Subscribe

Back

Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

Ahmed Akhter

researcher spotlight

Akhter Ahmed

Akhter Ahmed is a Senior Research Fellow in the IFPRI’s Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit and Country Representative for IFPRI Bangladesh. He has worked on strategies for agricultural and rural development, social protection, and women’s empowerment to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and undernutrition in developing countries including Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Malawi, the Philippines, and Turkey.

Back

What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

Research topics

Projects and impact

Modeling tools

Project microsites

What’s new

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Innovation Policy and Scaling

Hiroyuki Takeshima

Senior Research Fellow

Follow

Hiroyuki

at:

@HT_IFPRI
ORCiD

Bio

Hiroyuki Takeshima is a Senior Research Fellow in the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit, based in Washington, DC, and has worked in IFPRI’s Nigeria office. His research focuses on agricultural technology adoption under climate change, including agricultural mechanization, seed and varietal technologies, agrifood system transformation and rural economic transformation, public investments, conflict, gender, and agriculture–nutrition linkages. His work covers Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

Hiroyuki is a coeditor of two IFPRI books, The Nigerian Rice Economy: Policy Options for Transforming Production, Marketing, and Trade and An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development: How Much Can Africa Learn from Asia? He is also the 2018 recipient of the Nils Westermarck Award of the International Association of Agricultural Economics. He obtained a PhD in agriculture and consumer economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

LinkedIn

Google Scholar Citations

RePEc Author Profile

SCOPUS Author Profile

Research Gate Profile

CV

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Maize yield responsiveness and profitability of fertilizer: New survey evidence from six African countries

2025Ragasa, Catherine; Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Asante, Seth; Amare, Mulubrhan; Ma, Ning; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi; Duchoslav, Jan
Details

Maize yield responsiveness and profitability of fertilizer: New survey evidence from six African countries

Enhancing maize productivity growth is pivotal for revolutionizing the agrifood system in Africa, with inorganic fertilizer serving as a fundamental input for catalyzing this progress. However, concerns are mounting about the low and decreasing yield response and profitability of inorganic fertilizer use, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study aims to refine yield response and profitability models by incorporating recent data from nationally representative and panel datasets spanning six countries. Most countries exhibited low nitrogen yield responsiveness (4–7 kg), while Ghana and Uganda showed higher responsiveness (15–20 kg) per additional 1 kg of nitrogen. Analysis of fertilizer-to-maize price ratios from 2010 to 2023 showed a downward trend, with spikes in 2022 in Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Overall, except for those years, the data suggest a trend of increasingly favorable price incentives for fertilizer use. Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda experienced declines in the fertilizer-to-maize price ratio. Increasing inorganic fertilizer use would be profitable in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda at current market prices, but not in Malawi or Tanzania. Subsidies in Malawi and Tanzania have boosted profitability, but these may not be necessary in Ghana, Nigeria, or Uganda, which already have favorable price incentives; Malawi could benefit by substantially reducing its 80 percent subsidy while maintaining decent price incentives and farm profits. The paper proposes policy options based on factors influencing yield responsiveness and potential improvements drawn from new modeling and synthesis of the literature.

Year published

2025

Authors

Ragasa, Catherine; Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Asante, Seth; Amare, Mulubrhan; Ma, Ning; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi; Duchoslav, Jan

Citation

Ragasa, Catherine; Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Asante, Seth; Amare, Mulubrhan; Ma, Ning; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi; and Duchoslav, Jan. 2025. Maize yield responsiveness and profitability of fertilizer: New survey evidence from six African countries. Food Policy 133(May 2025): 102815. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102815

Country/Region

Ghana; Uganda; Malawi; Nigeria; Ethiopia

Keywords

Tanzania; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Maize; Agricultural Productivity; Agrifood Systems; Inorganic Fertilizers; Yields; Profitability; Data; Prices

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102815 Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Fertilizer and conflicts: Evidence from Myanmar

2025Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Masias, Ian; Goeb, Joseph; Aung, Zin Wai; Htar, May Thet
Details

Fertilizer and conflicts: Evidence from Myanmar

The number of farmers residing in fragile and conflict-affected countries is rising globally, yet the impacts of conflict on the economics of inorganic fertilizer in these settings remain poorly understood. We study how conflicts in Myanmar, combined with global fertilizer market disruptions, have affected inorganic fertilizer prices, use, response, and efficiency. We utilize unique nationally representative household panel survey data and a comprehensive approach that employs various analytical methods to examine the nexus between conflicts and fertilizer-related issues. Our findings reveal that greater intensity of violent events is associated with higher prices of major types of inorganic fertilizer, particularly in areas farther from major import locations. These price changes and increases in violent events have suppressed both the likelihood and quantity of inorganic fertilizer usage, leading to decreased rice yield responses at given nitrogen application levels. Panel stochastic frontier analyses, combined with a method addressing the endogeneity of inorganic fertilizer use, suggest a significant decline in fertilizer use efficiency each year since the onset of conflict. The increase in violent events is also associated with the reduced use of extension services, seeds from markets, irrigation, and optimal fertilizer blends, which may partly explain the diminished returns and efficiency of inorganic fertilizer use. Conflict therefore seems to be associated with a change in the economics of inorganic fertilizer use through various impact channels, affecting agricultural performance in these fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Year published

