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porträtt Ol Hall

Ola Hall

Head of Department, Senior Lecturer

porträtt Ol Hall

Using panel survey and remote sensing data to explain yield gaps for maize in sub-Saharan Africa

Author

  • Göran Djurfeldt
  • Ola Hall
  • Magnus Jirström
  • Maria Archila
  • Björn Holmquist
  • Sultana Nasrin

Summary, in English

The aim of this paper is to combine remote sensing data with geo-coded household survey data in order to measure the impact of different socio-economic and biophysical factors on maize yields. We use multilevel linear regression to model village mean maize yield per year as a function of NDVI, commercialization, pluriactivity and distance to market. We draw on seven years of panel data on African smallholders, drawn from three rounds of data collection over a twelve-year period and 56 villages in six countries combined with a time-series analysis of NDVI data from the MODIS sensor. We show that, although there is much noise in yield forecasts as made with our methodology, socio-economic drivers substantially impact on yields, more, it seems, than do biophysical drivers. To reach more powerful explanations researchers need to incorporate socio-economic parameters in their models.

Department/s

  • Department of Human Geography
  • Sociology
  • Department of Statistics

Publishing year

2018

Language

English

Pages

344-357

Publication/Series

Journal of Land Use Science

Volume

13

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Human Geography

Keywords

  • smallholders
  • sub-Saharan Africa
  • yield gaps
  • panel data
  • transdisciplinary explanation

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1747-423X