Household nutrition and income impacts of using dairy technologies in mixed crop–livestock production systems

Abstract

Technologies like improved breeds of dairy cows and improved forages have the potential to significantly increase dairy cow productivity and farmers’ profits in developing countries. However, adoption of such technologies has been low in Ethiopia, despite numerous efforts to disseminate the technologies in the past. Some studies argue that adoption of technologies is low because welfare effects of the technologies could be insignificant or negative to certain groups of farmers. This article employed propensity score matching and inverse probability weighting estimator with regression adjustment to examine the difference in household nutrition and income between adopters and nonadopters of dairy technologies in rural Ethiopia. We find that adoption of cross-bred dairy cows and improved forages increases household nutrition and income. The significant household nutrition and income impact for adopters support the notion that many Ethiopian smallholders have not adopted dairy technologies because adopters and nonadopters of dairy technologies have inherent differences in welfare outcome potentials. The results suggest that interventions that enhance access to farm resources and address barriers to input and output value chains could improve adoption of dairy technologies.