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     

Financial drivers of land use decisions: The case of smallholder woodlots in Amhara,Ethiopia

A household survey on the financial drivers of woodlot production was conducted in the Lake Tana watershed of Amhara State, Ethiopia. Analysis of smallholder Eucalyptus globulus Labill. production reveals that converting uneroded over eroded croplands leads to significantly higher financial returns. Returns were also significantly higher for rotation intervals closer to the optimal economic rotation and for higher planting densities. Most woodlots had positive financial returns. The presence of negative financial returns for some households demonstrates that positive ecological externalities, a lack of economies of scale and/or myopic behavior are potentially important factors in land use decision-making. Wood utilization decisions were shown to impact the potential financial returns of households. Smallholders’ activities demonstrate that eucalyptus is an imperfect substitute for agricultural production on surplus cropland. A third of respondents indicated they had intentionally chosen to convert uneroded croplands to achieve higher returns. Smallholders faced constraints in bargaining over price and access to markets. Future land use policies should address marketing constraints and unsustainable land use activities. Harvesting soil from natural forests and the conversion of productive surplus cropland to woodlot production both present long-term sustainability challenges. This study demonstrates the importance of considering economic and social incentives when creating land use policies for smallholder's woodlot production.     

Factors affecting farm growth intentions of family farms in mountain regions: Empirical evidence for Central Switzerland

Family farms in mountain regions are undergoing a progressive structural change and an ongoing shift in the allocation of production factors land, capital and labor. In Switzerland, various policy measures influence the re-allocation of these production factors. To understand the effectiveness of these schemes and to assess future farm structural change, it is useful to analyze the underlying drivers which support and hinder the emergence of individual farm growth strategies. We study the family farms’ growth intentions using a logistic regression model based on a combination of census and survey data on family characteristics from two mountain case study regions in Central Switzerland. Factors supporting farm growth intentions are the relative change in farm size in recent years, farm related sunk costs, farm diversification and farm size. We found no support for the hypothesis that farm growth intention is also influenced by the perceived personal situation represented by indicators for the perceived workload, psychological stress and financial problems. In addition, off-farm labor did not prevent farmers from stating growth intentions. Our empirical findings suggest that (i) the most important factors which support farm growth intentions correspond with factors driving observed patterns of structural change; (ii) limited availability of family labor may result in a new critical threshold for farm growth strategies; (iii) aims and non-pecuniary preferences of farmers will impede a rapid structural change in the near future.     

Tenants’ land access in the rental market: evidence from northern Ethiopia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the allocation efficiency in the tenancy market, and thereby the potential of the market to facilitate operational farm size adjustment that can help land‐poor tenant households to transform into smallholder commercial farms. We analyzed three rounds of balanced panel data for the production seasons 2005–2006, 2009–2010, and 2014–2015 collected from 320 smallholder farms in Tigrai region in northern Ethiopia. Random effects dynamic probit and tobit models are used to assess how land‐poor tenants’ access and extent of access to land are affected by state dependency (earlier participation in the market), kinship ties, climate shocks, and legal restrictions. The results indicate that state dependency and kinship ties with the landholder had strong positive effects on participation and intensity of participation. Climate shocks significantly affected the intensity of participation of tenants already in the rental market. Tenants’ overall access to rented land had not improved from 2005–2006 to 2014–2015. The amount of land accessed by those already in the market was insufficient for them to become commercial farmers. The important policy implication is that orchestrated interventions at community level are needed to reduce transaction costs and thereby improve land access of entrepreneurial tenants.     

