Advancing climate-smart-agriculture in developing drylands: Joint analysis of the adoption of multiple on-farm soil and water conservation technologies in West African Sahel

Water stress and soil infertility are the greatest constraining factors for higher agricultural productivity in drylands, prompting the current interest in soil and water conservation (SWC) practices in water-constrained regions. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of challenges surrounding the adoption of SWC practices in these regions, we used a joint analysis framework combining both multivariate and ordered probit models to analyze adoption-decisions for eleven on-farm SWC practices. Our case study, involving 500 farmers from a representative West African Sahelian zone, revealed that although the adoption of SWC practices is widespread in the West African drylands, there is still an important potential to improve and upscale their specific adoption rates. Almost all farmers (99%) used at least one of the eleven practices considered in this study, whereas specific adoption rates ranged from 5% for contour vegetation barriers to 87% for manure application. More than 70% of the farmers used up to three practices only, and less than 30% used between four to nine practices. Many practices are interdependent, with some practices being complementary and others substitutable. The analysis of the determinants of the adoption and the intensity of adoption revealed that SWC practices are labor-, knowledge- and capital-intensive. We found that the major drivers of farmers’ decisions to adopt, as well as to intensify the use of, most SWC practices are the presence of children (aged 6 to 14) in the household, land holding, land tenure, awareness and training on SWC and access to alternative – but non-agricultural labor constraining – cash sources such as remittance and cash farming. A higher number of migrating household members increases the probability of intensifying the use of SWC practices, but only when this is in line with the household’s land endowment and labor needs for farm activities. This comprehensive study will be of significance for a finer understanding of SWC practices in West African Sahel. More generally, it will likely help policy makers to upscale the adoption of sustainable SWC practices for the advance of climate-smart agriculture in developing drylands.     

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     

Farmers’ objectives as determinants of organic farming adoption: the case of Catalonian vineyard production

This article assesses the decision to adopt organic farming practices. We use Duration Analysis (DA) to determine why farmers adopt organic farming practices and what influences the timing of adoption. We extend previous studies by including farmers’ objectives, risk preferences, and agricultural policies as covariates in the DA model. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is used as a multicriteria decision‐making methodology to measure farmers’ objectives. The empirical analysis uses farm‐level data from a sample of vineyard farms in the Spanish region of Catalonia. Farmers’ objectives are found to influence the conversion decision. Moreover, farmers who are not risk averse are more likely to adopt organic farming. Results point to the policy changes that have been most relevant in motivating adoption of organic practices.     

Farmers’ perceptions and management of risk in rice/shrimp farming systems in South-West Coastal Bangladesh

Farmers in Bangladesh face considerable risk due to fluctuations in biophysical and economic conditions, but the response to these risks is poorly understood. In particular, there is a need to better understand the endogenous management of risk in the rice/shrimp farming systems that have emerged in the inner coastal zone of Bangladesh. This paper draws on a case study of a typical rice/shrimp farming village in Khulna District to explore: (a) farmers’ perceptions of risks and their management responses, (b) risk-return trade-offs within small-, medium-, and large-farm households, and (c) the role of other farm and non-farm activities in mitigating risks to household livelihoods. Farm-level data were collected through a reconnaissance survey, a village census, household case studies, and a sample survey of 73 households. Representative farm budgets were constructed for the three farm-size classes. The key performance indicators calculated were gross margin (GM), net income (NI), and GM per workday of family labour. The riskiness of the rice/shrimp system was assessed for each farm type using farmers’ estimates of low, normal, and high yields and prices to specify triangular distributions. Cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) for GM, NI, and GM per workday were generated. A whole-farm economic analysis was also conducted to assess the relative contributions of different sources of income for each farm type. With access to saline water for shrimp farming in the dry season and fresh water for rice in the wet season, farmers have developed and progressively adapted an alternating rice/shrimp farming system that has minimised the trade-offs between the two crops and provides a good return to household and village resources for all farm types. The system is subject to significant production and market risks, especially the shrimp component. However, farmers have clearly perceived these risks and ameliorated them through a range of production, marketing, and management strategies. With these risk management practices, the rice/shrimp cropping system is economically viable, given the current variation in yields and prices. The greater risk associated with the shrimp component was offset by the renewed stability of the rice component over the past decade, and the risks of the whole cropping system were offset by other farm and non-farm sources of livelihood. Development interventions need to work with farmers to provide further options (suitable rice varieties, solutions to shrimp disease, improved village and transport infrastructure) if this resilience is to be maintained.     

