Policy instruments for sustainable land management: the case of highland smallholders in Ethiopia

Degradation of land continues to pose a threat to future food production potential in many developing economies. Various approaches, mainly based on command‐and‐control policies, have been tried (with limited success) in the past to encourage adoption of erosion‐control practices by farm households. High transactions costs and negative distributional impacts on the welfare of the poor limit the usefulness of standards and taxes for soil and water conservation. One innovative approach is the use of interlinked contracts which create positive incentives for land conservation. This study analyses the social efficiency of such policies for erosion‐control in the Ethiopian highlands using a non‐separable farm household model. Incentive contracts linked with conservation seem to be promising approaches for sustainable resource use in poor rural economies. This may suggest that conservation programs should give greater consideration to better fine‐tuning and mix of policies that help achieve both economic and environmental objectives.     

Economics of erosion-control and seed-fertilizer technologies for hillside farming in Honduras

With population growth still at very high rates and large-scale commercial farmers and cattle ranchers owning much of the more fertile valley land, small-scale farmers are concentrated on increasingly marginal, steeply sloping hillsides in Central America. The continuing soil erosion and land degradation in these low-input staple crop production hillside farming systems lead many to be pessimistic about increasing the agricultural incomes of these farmers. However, this study shows that the appropriate combination of improved technologies and agricultural policy or alternative production diversification strategies can improve the incomes of small-scale hillside farmers in southern Honduras by over 50%. The technology components considered are stone walls and ditches combined with living tree barriers to prevent erosion of the hillsides, and a package of improved sorghum seed, seed treatment, and modest doses of nitrogenous fertilizer. A whole-farm mathematical programming framework is used to determine the potential farm-level income effects of the soil-conservation and seed-fertilizer technologies. The main conclusion is that erosion-control devices and yield-increasing crop varieties and fertilizer are an effective technology introduction strategy for the erosion-prone hillside landholdings found in many areas of Central America. If policy actions or diversification strategies for disposal of surplus grain are found which are effective in reducing the risk of low income from cereal price reductions in high-production years, adoption of the improved technologies is shown to be profitable for small-scale farmers. Another benefit not explicitly considered would be to slow the very rapid growth of urban poverty in these countries. Sensitivity analysis results indicated that neither risk aversion nor the increased availability of crop land or initial cash have any substantial effects on the predicted adoption level of the improved technologies, or on their income impacts for these farmers.     

Migration,remittances and smallholder decision-making: Implications for land use and livelihood change in Central America

We model Central American migrant-sending household agricultural practices given labor losses and the concomitant infusion of remittances. Under the new economics of labor migration (NELM) framework, it is hypothesized that smallholder farm households invest remittance income in their land either to increase crop production or to transition to cattle ranching. We test this hypothesis by developing a combination of multivariate logistic, Poisson and beta regression techniques using Latin American Migration Project data to determine how agricultural land use change compared among migrant and non-migrant households in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Results indicate that a rise in months spent abroad and remittances returned do not translate into a higher percentage of farm sales, intensification or transition to cattle ranching – counter to NELM. However, farmers are investing remittances to increase row crop and pasture land holdings. These findings suggest remittance investments in quantitative increase rather than qualitative change in land use practices. Given the expansive land demands supporting low intensity smallholder agriculture and cattle, and the land degradation cattle precipitate particularly, the trend does not augur well for the sustainability of rural landscapes increasingly transformed by international remittances. Appropriate policies to champion coupled human-land system sustainability in Central America might usefully consider viable land use alternatives to remittance investments dedicated to crop and pasture expansion.     

Resource degradation and adoption of land conservation technologies in the Ethiopian Highlands: A case study in Andit Tid,North Shewa

This paper reports results from a study of resource degradation and conservation behavior of peasant households in a degraded part of the Ethiopian highlands. Peasant households' choice of conservation technologies is modeled as a two-stage process: recognition of the erosion problem, and adoption and level of use of control practices. An ordinal logit model is used to explain parcel-level perception of the threat of the erosion problem and the extent of use of conservation practices. Results show the importance of perception of the threat of soil erosion, household, land and farm characteristics; perception of technology-specific attributes, and land quality differentials in shaping conservation decisions of peasants. Furthermore, where poverty is widespread and appropriate support policies are lacking, results indicate that population pressure per se is unable to encourage sustainable land use. The challenge of breaking the poverty-environment trap and initiating sustainable intensification thus require policy incentives and technologies that confer short-term benefits to the poor while conserving the resource base.     

