Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Long History Of Low Productivity In Zambia: Is It Time To Do Away With Blanket Recommendations?, Antony Chapoto, Lydia M. Chabala, Olipa N. Lungu

Zambia Social Science Journal

Although there have been calls to ramp up efforts to design and implement a fertiliser programme that recognises the spatial variability of soil fertility and climatic conditions in the country, Zambia like most countries in Africa, continues to rely heavily on outdated general fertiliser recommendations, which are uniform across geographic locations and crops. This could be one of the main reasons why Zambia continues to record low crop productivity despite government fertilizer subsidy programmes. Using soil analysis and household data collected in rural Zambia, this study presents a comparative analysis of location-specific fertilizer application versus blanket recommendation to demonstrate why …