Abstract
Using household survey data from a sample of about 2305 households selected from eighteen states in Nigeria, this paper analyses the impact of irrigation technology usage on crop yield, crop income and household food security in Nigeria among smallholder farmers. The logistic regression estimate revealed that years of education, household size, rainfall information, access to credit, regional dummies are the main drivers of usage decision. The results of the linear regression with endogenous treatment effects showed that irrigation technology use is positively related to crop yield, crop income and household food security. In consistence, the impact analysis using propensity score matching (PSM) also showed a significant and positive effect of irrigation technology use on crop yield, crop income and household food security. We suggest to policy makers, implementers, and any funding agencies with similar interest to further capitalize and scale up the irrigation technology facilities, especially for the poor households, and create more awareness to improve the livelihood of rural households. However, despite the positive impact of irrigation technology use, we contend that other sustainable irrigation sources, such as rainwater harvesting should be used due to possible environmental impact in the excessive use of irrigation technology. Moreover, rained agriculture can be improved with other farming techniques such as agroforestry and soil and water conservation practices.
Highlights
In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), agriculture forms the backbone of livelihood for majority of the population [1] especially rural households [2]
The logistic regression estimate revealed that years of education, household size, rainfall information, access to credit, regional dummies are the main drivers of usage decision
Our estimate is in consistence with this submission as we found that the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of the irrigation technology use on crop yield for the users was 1954.66 kg/ha for nearest neighbour matching (NNM) and 2354.66 kg/ha for kernel-based matching (KBM), this shows that the causal effect of irrigation technology use on crop yield is between 1954.66 kg/ha and 2354.66 kg/ha
Summary
In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), agriculture forms the backbone of livelihood for majority of the population [1] especially rural households [2]. The major bottleneck to further increase in agricultural production is the scarcity of agricultural water [6]. Irrigation is a method for improving natural production by increasing the productivity of available land and thereby expanding total agricultural production especially in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world [14]. Irrigated agriculture is one of the components of world food production, which has contributed significantly to maintaining world food security and to the reduction of income poverty especially the rural households [15]. In many areas where rainfall is inadequate, unreliable, or incorrectly timed, reducing the
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