Cattle sharing and rental contracts in an Agrarian economy: evidence from Ethiopia

Empirical evidence on the role of cattle sharing and rental contracts in agrarian economies is limited. This article is an investigation of different types of cattle sharing and rental contracts producers in rural Ethiopia adopt. It also investigates why households in rural Ethiopia rely on these contracts that are vulnerable and therefore subject to potential moral hazard problems described in earlier literature. We apply random effect probit and control function econometric methods to household panel data collected in 2005 and 2007 from two agro‐ecological zones in Ethiopia. Controlling for the endogeneity of access to livestock credit, we find that contracts are spatially fragmented and better developed where population density is high and credit and insurance markets are poorly developed. We also find that contracts help cash poor and credit constrained households to improve their herd dynamics, to get access to nonlivestock resources (land, labor and cash) and share risks that could have been difficult without the contract. We show that contracts are rational responses of residents in rural communities characterized by imperfect credit and insurance services, since households with better access to credit are less likely to rely on contracts.     

Determinants and impact of sustainable land management (SLM) investments: A systems evaluation in the Blue Nile Basin,Ethiopia

Ongoing debate over water management along the Blue Nile and land degradation in Ethiopia emphasizes the need for efficiency gains in agricultural production through sustainable land management (SLM). However, previous SLM studies overlook the tradeoffs involved in maintaining SLM investments over time. We address this limitation by combining a household survey that evaluates the economic impacts of SLM investments and maintenance, with a hydrological model that explores location‐specific infrastructure effects. We then use a multi‐market model to evaluate the impacts of alternative SLM investments on agricultural production, prices, and incomes over time. Analysis suggests SLM investments must be maintained for at least seven years to show significant increases in value of production, and that terraces on moderate and steep slopes are most effective in increasing agricultural yields. However, the benefits of terracing do not outweigh the cost of foregone off‐farm labor opportunities, nor compensate for lower agricultural prices from increased supply. Thus, SLM investments must be paired with other input and infrastructure investments, as well as subsidies for initial labor costs, in order to incentivize adoption and long‐term SLM maintenance.     

Distress rentals and the land rental market as a safety net: contract choice evidence from Tigray,Ethiopia

Rural households in the semiarid Northern Ethiopian highlands are net buyers of food. Crop failure due to erratic and unpredictable rainfall occurs frequently and leads to food shortages and income shocks. The renting out of land may be one of the coping responses of households exposed to shocks. We developed a theoretical household model for poor landlord households capturing their contract choice response to downside production shocks. We tested econometrically whether contract choice may depend on poverty, capital constraints, production risk and random shocks. The multinomial logit model estimates show that poor households experiencing random shocks are more likely to choose fixed‐rent contracts as a distress response to shocks, suggesting that fixed‐rent contracts may be used to meet immediate needs, but at the expense of future incomes. We also found that fixed‐rent contracts are preferred when ex ante production risk is low, while sharecropping is more likely where production risk is high. Finally, we found an indication that the choice of a fixed‐rent contract as a coping response to shocks comes as a last resort after all other means of coping are exhausted.     

Understanding the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among smallholder farmers: Evidence from land reform beneficiaries in South Africa

Climatic change has a negative impact on people’s livelihoods, agriculture, freshwater supply and other natural resources that are important for human survival. Therefore, understanding how rural smallholder farmers perceive climate change, climate variability, and factors that influence their choices would facilitate a better understanding of how these farmers adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. A Zero-inflated double hurdle model was employed to estimate the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies and intensity of adoption at the household level in South Africa. Different socioeconomic factors such as gender, age, and experience in crop farming, institutional factors like access to extension services, and access to climate change information significantly influenced the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among beneficiaries of land reform in South Africa. Concerning intensity of adoption, age, educational level, farming experience, on-farm training, off-farm income, access to information through ICT and locational variables are the significant determinants of intensity of adaptation strategies. Thus, education attainment, non-farm employment, farming experience are significant incentives to enhance smallholder farmers' adaptive capacity through the adoption of many adaptation approaches. This study therefore concluded that farm-level policy efforts that aim to improve rural development should focus on farmers’ education, on-farm demonstration and non-farm employment opportunities that seek to engage the farmers, particularly during the off-cropping season. The income from non-farm employment can be plough-back into farm operations such as the adoption of soil and water conservation, use of improved planting varieties, insurance, among others to mitigate climate variability and subsequently increase productivity. Policies and investment strategies of the government should be geared towards supporting education, providing on-farm demonstration trainings, and disseminating information about climate change adaptation strategies, particularly for smallholder farmers in the country. Thus, the government, stakeholders, and donor agencies must provide capacity-building innovations around the agricultural extension system and education on climate change using information and communication technologies.     

