Examining the adoption of agroforestry in Southern Rwanda: a double hurdle approach

Abstract

This article analyzes determinants of farmers’ adoption decisions for agroforestry practices and the extent of adoption in rural Rwanda. The study also investigates the key constraints hindering smallholder farmers to adopt agroforestry. The study uses the cross-sectional data from a sample of 615 farmers and Cragg’s double-hurdle model is used for the empirical estimation. The findings show that farmers’ land ownership, cooperative membership, farming experience, market orientation, credit access, and distance to the market mainly determine adoption of agroforestry. Policies that enhance adoption of agroforestry should be consider the formation of farmers’ cooperatives and provision of door-to-door education to uneducated farmers. In addition, strategies for supporting liquidity-constrained households to get continuous and increased access to credit should be put forward. Agricultural and resources development policies should direct efforts toward increased access to institutional support services such as better extension to farmers through cooperatives to promote the adoption of agroforestry.

Keywords:

• Agroforestry
• Smallholder farmers
• Adoption
• Constraints
• Double-hurdle model

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the University of Rwanda through UR – Sweden Programme. We would also like to thank the enumerators and the data manager for their valuable cooperation during data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).