The influence of market access on the adoption and intensity of grain legume cultivation in African small-holder households

Legumes have been promoted by a number of agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in order to support nutrition, soil quality and income growth. However, uptake is still generally low across SSA. We employ a dataset of around 20 000 smallholder households across 10 African countries to explore the drivers of intensity of planting and adoption of legumes themselves. For the former we compose an indicator of grain legume cultivation intensity, based on individual plot area planted and legumes planted. Overall, there are large proportions of non-adoption of any grain legumes within the household leading to the choice of a zero-inflation model. Moreover, adopters’ cultivation intensity ranges from 0.04% of total crop plot areas to up to 90% of area, with Ghana and Kenya having the highest mixtures of different grain legume crop types We employ a zero-inflated beta regression framework to explore both the non-adoption/adoption hurdle and also to accommodate the proportion of land cultivated under legume crops. Using the RHoMIS survey we identify a number of key drivers to explain uptake and include a measure of legume crops sold, for adopters, to proxy market access for legumes, and market-orientation, for non-adopters, to indicate the level of engagement in markets generally for these households. Overall, we find strong odds of participation where legume markets are available on the intensity of legume cultivation, but market access of other products, e.g. livestock, seems to be a strong negative influence on the decision to adopt legumes. Further drivers, such as poverty indicators, age, size of household and control over tenure seem to drive intensity but have reverse impacts on the decision to adopt legumes. Overall, the link between market access and legume growing is a key finding which suggests that focus of development budgets towards the household should be augmented by wider supply chain and value chain initiatives to create sustainability of legume cultivation across Africa.