In Simple Words
Imagine a grocery store requiring customers to order their vegetables ten months in advance through a regional government office. By the time the vegetables arrive, the delivery is late, the quantity is incorrect, and half the customers no longer have the cash to pay for them.
Surveyed farm households
- Late fertilizer delivery
- More than 70% reported this
- Inadequate fertilizer supplies
- About 40% reported this
2004 Ethiopian Economic Association survey, cited by the study. Responses may overlap; percentages are among surveyed households, not just those reporting problems.
See source →Research question
Centralized government input procurement systems require farmers to register demand up to 10 months before planting, creating massive logistical lead times that lead to widespread delays and input shortages.
Participants
N = 2,399 rural agricultural households surveyed across 120 Kebeles in Amhara, Ethiopia evaluated in national agricultural input studies.
Study Design
Observational supply chain audit and household survey evaluating input delivery timeliness and adequacy.
Results
Over 70% of surveyed smallholder households reported that chemical fertilizer is regularly supplied late, and approximately 40% reported that available input quantities were inadequate for farm needs.
Takeaway
Streamline agricultural input supply chains by enabling decentralized retail stockholding closer to planting periods rather than relying solely on advance aggregation by cooperative unions.