The influence of farming styles on the management of the Iveragh uplands,southwest Ireland

The links between farming practices and biodiversity is well established. This paper develops a farm typology based on eighty hill sheep farmers on the biodiversity rich uplands of the Iveragh peninsula, SW Ireland. Despite outward appearances considerable diversity was found to exist within their livelihood strategies and farming styles. Using a combination of a detailed farm management survey and grazing state evaluation, the farms were classified into four distinct types – environmental stewards, support optimisers, traditionalists and production maximisers. Our results suggest that knowledge of the different farming styles is critical for more effective biodiversity conservation and for the design of more targeted agricultural and agri-environment policies. We suggest the need to move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach, which on the Iveragh currently rewards the most overgrazed farms with the highest agri-environment payments.     

Retirement farming or sustainable growth – land transfer choices for farmers without a successor

Ireland’s agriculture is characterised by an ageing farmer population and small average farm sizes. These structural issues are shared by a number of European countries and have been identified as barriers to sustainable growth in the sector. While farms with an identified successor usually enter a path of expansion and growth, farms without a successor at some point follow a route of winding down and extensification. Such retirement farming could potentially become an issue for food security and sustainable land use. Understanding the retirement decisions of farmers without a successor is key to address this issue. To this end a survey was conducted with Irish farmers including questions surrounding succession and retirement. About half of the surveyed farmers did not have a successor and two thirds of those did not intend to fully retire from active farming in the future. A logistic regression analysis of the collected data showed that placing a high value on family tradition in farming and only receiving a state pension had a negative effect on the intention to retire, while being aware of changing pension ages had a positive effect. A follow up qualitative study explored the perceptions of farmers without a successor regarding various land transfer options. The participants mainly anticipated negative consequences arising from selling the farm and full retirement such as the loss of land and the end of the farming activity. Other options such as the long-term leasing of part of the land or entering into a partnership with a younger farmer were regarded as having more positive consequences. These included a lowering of the workload, allowing a continuing involvement in farm work, and the ability to be able to stay on the farm.     

Innovation and networks in New Zealand farming

The New Zealand government seeks to dramatically increase the value of agricultural exports while concurrently protecting the natural environment. Thus, farmers are expected to adopt pro‐environmental management practices and novel farm technologies. We show that farmers are more likely to adopt new practices and technologies after seeing them demonstrated, but earlier evidence indicates that demonstration is most effectively undertaken within farmer networks. We use multivariate regression to identify the traits of livestock farmers who are innovative by focusing on adoption of pro‐environmental management practices (managing nutrients, soils and pugging) and novel farm technologies (e.g., windmills, computer‐based management systems, automatic sensors and specialised grasses), considering both numbers adopted and timing. We find that dairy farmers are more innovative than other livestock farmers and that higher education levels and stronger environmental norms within the family are strongly associated with innovativeness. In addition, we find that innovators and early adopters have larger networks than other farmers. Moreover, the composition of these networks is much more varied than the networks of less innovative farmers. These findings imply that innovative farmers in New Zealand may also act as connectors for the diffusion of new ideas in farming.     