How smallholder farmers adapt to agricultural drought in a changing climate: A case study in southern China

Although the adaptation strategies of smallholder farmers to climate change and its attendant hazards have attracted widespread attention, the quantitative detection and evaluation of their adaptive behaviors remains a difficult task that deserves further study. This article describes an empirical case study performed in southern China to examine the adaptation strategies of paddy farmers to agricultural drought. We collected first-hand data through household questionnaires, in-depth interviews with local managers, and farm-level land-use surveys. The effectiveness of the adaptation approaches of the farmers was assessed in terms of the ecological, economic, and social benefits. Our findings indicate that over the past three decades, when confronted with recurrent seasonal drought in a warming climate, farmers have gradually abandoned the double-cropping rice production and transformed their cropping patterns into a new diversified mode of “Rice-Cole, rice, cotton, seedling nursery, and coarse cereals”. Current farming practice reduces the vulnerability of local agriculture to drought, and allows farmers to diversify and improve their incomes, which contributes to enhanced resilience and adaptability to drought. However, the autonomous adaptation of farmers may primarily serve their interests of minimizing drought risk and maximizing economic profits but could also undermine the social benefits, such as regional grain security. A robust adaptation strategy should balance the ecological and economic benefits with social interests to maintain agricultural sustainability.     

The impacts of population and agglomeration development on land use intensity: New evidence behind urbanization in China

The impacts of population growth and agglomeration development on urbanization are complex. They cannot be effectively disentangled by simple fixed-effect regression analyses. This study introduces the land use intensity (LUI) metric to measure urbanization, and further applies quantile and threshold regression models to examine the impacts of population (POP) and agglomeration development (AGD) on land use intensity using a sample of 297 Chinese cities. The results reveal the heterogeneous effects that POP and AGD have on LUI. Variation is also observed in the effects of POP and AGD on LUI by POP/AGD intervals. As POP increases, its pressure on LUI increases. In contrast, the accumulative effects of development are beneficial in restraining overdevelopment of land resources within a specific range. The findings suggest that understanding complex human and development effects provides valuable insights, references, and implications for urban development and land use policies, which can guide cities with greater potential land development space in reducing the risk of unsustainable urbanization. Policies are recommended for ecological construction, city grouping, and sustainable land use.     

Farm-level adaptation to climate change in Western Bangladesh: An analysis of adaptation dynamics,profitability and risks

Using long-term district-level climate data and a case study from a drought-prone village in western Bangladesh, this research explored trends in climate change, and analysed farmers’ adaptation dynamics, profitability and risks. This is the first study of its kind for drought-prone areas in Bangladesh.Farmers perceived climate changes included increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall which were as consistent with the trends of Chuadanga climate records. Farmers’ adaptation measures included changes in cropping systems, cropping calendars, crop varieties, agronomic practices, crop diversification and improved animal husbandry. Reducing environmental stress, ensuring self-sufficiency in staple crops (mainly rice) and other crop production practices, and enhancing economic viability of farm enterprises have underpinned these adaptations. Off-farm and non-farm wage employment, temporary migration, self-employment and educating children, constituted the core non-farm adaptation strategies.Emerging cropping systems like maize/cucumber and maize/stem amaranth/rice were economically more viable than the traditional rice/rice and rice/maize systems. Despite some uncertainties, farming was preferred to off-farm work, generating higher returns to labour for all cropping systems. Limited access to stress-tolerant varieties, extension services and affordable agricultural credit, combined with high production costs, variability in crop yields and output prices, are the main barriers to adaptation. Stronger agricultural research and support services, affordable credit, community-focussed farming education and training are critically important for effective adaptation to climate change.     