2025

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Masias, Ian; Goeb, Joseph; Aung, Zin Wai; Htar, May Thet

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Lambrecht, Isabel Brigitte; Masias, Ian; Goeb, Joseph; Aung, Zin Wai; and Htar, May Thet. 2025. Fertilizer and conflicts: Evidence from Myanmar. Food Policy 133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102786

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Fertilizers; Conflicts; Prices; Imports; Farmers; Markets; Data; Rice; Yields; Agricultural Productivity

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102786 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India

2025Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kishore, Avinash
Details

Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India

Despite recognition of the potentially significant cumulative effects of input use on annual crop output—such as the effect of applying inorganic fertilizer in one year on crop output in the subsequent year—real-world evidence from smallholder farmers’ fields in lower-income countries remains scarce. We narrow this knowledge gap using unique district-level and farm-household-level annual panel datasets in India. We start with flexible translog production functions, which are well-suited for identifying cumulative effects in farmers’ actual production environments. We then apply shrinkage methods (LASSO and GMM-LASSO) to approximate the production function with reduced parameter dimensions, addressing various challenges such as multicollinearity among multiple inputs, including the same inputs from the current and previous years, and potential endogeneity in inputs. Our results indicate that, throughout the shrinkage process, potassium remains a key predictor of outputs, while other inputs (land, labor, capital, irrigation, and other fertilizer nutrients) drop out. More important, the cumulative quantity of potassium from both the previous and current years is a consistently more critical determinant of production than the quantity of potassium from the current year alone, demonstrating the potassium’s significant cumulative effects. These patterns hold at both the district and farm levels across diverse agroecologies and cropping systems. Furthermore, the dynamic panel data analyses suggest that farmers’ use of potassium in the current year is significantly negatively affected by its use in the previous year, potentially stabilizing outputs across years. Our results support earlier agronomic findings suggesting that the cumulative effects of potassium may be relevant across wider geographic regions than previously thought.

Year published

2025

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kishore, Avinash

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; and Kishore, Avinash. 2025. Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2332. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174101

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Fertilizers; Inputs; Machine Learning; Potassium

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Resource-poor rice farmers in Myanmar suffer double impact from political conflict
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 12, 2024

Resource-poor rice farmers in Myanmar suffer double impact from political conflict

By Hiroyuki Takeshima, Zin Wai Aung, Ian Masias, and Bart Minten

Productivity erodes amid turmoil.

Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit: Leveraging Japanese knowledge to address global health and nutrition challenges
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 14, 2022

Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit: Leveraging Japanese knowledge to address global health and nutrition challenges

By Swati Malhotra, Futoshi Yamauchi, and Hiroyuki Takeshima

Innovative approaches to solving the problems of food insecurity.

In search of effective support for agricultural mechanization in Africa
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 30, 2020

In search of effective support for agricultural mechanization in Africa

By Hiroyuki Takeshima, Xinshen Diao, and Patrick Ohene Aboagye

Rising food demand and a shrinking rural labor pool have made the need for tractors and other machines increasingly urgent.

View all Blogs

Events

The 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

September 28, 2022, 6:00 – 7:30 pm

The 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8)

Virtual Event: September 28, 2022 – 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM JST. The side event explores how Japan can lend its expertise to address Africa’s food and nutrition challenges and show some evidence of the impacts.

Side Event: How Japan’s know-how can help address food and nutrition challenges in the developing world
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

November 30, 2021, 6:00 – 7:30 am

Side Event: How Japan’s know-how can help address food and nutrition challenges in the developing world

Virtual Event: Nov 30, 2021 – 06:00 AM to 07:30 AM EST. This event explores how Japan can lend its expertise to address food and nutrition challenges in the developing world.

IFPRI @ Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit 2021
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

November 30 to December 2, 2021

IFPRI @ Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit 2021

Virtual Event: Nov 30, 2021 – 05:00 AM to Dec 2, 2021 11:00 PM EST. IFPRI is participating in the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit 2021

View all Events

News

January 15, 2020 | In the News

Why FG’s policy on mechanisation is not working (Daily Trust)

Daily Trust (Nigeria) reported that for more than 60 years, Nigeria has been importing tractors yet less than 30 percent of farmers in the country have access to mechanization. The story cites an IFPRI study in which Senior Research Fellow, Hiroyuki Takeshima finds government programs designed to bring in more tractors “are rarely effective, and government […]

Research

Projects

Topics/Countries

Awards

  • Nils Westermarck Award, 2018, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) 30th Conference of Agricultural Economists