Crop Remix? Farmer's Crop Choice in Response to Covid-19 Evidence from Burkina Faso

Abstract

Half a billion households around the world are smallholder agricultural households. These households are at a unique risk to unexpected shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper looks at how planting behavior changes from before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage household panel data from Burkina Faso where information on planting behavior was collected before the outbreak of the virus. Our main findings are that households who had the opportunity to change crops for the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons indeed changed crops. Additionally, households grew more cereal crops (especially maize) after the pandemic than before, while household use of agricultural inputs did not meaningfully change Further examination is needed to understand if the households resist changing crops due to effects from the pandemic or due to unrelated factors.