Can’t hold me down? Farming households’ access to productive assets and inputs – A cross-country approach

This study provides country-level estimates of productive inputs and assets utilized by farming households, including land, fertilizers, agrochemicals, water management technologies, improved seeds, and mechanization in 19 countries across the world covering the period 2014–2020, using the latest nationally representative survey. Additionally, we explore inputs’ distribution across various dimensions such as household per capita consumption, crop income specialization, and the gender of the household head, while considering the level of agricultural productivity across countries as proxied by agricultural value added per worker. Our descriptive analysis reveals that farming households continue to face challenges in accessing inputs, assets, and water sources to support agricultural production in most of the countries analysed regardless of their productivity level. A gender gap persists in access to land and inputs, in all the countries analysed, regardless of their rural transformation path. Our empirical analysis emphasizes the significance of utilizing these inputs and assets, highlighting their potential to increase crop income for households in our sample of countries.