Technology Adoption and Food Security in Subsistence Agriculture – Evidence from a Group-Based Aid Project in Mozambique

This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention to improve farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach to technology adoption in subsistence agriculture, using panel data collected by our research team on over 200 households from treatment and control villages from 2008–10. The intervention was successful in encouraging vulnerable households to participate in farmers’ groups, and the impacts on farming techniques, such as fertilizer use, are significant in the first treatment year. The impact on food security is mixed across indicators but similar in both treatment years and cannot be attributed to whether or not households adopted new technologies.

Publication Information

Nyyssölä, M., Pirttilä, J., & Sandström, S. (2014), Technology Adoption and Food Security in Subsistence Agriculture – Evidence from a Group-Based Aid Project in Mozambique, Finnish Economic Papers, 1, 1–33.