Policies for sustainable development in the hillside areas of Honduras: a quantitative livelihoods approach

In this article, we use data for 376 households, 1,066 parcels, and 2,143 plots located in 95 villages in the hillside areas in Honduras to generate information needed by decision makers to assess the needs and opportunities for public investments, and design policies that stimulate natural resource conservation. We develop a quantitative livelihood approach, using factor and cluster analysis to group households based on the use of their main assets. This resulted in seven household categories that pursue similar livelihood strategies. We use a multinomial logit model to show that livelihood strategies are determined by comparative advantages as reflected by a combination of biophysical and socioeconomic variables. While 92% of the rural hillsides population in Honduras lives on US$1.00/capita/day or less, households that follow a livelihood strategy based on basic grain farming are the poorest because they often live in isolated areas with relatively poor agro‐ecological and socioeconomic conditions. Opportunities for off‐farm work tend to be limited in these areas and household strategies that combine on‐farm work with off‐farm work earn higher incomes. Per capita incomes can be increased by improving road infrastructure, widening access to land, policies that reduce household size and dependency ratios, and adoption of sustainable land management technologies that restore soil fertility. We used probit models to show that the latter can be promoted by agricultural extension programs and land redistribution. Investments in physical assets should be directed toward households that pursue livelihood strategies based on off‐farm employment or coffee production, while agricultural training programs are best focused on livestock producers.     

Household-level effects of China's Sloping Land Conversion Program under price and policy shifts

This study examined how agricultural households involved in China's Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) could respond to expected changes in environmental and livestock policies and changing commodity prices. We calibrated a farm household model using 2009 survey data collected in northeast Gansu Province, China, and examined the responses of four different household groups. Household groups were distinguished based on the resources they possessed for either cropping, livestock husbandry or off-farm employment. We also calculated the opportunity cost of converting sloping land from grain crop production to perennial grass production and included the net value of the replacement crop in these calculations. Our model simulations indicated that subsistence-oriented households were most likely to participate in the SLCP, and that SLCP payment reductions could have large negative income effects for this group. Reductions in SLCP payments increased income inequality among households in the study area. Migration- and cropping-oriented households have fewer incentives to participate in the SLCP. With rising commodity prices, SLCP payments need to rise to avoid that subsistence-oriented households reconvert their land from perennial grasses to annual grain crops. Local government policies related to livestock production are being devised in Gansu as a method to lift incomes, and these policies could also have positive environmental benefits by increasing grass production on sloping land. The introduction of these livestock promotion policies had modest income effects but did not alter the area grown with grasses under the SLCP.     

Sustainable agricultural practices,environmental risk mitigation and livelihood improvements: Empirical evidence from Northern Ethiopia

Using sustainable agriculture practices has various economic, social and environmental benefits. Determining the attitude of farmers toward risk is an important first step in understanding their behaviour and coping strategies to mitigate environmental risks. This paper investigates the dual impacts of some agricultural practices on agricultural yields and farmers’ livelihoods considering sustainable farmland. Cross-sectional data is collected from farmers in six rural villages in Tigray region, Northern Ethiopia using structured questionnaires. Results show that education, labour supply, agricultural extension services, attitudes, social capital, risk mitigation attitudes, farming experience and soil conditions are factors that significantly affect farmers’ decisions to adopt these practices. The practices are adopted either in isolation or jointly of integrated sustainable practices that increase crop production, household income and asset. Therefore, government and other development actors should promote their adoptions especially in drought-prone, degraded and water-stressed areas     

The impact of climate and price risks on agricultural land use and crop management decisions

This article aims to investigate the impacts of climate change and of lower and more volatile crop price levels as currently observed in the European Union (EU) on optimal management decisions, average income and income risks in crop production in Western Switzerland. To this end, a bioeconomic whole-farm model has been developed that non-parametrically combines the crop growth model CropSyst with an economic decision model using a genetic algorithm. The analysis focuses on the farm level, which enables us to integrate a wide set of potential adaptation responses, comprising changes in agricultural land use as well as crop-specific fertilization and irrigation strategies. Furthermore, the farmer's certainty equivalent is employed as objective function, which enables the consideration of not only impacts on average income but also impacts on income variability.The study shows that that the effects of EU crop prices on the optimal management decisions as well as on the farmer's certainty equivalent are much stronger than the effects of climate change. Furthermore, our results indicate that the impacts of income risks on the crop farm's optimal management schemes are of rather low importance. This is due to two major reasons: first, direct payments make up a large percentage of the agricultural income in Switzerland which makes Swiss farmers less vulnerable to market and climate volatility. Second, arable crop farms in Switzerland have by law to cultivate at least four different crops. Due to these diverse cropping systems and high government direct payments risk does neither under climate change, market liberalization nor combinations thereof, play a very decisive role in arable farming in Switzerland.     

