Market Imperfections and Land Productivity in the Ethiopian Highlands

This study analyses how market imperfections affect land productivity in a degraded low‐potential cereal‐livestock economy in the Ethiopian highlands. A wide array of variables is used to control for land quality in the analysis. Results of three different selection models were compared with least squares models using the HC3 heteroskedasticity‐consistent covariance matrix estimator. Market imperfections in labour and land markets were found to affect land productivity. Land productivity was positively correlated with household male and female labour force per unit of land. Female‐headed households achieved much lower land productivity than male‐headed households. Old age of household heads was also correlated with lower land productivity. Imperfections in the rental market for oxen appeared to cause overstocking of oxen by some households. Conservation technologies had no significant positive short‐run effect on land productivity. The main results were consistent across the different econometric models.     

Poverty Reduction Effects of Agricultural Technology Adoption: The Case of Improved Cassava Varieties in Nigeria

We use DNA‐fingerprinting to estimate the poverty reduction effect of adoption of improved cassava varieties in Nigeria. We estimate the counterfactual household income distribution of cassava producers by combining farm‐level treatment effects with a market‐level model. Our results suggest that adoption of improved cassava varieties has led to a 4.6 percentage point reduction in poverty, though this is sensitive to the measurement of adoption status. Therefore, accurate measurement of adoption is crucial for a more credible estimate of the poverty reduction effect of adoption. Our analysis also suggests that farmers who are more likely to be adopters are also likely to face higher structural costs. Addressing structural barriers that make improved technologies less profitable for the poor would therefore be important to increase the poverty reduction effect of improved cassava varieties.     

Determinants of food security in Southern Ethiopia at the household level

In the early 1980s, a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security, following Amartya Sens (1981) claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern, affecting the poor's access to food, than a supply concern, affecting availability of food at the national level. Despite the wide acceptance of Sen's thinking, many controversies including the relative importance of supply‐side versus demand‐side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles. This study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following Singh et al. (1986) , and parses out the relative importance of supply‐side versus demand‐side variables in determining household food security in southern Ethiopia. Based on results of a test of full/reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security, we conclude that the supply‐side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand‐side variables.     

The structural transformation of African agriculture and rural spaces: introduction to a special section†

This article briefly introduces a special section on the structural transformation of African agriculture and rural spaces. The five papers that comprise this special section all draw on household‐level microdata to explore important aspects of the salient changes taking place in the world's most agrarian and poorest continent.     

Agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement: improved maize varieties in rural Ethiopia

Adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households, including increased productivity, incomes, and food consumption. However, possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature. This article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties (IMVs) on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural Ethiopia. The conceptual linkage between IMV adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model. Instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height‐for‐age and weight‐for‐age z‐scores to be positive and significant. Quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes. Finally, by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation, it is found that the increase in own‐produced maize consumption is the major channel through which IMV adoption affects child nutrition.     

Analysis of Farmers' Preferences for Development Intervention Programs: A Case Study of Subsistence Farmers from East Ethiopian Highlands

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to better understand farmers' perception of the relevance of different development intervention programs. Farmers' subjective ranking of agricultural problems and their preference for development intervention are elicited using a stated preference method. The factors influencing these preferences are determined using a random utility model. The study is based on a survey conducted in the Hunde‐Lafto area of the East Ethiopian Highlands. Individual interviews were conducted with 145 randomly selected farm households using semi‐structured questionnaires. The study suggests that drought, soil erosion and shortage of cultivable land are high priority agricultural production problems for farmers. Low market prices for farm products and high prices of purchased inputs also came out as major problems for the majority of farmers. Farmers' preferences for development intervention fall into four major categories: market, irrigation, resettlement, and soil and water conservation. Multinomial logit analysis of the factors influencing these preferences revealed that farmer's specific socio‐economic circumstances and subjective ranking of agricultural problems play a major role. It is also shown that preferences for some interventions are complementary and need to be addressed simultaneously. Recognition and understanding of these factors, affecting the acceptability of development policies for micro level implementation, will have a significant contribution to improve macro level policy formulation.     

Does Schooling Promote Economic Growth?

Abstract: This paper revisits the debate on schooling and economic growth with particular reference to the case of sub‐Saharan Africa. Following the endogenous growth model developed by Lucas (1988) that considers human capital as one factor of production and schooling as a means of human capital accumulation, two results of schooling are explicitly stated: accumulation of privately owned and publicly owned human capital. By developing a growth estimating equation containing these two types of schooling results from the model and confronting it with empirical data, the hypothesis that schooling has got growth effect is tested. The analytic result suggests that in the indicated economies, for the period covered by the study (1966–2000), schooling that leads to accumulation of publicly owned human capital is associated with per capita income growth. Likewise, the analysis provides supporting evidence for the argument that primary schooling level is more associated with growth than other levels of schooling.     

Impact of modern agricultural technologies on smallholder welfare: Evidence from Tanzania and Ethiopia

This paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households (700 in Ethiopia and 613 in Tanzania). The causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression. This helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions. Our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure (in per adult equivalent terms) in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty, higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk. An analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed, access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption.     

Adoption and impacts of sustainable intensification practices in Ghana

Sustainable agricultural intensification requires the use of multiple agricultural technologies in an integrated manner to enhance productivity while conserving the natural resource base. This study analyses the adoption and impacts of sustainable intensification practices (SIPs) using a dataset from Ghana. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was estimated to assess the adoption of multiple SIPs. Moreover, we used a multivalued semi-parametric treatment effect (MVTE) model to estimate the effects of adopting multiple SIPs on maize productivity. The MVP model results show, among others, that access to market, capital, and information/knowledge would enhance the adoption of SIPs. The MVTE model results show that a higher number of SIPs is associated with higher productivity which is more visible when commercial inputs are used in combination with cultural practices. These results have the following policy implications. First, they imply that good rural infrastructure and agricultural services such as rural road network, village-level input delivery system, input credit, and multiple information/knowledge sharing approach (instead of the conventional singular formal information/knowledge sharing approach) can enhance adoption. Second, the results suggest that promoting an integrated use of technologies, instead of a single technology, would have a positive impact on farm productivity and farm household income.