Combining management plans and payment schemes for targeted grassland conservation within the Habitats Directive in Saxony,Eastern Germany

As central policies for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes in the European Union (EU), the Habitats Directive and Agri-environmental programmes (AEP) have largely failed to halt biodiversity loss. In response, the German federal state of Saxony combined the instrument of management plans with AEPs to support the implementation of the Habitat Directive. In this study, we investigate the determinants of a farmers’ decisions to adjust their farming practices. Our data set consists of a quantitative survey with 131 farmers conducted between 2004 and 2011, complemented by implementation data from 333 grassland-plots. Determinants of farmers’ decisions to conserve grassland were estimated using a multinomial logit model. Our results show that a combination of management plans and AEPs can increase farmers’ disposition to adopt nature conservation measures. As central determinants, structural and location factors as well as the complementary provisiion of specifically designed AEPs increase farmers’ willingness to adopt conservation practices for grassland management. It can be concluded that additional costs are a major barrier to farmers’ adoption, particularly to those farms directing their farm management towards the optimisation of productivity and profitability . The findings highlight the complementary potential of integrated policy packages to incentivise specific measures of nature conservation within the framework of the Habitats Directive.     

Contract farming,contract design and smallholder livelihoods*

Contract farming has gained in importance in many developing countries. Previous studies analysed effects of contracts on smallholder farmers’ welfare, yet mostly without considering that different types of contractual relationships exist. Here, we examine associations between contract farming and farm household income in the oil palm sector of Ghana, explicitly differentiating between two types of contracts, namely simple marketing contracts and more comprehensive resource-providing contracts. Moreover, we look at different income sources to better understand how both contracts are linked to farmers’ livelihood strategies. We use cross-sectional survey data and regression models. Issues of endogeneity are addressed through measuring farmers' willingness-to-participate in contracts and using this indicator as an additional covariate. Farmers with both types of contracts have significantly higher household incomes than farmers without a contract, yet with notable differences in terms of the income sources. Farmers with a marketing contract allocate more household labour to off-farm activities and thus have higher off-farm income. In contrast, farmers with a resource-providing contract have larger oil palm plantations and thus higher farm incomes. The findings suggest that the two contract types are associated with different livelihood strategies and that disaggregated analysis of different income sources is important to better understand possible underlying mechanisms.     

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.     

Land fragmentation,climate change adaptation,and food security in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia

Household food security among smallholder farmers is sensitive to a variable and changing climate, requiring farmers in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia to adopt new land management practices to improve food security. Agricultural land in the Gamo Highlands is highly fragmented. The extent to which land fragmentation (LF) moderates the food security effects of sustainable land management (SLM) practices is unknown. This study used probit and Poisson models to explain this relationship. The study found that food insecurity was severe during the food shortfall season. LF provides more potential opportunities for improving food security than challenges. Furthermore, SLM practices had both positive and negative effects on food security and their effects were conditioned by the magnitude of LF. Reducing severe LF through the assembly of small parcels into larger heterogeneous plot clusters could enhance food security by exploiting synergies between adaptation practices and LF.     

Sustainability of fish pond culture in rural farming systems of Central and Western Cameroon

In Sub-Saharan Africa, fish ponds are often an integral part of farming systems but have suffered from a lack of viability and sustainability. The present study aims to understand the strategies used by fish farmers to overcome economic and environmental constraints. In 2008 and 2009, fish farmers were surveyed in Central and Western Cameroon, and the fish production systems were classified by cluster analysis. Four broad types were identified according to the complexity of household operations. The development of extensive systems (large-scale and low-input) in rural areas of central Cameroon is induced mainly by abundant available land. For semi-intensive systems in both regions (small-scale and high-input in the Western Region, large-scale and high-input in peri-urban areas of the Central Region), horizontal integration is not sufficient to make fish production profitable and sustainable. More intensive fish farms tend towards vertical integration, in which farmers establish close links with input suppliers. Main causes of low productivity of semi-intensive systems (1–2?t/ha/yr) are both lack of knowledge of fish farming principles by farmers and lack of technical improvement by extension agents and researchers which need to consider the local complexity of farming systems to develop and intensify fish production. The adaptation of development strategies to socio-economic and environmental contexts is a necessity to hope for an increase in fish pond aquaculture production in Africa.     