Sustainable agricultural intensification in forest frontier areas

The Lore Lindu region in Indonesia—as in many forest frontier areas in Southeast Asia—has experienced rapid deforestation due to agricultural expansion in the uplands, at the forest margins. This has resulted in aggravated problems of erosion and water availability, threatening agricultural productivity growth. At the same time, technical progress is promoting agricultural intensification in the lowlands. In this article, we examine how improved technologies for paddy rice cultivation in the lowlands have affected agricultural expansion and deforestation in the uplands. The question of a “forest‐saving” or “forest‐clearing” effect related to technical innovation is important from a sustainable development perspective and remains a controversial issue in the literature. We address this question for the Lore Lindu region with an empirical model in which expansion in the lowlands and the uplands is estimated simultaneously. We use data from an extensive village survey conducted in the region, combined with GIS data. To guide the empirical analysis, we develop a theoretical framework based on a Chayanov‐type agricultural household model. The model analyzes farmers' land allocation decisions, taking into account the lowland–upland dichotomy in the agricultural sector. The empirical findings, corroborated by the analytically derived results, show how technical progress for lowland production affects land use at the forest margins and how these effects depend on the factor‐intensity of the technology. The findings imply specific rural development policies for sustainable agricultural intensification in forest frontier areas.     

How has microcredit supported agriculture? Evidence using panel data from Bangladesh

Improving agricultural productivity has received a greater attention in recent years amid concerns about rising food insecurity, population pressures, and climate change. Many believe that better access to institutional credit, spanning microcredit as well as commercial and agricultural banks, can help rural households smooth risks, and access inputs and other technology to modernize agriculture and improve farm/nonfarm linkages. We use recently augmented household panel data spanning over 20 years in Bangladesh to examine the effects of rural credit expansion (both microcredit and formal bank channels) on outcomes for agricultural households. We find that microcredit has benefited households with lower landownings, raising agricultural income from activities such as livestock rearing that require less land, as well as nonfarm income diversification for all households, but with the strongest effect for landless or near‐landless households. We do not find effects of microcredit on crop income, but do, however, find that reported supply‐side credit constraints significantly lower crop income. Borrowing by both men and women has contributed to nonfarm income growth for marginal farmers, but only men's borrowing has contributed to nonfarm income growth among higher landowning groups.     

农户农地流转经营效益及其成因研究——基于新疆179份农户问卷调查

[目的]从农户经营角度研究流转耕地与非流转耕地之间的经济效益差异,并找出造成差异的成因,为提高土地经营效益,加快土地流转提供参考依据。[方法]基于农户投入产出调查数据,采用对比分析方法研究流转耕地与非流转耕地之间的经济效益差异,借助多元线性回归和处置效应模型研究造成经济效益差异的成因。[结果]耕地流转后的地块面积均有不同程度的扩大,但单位面积产出减少;耕地流转后土地租金等非物质投入增加,导致单位耕地净收入低于非流转耕地;流转耕地用于种植经济作物的收益高于粮食作物;农业收入占家庭收入比重和土地确权对单位耕地流转的经济效益有显著正向影响,而耕地地块面积有显著负向影响;户主民族属性、家庭人均耕地面积和地区差异对耕地是否流转产生显著正向影响,而户主年龄、受教育年限和土地流转风险认知对耕地是否流转产生显著的负向影响。[结论]土地流转实现了规模化经营,过高的土地租金等非物质投入是导致耕地流转后经济效益下降的主要原因,进而导致"去粮化"问题突出;提高农户家庭农业收入占比、合理配置投入生产要素、加快土地确权登记有利于提高单位流转耕地经济效益。     

Estimating returns to soil conservation adoption in the northern Ethiopian highlands

