Abstract
This paper builds on the literature surrounding the economic consequences of land fragmentation, focusing on the effects of such fragmentation on food insecurity rather than agricultural productivity. Building on existing literature, it accounts for concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation, its measurement, and the importance of considering impacts in terms of different welfare metrics. Using data from the Living Standards and Measurement Survey (LSMS) that are well‐suited to addressing these issues, the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity in Ethiopia. This result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed. Further, the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security. This is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types.
Highlights
Assessments of the economic consequences of land fragmentation - the division of holdings into discrete parcels that are dispersed over a wide area but operated by a single farmer and his or her household - have a long history in agricultural economics and related disciplines. Shaw (1963), referring to his study sites near Dubrovnick in the former Yugoslavia, laments that the fragmentation of land holdings led to lost labor time as farmers spent many hours walking from their homes to their dispersed plots
Building on insights found in Ali, Deininger, and Ronchi (2018) and Veljanoska (2016), we address issues of endogeneity by exploiting a unique natural experiment, Ethiopia’s history of land reform and allocation which we argue represents an exogenous source of household-level land fragmentation
Our data source, Ethiopia’s Living Standards and Measurement Study-Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), contains information on household food security outcomes allowing us to assess the impact of land fragmentation on welfare metrics in terms of food security
Summary
Assessments of the economic consequences of land fragmentation - the division of holdings into discrete parcels that are dispersed over a wide area but operated by a single farmer and his or her household - have a long history in agricultural economics and related disciplines. Shaw (1963), referring to his study sites near Dubrovnick in the former Yugoslavia, laments that the fragmentation of land holdings led to lost labor time as farmers spent many hours walking from their homes to their dispersed plots. Our data source, Ethiopia’s Living Standards and Measurement Study-Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), contains information on household food security outcomes allowing us to assess the impact of land fragmentation on welfare metrics in terms of food security. 3. Land data in the LSMS-ISA are collected at three levels of aggregation: parcels; fields; and plots. In pastoral areas (Afar and Somali) most plots are acquired from local leaders or via inheritance but a considerable fraction (38 and 27 percent respectively) are acquired “without permission” Where this has occurred, land acquisition and fragmentation becomes partly endogenous. Land acquisition and fragmentation becomes partly endogenous Given this feature, along with the fact that pastoralism, not sedentary agriculture, is the principal livelihood strategy in Afar and Somali, we exclude these two regions from our subsequent work. This index has three properties (Demetriou, Stillwell, and See 2013): 1. Fragmentation increases proportional to n
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