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.     

Implications of land use transitions and climate change on local flooding in urban areas: An assessment of 42 Indian cities

Urban development induced land transitions affect urban hydrology, resulting in increased flooding risks. Climate change-related precipitation changes are an added complexity to the flood risks of cities. This study examines the role of land use changes in determining the occurrence of urban flooding events across 42 Indian cities under current and future climate change scenarios. Landsat images for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2017 have been processed using a hybrid classification technique to determine the land use shares for all cities. A typical event-count study using newspaper archives has been conducted to create a flooding event database. A multilevel model employing logistic mixed-effects approach was used. Future projections of the occurrence of flooding events for nine models under three climate change-related Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)—2.6, 4.5, and 8.5—and three urban development scenarios have been carried out. The results suggest that cities should preserve the land uses that act as a sponge—the green, open and blue spaces. As these spaces decrease, the projected flooding events increase. Under the RCP 2.6 scenario, the number of flooding events is significantly lower (95 % confidence) than under RCPs 4.5 and 8.5. The expected flooding occurrences between RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 are not significantly different (95 % confidence) for many scenarios, suggesting that Indian cities should aim for a world temperature increase of below 2 °C, or devastating consequences are imminent. This study highlights the need for Indian cities to undertake integrated spatial planning measures for a resilient, sustainable urban future.     

The impact of the use of new technologies on farmers’ wheat yield in Ethiopia: evidence from a randomized control trial

In 2013, Ethiopia's Agricultural Transformation Agency introduced the Wheat Initiative to increase smallholder productivity. In this article, we measure the impacts of the Wheat Initiative package of technologies, and its marketing assistance component alone, on yields among a promotional group of farmers. The package includes improved techniques, improved inputs, and a guaranteed market for the crop. Relying on crop‐cut measures and farmers’ own assessments, we find that full package led to an average 14% higher yields. Implementation of the Wheat Initiative was successful in making certified seed and fertilizer accessible to farmers and increasing their uptake, though only 61% of the intervention group adopted row planting and few farmers received marketing assistance. The measured yield difference may underestimate the true yield difference associated with the technology because of incomplete adoption of the recommended practices by intervention farmers and adoption of some practices by control farmers.     

Determinants of efficiency of vegetable production in smallholder farms: The case of Ethiopia

Improving production efficiency remains as a plausible means of increasing productivity when resource reallocation, and the creation and adoption of new technologies are limited. Technical, allocative and economic efficiencies are derived from a sample of smallholder vegetable farmers in Ethiopia using parametric and non-parametric methods. The results reveal that the two methods yield similar estimates and the existence of substantial inefficiencies in production as well as efficiency differentials among farmers. The analysis of the determinants of efficiency of vegetable production using regression models show that low asset ownership, illiteracy, large family size, inadequate extension contacts, small farm size, age, low off/non-farm income and high consumer spending are the major socio-economic factors causing inefficiency of vegetable production in the study areas. A comparison of the market-driven (vegetables) with the whole-farm (crops and livestock) production efficiency indicates that lower economic efficiency scores for the former might be related to the limited access to capital markets, high consumer spending, and large family size.     

Reasons for adoption of sustainable land management practices in a changing context: A mixed approach in Thailand

A farmer’s decision to adopt sustainable land management practices often takes place in a changing context. In the Northeast Region of Thailand, rural areas face a deagrarianization process and the dominant farming system – small-scale rice farming under rainfed conditions – is losing its role as the main provider of household income. The study applies a mixed approach to investigate the reasons why farmers adopt sustainable land management practices in this region. This approach involved a quantitative assessment of factors that influence adoption and a qualitative analysis of local actors’ opinions regarding these reasons. Two major reasons were identified: the engagement in diversifying production and the willingness to reduce the amount of time household members spend farming. These two reasons relate to two strategies farmers use to adapt to ongoing changes: getting involved in changing the farm or maintaining it while limiting the effort they spend running the farm. Initiatives to enhance the uptake of sustainable land management practices in the Northeast Region of Thailand would benefit from structuring the support provided taking these two strategies into account.     

