Impact of smallholder farmers’ climate-smart adaptation practices on wheat yield in southern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This study explored factors that determine smallholder farmers’ climate change adaptation practices and their impact on wheat yield in the Lemo district of southern Ethiopia. Focus group discussions and stakeholder consultations were used to supplement survey data collected from 537 wheat smallholder producers. We performed an impact evaluation analysis by combining endogenous switching regression (ESR) with propensity score matching (PSM) model to address the issue of unobserved biases. The study indicates that gender, farmers’ education level, farming experience, cooperative membership, access to extension services, and weather information were significant determinants of smallholder household decisions for climate change adaptation practices. Both ESR and PSM models revealed that smallholder farmers’ adaptation practices significantly enhanced wheat yield by 34.35%. This implies that climate-smart practices adopted by smallholder farmers are vital for improving and sustaining wheat yield. Thus, our findings suggest that policy actions should consider existing smallholder farmers’ knowledge and practices in policy actions aimed at mitigating climate change impacts to sustain agricultural productivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate-smart agriculture
• climate change impact
• endogenous switching
• propensity score matching
• crop yield

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Kebele is the lowest administrative unit in Ethiopia

2 Teff (Eragrostis teff) is small size and staple local cereal originated from Ethiopia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71873050].

Notes on contributors

Dessalegn A. Sedebo

Dessalegn A. Sedebo is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, China. His research interest is mainly focusing on livelihood diversification and food security, adaptation of climate-smart practices and crop production efficiency, impact evaluation of agricultural technology adoption. He has worked as a lecturer and researcher of economics at Mizan-Tepi University, Ethiopia. He is also a research fellow at the Ethiopian policy study institute.

Gucheng Li

Dr. Gucheng Li is a professor at the College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, China. His research interest includes Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Production Economics, in particular focusing on production efficiency, adaptation to climate change and agriculture, technology adoption and farm performance. He is currently also working as the dean of the College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University.

Bekele G. Etea

Bekele G. Etea is a Ph.D. holder in Agricultural Economics and Management. His research interest area is rural income diversification and food security, climate change and food security. Currently, he is working as a researcher and teaching staff at the college of business and economics of Ambo University, Ethiopia.

Kidane A. Abebe

Kidane A. Abebe is a Ph.D. holder in Agricultural Economics and Management and assistant professor at the college of business and economics of Ambo University, Ethiopia. His research interest focuses mainly on agricultural marketing, transaction cost economics, economics of measurement, and sustainable rural development. In addition, he has a keen interest in climate change and food security in rural and peri-urban areas.

John K. Ahiakpa

John K. Ahiakpa is an agribusiness management and training consultant with Research Desk Consulting Ltd (https://researchdesk.consulting/) in Ghana and a Ph.D. scholar at the Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China. He had worked on the N2Africa project as a data manager and research associate and with the USAID-funded ‘Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development’ (EHELD) program in Liberia.

Yibeltal Arega

Yibeltal Arega is a Ph.D. holder in Bioinformatics. His background is Statistics, and working ten years at the University of Gondar as an assistance professor position. Currently he is working as a postdoctoral position at New York university, USA. His research interest is statistical modeling in different field of study. Mostly he apply statistical modeling on the field of health, agriculture and economics data.

Zhang Anran

Zhang Anran is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, China. Her main research focuses on the agricultural technology adoption behavior of farmers, agricultural production trusteeship, agricultural technical efficiency, and climate impact adaptations.