Abstract
Can commercial farming stimulate economic development? Across sub-Saharan Africa, large commercial farms are increasingly promoted as engines of rural transformation. Yet whether they generate gains beyond the farm, and how these vary with local conditions, remains unclear. We construct a new spatial census tracing the expansion of large commercial farms in Senegal from 1999 to 2023 and combine it with satellite data, a farm survey, and population censuses. Local economic responses differ substantially across the four settings in which farms operate. In two horticultural regions with investments of similar scale and labor demand, census comparisons show increases in the share of women’s employment in agriculture. Near major urban markets, where commercial farms replace smallholder production, farm expansion increases nighttime-light coverage and is associated with higher household wealth and in-migration. In the less densely populated river valley, where farms expand cultivated land, census estimates point to population growth, but we find no comparable nighttime-light response and weaker evidence of rising wealth. In the other two settings, we find little evidence of local economic change.