What carbon farming activities are farmers likely to adopt? A best–worst scaling survey

Transferring carbon from the atmosphere into terrestrial sinks through carbon sequestration practices (so-called ‘carbon farming’) has been proposed as an important component in Australia’s efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. We use a Best–worst scaling survey to determine which carbon sequestration practices farmers would be most and least likely to adopt, and what factors were most important in any potential adoption decision. The survey was distributed to dryland cropping and mixed crop-livestock farmers in Western Australia. Farmers ranked improved soil quality and reduced soil erosion as the most important potential co-benefits of carbon farming. Factors discouraging farmers from participating in carbon farming contracts were policy and carbon price uncertainty and the uncertain impact of carbon farming practices on productivity and profitability. Farmers had strong preferences for stubble retention and no-till cropping practices as carbon farming strategies. The practices that farmers preferred least were applying biochar and planting trees. Farm and farmer characteristics, including (lack of) awareness of carbon farming policies and opinions about climate change, influence the potential willingness to adopt different carbon farming practices. Given recent policy uncertainty and farmer preferences revealed in this study, it is important to communicate potential co-benefits (rather than opportunities to earn compensation or carbon credits) to increase farmers’ engagement in carbon sequestration activities.     

A discussion of the market and policy failures associated with the adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops

Weed control in the U.S. Midwest has become increasingly herbicide-centric due to the adoption of herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops in the 1990s. That integrated weed management (IWM) practices, including ecological and mechanical controls, are scarcely used is concerning. IWM would be a more sustainable form of farming for two reasons. First, it would reduce the negative health and environmental externalities associated with herbicide use. Second, it would reduce the selection pressure on weed populations and the development of weed resistance to some herbicides, thereby reducing the uncertainty of the long-term effectiveness of herbicidal weed control. In this context, we develop an economic framework to clarify the interplay among the different market failures that either contribute to the herbicidal ‘lock-in’ or make it problematic. We then analyse the evidence for and perceptions of these market failures based on twenty-four semi-structured interviews with farmers and experts conducted in 2017, as well as on discussions in the academic literature. To this end, we put into perspective the possible self-reinforcing effects in the adoption path of HT crops, such as increasing farm size, changes in farm equipment, increasing incentives for simplified crop rotations, and the loss of practical knowledge of IWM practices.     

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.     

Renters,landlords, and farmland stewardship

Are farmers better stewards of the land they own than the land they rent from others? We answer this question using a data set that identifies Ontario farmers’ conservation practices on their own land as well as the land they rent. Using a fixed‐effects regression approach, we find that the role of tenure varies for different types of conservation practices. Farmers were found to be just as likely to adopt a machinery‐related practice such as conservation tillage on their rented land as that land which they own. On the other hand, farmers were found to be less likely to adopt site‐specific conservation practices such as planting cover crops on rented land. However, this effect diminishes as the expected length of the rental relationship increases when the landlord has a farming background.     

Off‐farm employment and reasons for entering farming as determinants of production enterprise selection in US agriculture

In today’s agriculture, farmers consider off‐farm employment and lifestyle goals in complex ways to select production enterprises. Data from USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey were used to examine how off‐farm employment and ‘reasons for entering farming’ influence production enterprise selection in US agriculture. A two‐stage analysis with a multivariate tobit model was used to examine the impact of off‐farm employment as influenced by government farm programme payments, reasons for entering farming, demographics and location on production enterprise selection. Results underscore the impacts of reasons for entering farming and off‐farm employment on production enterprise choice and provide implications for policy development. The study highlights the importance of government farm programme payments in production enterprise selection by US farmers.     

Farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change under various property rights: A case study of maize farming in northern Benin (West Africa)

Making the assumption that property rights might determine whether farmers adopt particular strategies, this study aims at modelling farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change by focusing on their property rights – declined as institutional arrangements on land and rights on land – as well as their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The case study took place in northern Benin (West Africa). In this zone, 308 farmers producing maize and adapting to climate change were randomly sampled. The study was conducted by a survey method on respondents using structured interviews based on a questionnaire. A simultaneous modelling using a Multivariate Probit (MVP) model highlighted that socio-economic and demographic characteristics, institutional arrangements on land, and rights on land determine the farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change. The land ownership has a positive effect on the decision to adopt any adaptation strategy. Subsequently, securing farmers’ property rights would help to enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change.