Land degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion presents a threat to food security and sustainability of agricultural production in many developing countries. Governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources to promote soil conservation practices as part of an effort to improve environmental conditions and reduce poverty. However, limited rigorous empirical work has been done on the economics of soil conservation technology adoption. This article investigates the impact of stone bunds on value of crop production per hectare in low and high rainfall areas of the Ethiopian highlands using cross-sectional data from more than 900 households, with multiple plots per household. We have used modified random effects models, stochastic dominance analysis (SDA), and matching methods to ensure robustness. The parametric regression and SDA estimates are based on matched observations obtained from the nearest neighbor matching using propensity score estimates. This is important, because conventional regression and SDA estimates are obtained without ensuring that there actually exist comparable conserved and nonconserved plots on the distribution of covariates. We use matching methods, random effects, and Mundlak's approach to control selection and endogeneity bias that may arise due to correlation of unobserved heterogeneity and observed explanatory variables.
We find that the three methods tell a consistent story. Plots with stone bunds are more productive than those without such technologies in semi-arid areas but not in higher rainfall areas, apparently because the moisture conserving benefits of this technology are more beneficial in drier areas. This implies that the performance of stone bunds varies by agro-ecology type, suggesting the need for designing and implementing appropriate site-specific technologies.     

贫困地区农业结构调整对农民收入的影响——重庆五区县实证分析

本文利用重庆贫困地区5个区县619户农户实地调查资料,着重从农产品商品率和现金收入的变化,分析了农业结构调整对贫困地区农户人均纯收入的影响。同时探讨了农业结构调整对农户增收的影响因素。经过计算和分析认为:农民人均纯收入的变化中,贡献率最大的是外出打工等工资性收入,农业纯收入增量的贡献率不到1/3。且农业纯收入增量中,由于商品率提高带来的现金收入增量也不到一半。因此可以说,农业结构调整对农户收入的提高产生了一定影响,但作用有限。另外,农村基础设施建设,如道路、电力通讯等设施建设是影响农业结构调整对农民增收作用的重要因素。     

Poverty targeting, resource degradation and heterogeneous endowments—a micro-simulation analysis of a less-favored Ethiopian village

Persistent and widespread poverty in less-favored areas (LFAs) is attributed to fragile natural resources and poor markets. Limited assets may keep households outside the reach of poverty policies targeted at LFAs. We explored in a stylized manner the role of heterogeneous household assets for (1) policies aimed at poverty reduction; (2) within-village income inequality; and (3) soil erosion. With a farm-household micro-simulation model we analyzed for each household in a remote Ethiopian village three sets of policies: technology improvement, infrastructure investment, and off-farm employment through migration or cash for work (CFW) programs. Combating poverty with a single policy, migratory off-farm employment reduces the poverty headcount most. Because of self-selection, CFW programs performed best in terms of reaching the poorest of the poor. CFW also reduced within-village income inequality most, while a price band reduction increased income inequality. Only technology improvements resulted in a trade-off between poverty and soil erosion. Price band and off-farm employment policies reduced erosion while outperforming technology improvements in terms of poverty reduction. We found that combining two policies was most helpful in assisting poorer households to overcome the limitations of their asset endowments. A CFW program combined with reduced price bands yielded most in terms of poverty reduction and income inequality. This policy complementarity is, however, less important for better-endowed households. Reducing the reliance of households on agriculture offered a win-win situation of reducing poverty and maintaining natural resources. Combining policies helped to overcome asset limitations, to target policies to the poorest households and to reduce income inequalities.     

Technology,market policies and institutional reform for sustainable land use in southern Mali

To identify appropriate interventions that support sustainable land use; a farm household modelling approach is applied to analyze micro-economic supply reactions to various policy measures. The modelling framework links agro-technical and economic data, and takes both production and consumption decisions into account, allowing land use and production technology adjustments in accordance with farm household objectives. Different types of farm households are distinguished on the basis of their resource endowments, savings coefficients and time discount rate. Actual and alternative (sustainable) cropping and livestock activities for different weather regimes are defined for southern Mali. The effects on sustainable land use and expected farm household welfare of adopting alternative technologies and modifying prices, transaction costs, access to credit and land taxes are demonstrated. Even with full information on sustainable technologies, strong policy interventions are required to halt soil degradation. Structural policies proved to be more effective than price policies to reduce soil degradation while maintaining positive income effects. When prices are determined endogenously, structural policy loses some effectiveness as an incentive for sustainable land use due to the effect of additional supply on local cereal and meat Prices.     

