Development research has focused on farmers (demand) because household surveys are easy to run and analyze.
- Hope Michelson argues this creates a "streetlight" bias that overlooks critical upstream supply-side constraints.
Rwanda RCT Revealed Supply Bottleneck
- In a Rwanda coffee RCT, training increased demand for NPK but local agro-dealers faced stockouts.
- That supply-side failure caused negative spillovers for untreated farmers who then lost access to fertilizer.
Successful Seed Trial, No Follow‑Up Supply
- In Kenya, trial packs of a new hybrid doubled yields but agri-dealers did not stock the seed afterward.
- Farmers replanted trial seed despite reduced hybrid vigor and then experienced disappointment.