ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE ADOPTION ON CROP PRODUCTIVITY UNDER RAIN-FED SYSTEM (ETHIOPIA): A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH ANALYSIS

Abstract

Few initiatives have been made to raise awareness of Conservation Agriculture (CA) and how it has improved the lives of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. This study seeks to analyze the crop productivity impact of CA in the Farta district of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional household data was collected in 2018/19 in the two agro-ecological zones of the study area. Mean comparison of CA farmers’ characteristics with respect to count of adult males in family and number of farm plots fragmented; and educational attainment, differ statistically from their counterparts. The impact of CA adoption was estimated using counterfactual outcome approach by employing Propensity Score Matching (PSM) based on a sample of CA matched with the non-CA farmers. Initially a binary outcome variable indicating whether a farmer adopted CA was estimated as a primary outcome while crop productivity as a secondary outcome variable of interest measured in kg/hectare of farmland in logarithmic form. From a total of 322 subjects included 168 CA and 154 non-CA farmers, four treated cases (CA farmers) were discarded from the analysis using estimator of kernel matching with no bandwidth. The Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) was used as a relevant statistical measure. The advantage was taken by CA farmers as CA practice has brought increment in 1.08 kilogram of crop produced per hectare of farmland. Despite CA’s practice found with small effect as observed at T-value of 1.65 at less than 1 percent level of significance. Possible reasons may include farmers’ interest to increase production at the expense of cultivating large farmland size for crop production and the failure to implement the full practices necessary to improve crop productivity. The project's findings highlighted the need for policies that support and enable a more frequent and successfully established communication link between farmers with agricultural experts at the regional, zonal, and district levels, as well as agricultural extension personnel at the local level. There should be more attention to sustainable agricultural practices through adopting crop and soil management system on farmland, improving soil quality consistently for improved crop productivity.