Adoption of agricultural land management technologies by smallholder farmers in the Jos Plateau,Nigeria

Against a background of growing concern about the adverse effects of agricultural land degradation due to accelerated soil erosion, nutrient depletion and high population pressure, farmers in the Jos Plateau, Nigeria have adopted biological and structural land management practices, though the degree of adoption of such practices varies from one farm household to another. This study, based on a survey of 150 farm households, employed a stepwise multiple linear regression model to analyse the factors significantly influencing the adoption of land management technologies. The results of the analysis revealed four variables, namely, extension service, agricultural labour force, accelerated soil erosion and out-migration, explaining nearly 90% of the variation in the range of land management technologies adopted. The first three of these variables have positive influences on adoption. Extension service appeared to be the strongest, impacting on skills in the agricultural labour force. Policy recommendations are made in line with the findings of the analysis.     

Cash cropping and food crop productivity: synergies or trade‐offs?

The case for promoting export‐oriented cash crops in Africa has generally been based on their direct potential contribution to agricultural productivity and small farmer incomes. A relatively neglected avenue of research concerns the synergistic effects that cash cropping can have on other household activities, including food production. The conventional view that cash crops compete with food crops for land and labour neglects the potential for cash crop schemes to make available inputs on credit, management training, and other resources that can contribute to food crop productivity, which might otherwise not be accessible to farmers if they did not participate in cash crop programs. This article builds on previous research by hypothesising key pathways by which cash crops may affect food crop activities and empirically measuring these effects using the case of cotton in Gokwe North District in Zimbabwe. Analysis is based on instrumental variable analysis of survey data on 430 rural households in 1996. Results indicate that—after controlling for household assets, education and locational differences—households engaging intensively in cotton production obtain higher grain yields than non‐cotton and marginal cotton producers. We also find evidence of regional spill‐over effects whereby commercialisation schemes induce second round investments in a particular area that provide benefits to all farmers in that region, regardless of whether they engage in that commercialisation scheme. The study suggests that the potential spill‐over benefits for food crops through participation in cash crop programs are important to consider in the development of strategies designed to intensify African food crop production.     

Household‐level Impacts of Dairy Cow Ownership in Coastal Kenya

This study uses heteroskedastic Tobit and Censored Least Absolute Deviations models to examine the impacts of dairy cow ownership on selected outcomes for a sample of 184 households in coastal Kenya. The outcomes examined include gross household cash income, gross non‐agricultural income, consumption of dairy products, time allocated to cattle‐related tasks, number of labourers hired and total wage payments to hired labourers. The number of dairy cows owned has a large and statistically significant impact on household cash income; each cow owned increased income by at least 53% of the mean total income of households without dairy cows. Dairy cow ownership also increases consumption of dairy products by 1.0 litre per week, even though most of the increase in milk production is sold. The number of dairy cows has no significant effect on total labour for cattle‐related tasks. However, in contrast to previous studies, labour allocation to cattle by household members decreases and labour requirements for dairy cows are met primarily by an increase in hired labour. Dairy cow ownership results in relatively modest increases in payments to hired labourers and the number of hired labourers employed. The large positive impacts on income and the substitution of hired for household labour in cattle care suggest that intensification of smallholder dairying can be beneficial as a development strategy in the region if disease and feed constraints are addressed.     

Key socio-economic factors influencing sustainable land management investments in the West Usambara Highlands,Tanzania

Low investments in sustainable land management (SLM) limit agricultural production in the East African Highlands, leading to increased soil erosion, low productivity of land and food insecurity. Recent studies in the region show that different socio-economic factors influence SLM investments by farmers, but knowledge on which of these are most influential and how to foster SLM is often lacking. This research fills this gap for the West Usambara Highlands, and determines key socio-economic factors influencing investments in SLM. Data for this research was collected from 196 randomly selected farm households in the Lushoto district, and Factor Analysis was used to reveal patterns of correlation between SLM investments and different household characteristics. Among the eight socioeconomic factors generated by Factor Analysis, four key factors were found to significantly influence SLM investments in upland (mainly rain-fed) agricultural fields: (1) the farmer’s access to support services; (2) the farmer’s experience with collaborative land management; (3) the household’s income from crop sales; and (4) the farmer’s forward driven attitude. The study concludes that a strategy to foster and scale-up SLM in the West Usambara Highlands should therefore improve the access of farmers to support services (especially micro-credits), trigger collaborative efforts in land management (e.g., farmer-to-farmer training) and promote investments in the rural area to create an enabling environment for SLM. A more active role of the Government, together with public and private sector partners, is therefore crucial.