Gendered Analysis of Households Uptake of Agricultural Technology, Production and Food Consumption in Rural Nigeria

The literature suggests marked gender inequality in the use of agricultural technology despite the availability of evidence that women could be as productive as men when given equal access to agricultural resources. This underscores an urgent need to consider improving womens access to agricultural technology to ensure the sustainable provision of food for all people, and particularly those in developing countries. This study addresses two specific objectives. It: (a) examines gender differences in households use of farm-level technology (herbicides, pesticides and inorganic fertilizer); and (b) assesses the impact of the uptake of agricultural technology on farm production and food consumption, paying particular attention to the gender of the household head. The results of a three-stage least squares (3SLS) regression reveal that households uptake of agricultural technology has a significant positive effect on their dietary diversity and food consumption expenditure per capita due to increased farm production. While these results are consistent regardless of the gender of the household head, the extent of effects for female-headed households is almost double that for male-headed households. Therefore, an essential policy implication of our result is that the government could use input subsidies to address some of the gender gaps with regard to agricultural technology access and use. Such efforts should address any entrenched inequalities in womens access to agricultural production resources and consider other socioeconomic factors such as education and landholding, which contribute to gender inequality in agricultural technology uptake.