Abstract
Conservation tillage (CT) options are among the most rapidly spreading land preparation and crop establishment techniques globally. In South Asia, CT has spread dramatically over the last decade, a result of strong policy support and increasing availability of appropriate machinery. Although many studies have analyzed the yield and profitability of CT systems, the technical efficiency impacts accrued by farmers utilizing CT have received considerably less attention. Employing a DEA framework, we isolated bias-corrected meta-frontier technical efficiencies and meta-technology ratios of three CT options adopted by wheat farmers in Bangladesh, including bed planting (BP), power tiller operated seeding (PTOS), and strip tillage (ST), compared to a control group of farmers practicing traditional tillage (TT). Endogenous switching regression was subsequently employed to overcome potential self-selection bias in the choice of CT, in order to robustly estimate efficiency factors. Among the tillage options studied, PTOS was the most technically efficient, with an average meta-technology ratio of 0.90, followed by BP (0.88), ST (0.83), and TT (0.67). The average predicted meta-frontier technical efficiency for the CT non-adopters under a counterfactual scenario (0.80) was significantly greater (P = 0.00) than current TE scores (0.65), indicating the potential for sizeable profitability increases with CT adoption. Conversely, the counterfactual TE of non-adopters was 23% greater than their DEA efficiency, also indicating efficiency gains from CT adoption. Our results provide backing for agricultural development programs in South Asia that aim to increase smallholder farmers’ income through the application of CT as a pathway towards poverty reduction.
Highlights
Over 84% of the globe’s agricultural land is managed by farmers cultivating less than two hectares, the majority of whom focus primarily on the production of staple cereals such as rice, maize, and wheat (FAO 2014)
Viewed as an attractive option to break the current stagnation in productivity increases for the major cereal crops, while addressing the negative environmental consequences of agriculture, interest in conservation tillage is growing globally and in South Asia
Using farmer survey data from three districts in northwest Bangladesh, we evaluated the impact of adopting three conservation tillage (CT) and machineaided crop establishment options compared to traditional tillage with seed broadcasting by hand, in terms of their technical efficiency
Summary
Over 84% of the globe’s agricultural land is managed by farmers cultivating less than two hectares, the majority of whom focus primarily on the production of staple cereals such as rice, maize, and wheat (FAO 2014). CT examples include zero- and strip-tillage, often with residues retained as mulch, machine-operated shallow-till seeding, and crop establishment on minimally tilled but raised beds reported to increase irrigation use efficiency (Aravindakshan et al 2015; Gathala et al 2016), an issue of importance given increasing water pumping costs in Bangladesh (Qureshi et al 2015) These approaches share similarities with conservation agriculture (CA) that aims to consistently reduce or eliminate tillage (Gathala et al 2015). We consider three of the most popular CT technologies adopted by farmers, including bed planting (BP), strip tillage (ST), and reduced tillage machine-aided line sowing using a PTOS or power-tiller operated seeder (see Krupnik et al 2013 for further description) These are contrasted with farmers’ traditional practices of repetitive tillage, broadcast seeding and crop establishment. We use the term CT referring to the practice of reducing the frequency of tillage passes in conjunction with the usage of mechanical seeding equipment (Table 1)
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