Price shock transmission: evidence from the wheat‐bread market value chain in Ethiopia

This study assesses the degree of vertical price transmission along the wheat‐bread value chain in Ethiopia. This is pursued by applying a vector error correction model and an impulse response analysis using monthly price data for the period 2000–2015. Our analysis considers transmission of price shocks across different market levels, including from the international and domestic wheat grain markets at the upstream to the domestic wheat bread market at the downstream of the value chain. The empirical findings indicate that significant cointegration exists across prices of the different market stages. There is a transmission from international prices to domestic prices at downstream markets, in particular to flour and bread prices. Prices at upstream markets are largely influenced by the domestic wholesale market. In general, the speed of adjustment is quite slow with a half‐life of about one year for restoring the equilibrium price relationship. As price margins between the different market stages in the value chain have substantially decreased in the last 15 years, higher transmission, and thus exposure to international market shocks, can be expected in the future. The results also show that causal relationships exist between prices at different market stages—with the wholesale market identified as the key market level where prices and price expectations are formed.     

Unravelling the dynamics of access to farmland in Tigray,Ethiopia: The ‘emerging land market’ revisited

This article uses ethnographic evidence from Tigray to revisit the debate on informal rural land markets in present-day Ethiopia. It explores informal farmland rental from a historico-anthropological, micro-analytical perspective in relation to the formal allocation of land use rights and to other informal land transfer practices. It shows how different rationales for land rental give rise to different socially embedded tenancy configurations. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the paper questions the appropriateness of the common idea that in Ethiopia ‘the land rental market is expanding’. It argues that research and policy thinking on land in Ethiopia could gain analytical power and relevance by adopting a less monolithic and abstract view on people's informal land transfer practices.     

The economic impacts of technology and climate change: New evidence from U.S. corn yields

Over the past century, U.S. farmers have been offered a steady stream of new agricultural technologies, and more recently, experienced climate change. Because these two events have been occurring simultaneously, identifying their separate effects is difficult, and misimputation is easy. This article explicitly examines the economics of technical change and the interaction between weather and technology as revealed in a half century of panel data on U.S. Midwest rainfed state‐average corn yields. Observed yields reflect two components: yield potential and damage to the potential caused by weather and pests. Yield potential is modeled as a stochastic production frontier where nitrogen fertilization, public corn research, and introduction and adoption of biotech corn seeds impact yield potential and excess heat impacts nitrogen productivity. The yield‐damage/damage‐control function permits biotech corn plants to abate adverse effects of weather and pest events. Results include the following: nitrogen use, public corn research, and biotech seed‐corn adoption increase yield potential; soil moisture stress reduces yield potential, and excess heat severely reduces nitrogen productivity. Biotech corn plants abate yield damage caused by soil moisture stress but not excess heat.     

Modern variety adoption and risk management in drought prone areas: insights from the sorghum farmers of eastern Ethiopia

Adoption rates of improved or modern varieties (MV) of sorghum in eastern Ethiopia are generally low. Although these MV may represent an effective means of coping with droughts, given their early maturing traits, landraces could prove to be more drought‐tolerant and better adapted to marginal production conditions. Whether MV adoption is a risk reducing technology is very much an empirical question which this article investigates using a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia in a year of extreme weather conditions. Results show that risk‐factors coupled with access to markets and social capital drive farmers’ decisions to adopt MVs. On the one hand, it appears that farmers use MVs to mitigate moderate risks. On the other hand, farmers who have been most vulnerable to extreme weather events are less likely to use MVs suggesting that MV adoption does not necessarily represent an effective means of coping with drought. Finally, findings show that MV growers are more likely to be affected by sorghum failure once controlling for exogenous production factors.