Abstract
BackgroundAdoption of improved agricultural technologies remains to be a promising strategy to achieve food security and poverty reduction in many developing countries. However, there are limited rigorous impact evaluations on the contributions of such technologies on household welfare. This paper investigates the impact of improved agricultural technology use on farm household income in eastern Ethiopia.MethodsPrimary data for the study was obtained from a random sample of 248 rural households, 119 of which are improved technology users and the rest are non-users. The research employed the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) procedure to establish the causal relationship between adoption of improved crop and livestock technologies and changes in farm income.ResultsResults from the econometric analysis show that households using improved agricultural technologies had, on average, 23,031.28 Birr (Birr is the official currency of Ethiopia. The exchange rate according to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) was 1 USD = 27.6017 Birr on 04 October 2018.) higher annual farm income compared to those households not using such technologies. Our findings highlight the importance of promoting multiple and complementary agricultural technologies among rural smallholders.ConclusionsWe suggest that rural technology generation, dissemination and adoption interventions be strengthened. Moreover, the linkage among research, extension, universities and farmers needs to be enhanced through facilitating a multistakeholders innovation platforms.
Highlights
Adoption of improved agricultural technologies remains to be a promising strategy to achieve food security and poverty reduction in many developing countries
The reasons could be that female farmers have difficulty accessing inputs [36] and other norms and beliefs prevailing in the society [37]
Land size, and Soil and water conservation (SWC) practices were the significant variables, while non-/offfarm income, access to irrigation, and asset value were found not significantly varying between the two groups of respondents. These results indicate that farm households who owned more livestock, operated a relatively large plot of land, and participated in SWC practices had a better chance of improved agricultural technology use due to the fact that such households are better-off in taking risks associated with new technologies and practices, or these households received preferential treatment by the promoters of improved agricultural technologies
Summary
Research design and study area This study relied on an ex-post data collection from a sample of improved agricultural technology users and non-users. In order to serve as a comparison group for the purpose of impact evaluation, random samples were drawn from a list of non-users of improved agricultural technologies. This list contained a total of 1,935 households – Girawa (259), Kombolcha (344), Sofi (240), Meta (297), Haramaya (458), and Babile (337). Descriptive statistics, such as mean and standard deviation, were used to present summary statistics of quantitative data pertaining to socio-demographic, economic, and institutional characteristics of sample households Inferential statistics, such as t-test and Chi-Square (χ 2) test, were used to assess the existence of statistically significant differences in observations between improved agricultural technology user and non-user groups of respondents. The Likelihood Ratio (LR) test on the joint significance of all covariates in the (Logit) model should not be rejected before matching, but should be rejected afterwards [31]
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