A discussion on the outcomes of adopted agricultural technological products and specific sustainable development goals: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

Establishing a link between specific sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the outcomes of adopted agricultural technological products is lacking in developing countries. Therefore, this study aims to address food security SDG 02 by adopting crop protection products of multinational brands versus sub-standard crop protection products SDG 12 by smallholder farming households. We employ endogenous switching probit models using a survey of smallholder farming households in the cotton-wheat zone in Pakistan. Full information maximum likelihood estimates illustrate that comparative advantage guide the adoption of crop protection products of multinational brands (CMBs). Our findings suggest that adopting CMBs rather than sub-standard crop protection products may translate as a responsible farming practice if assuming the use of crop protection products is inevitable. In sum, CMBs enhance food security and can play a vital role in the current debate on responsible consumption and production, particularly for sustainable development. Our findings also indicate that promoting agricultural extension information via radio broadcasts has a significant and positive relationship with adoption. Hence, it stands out as the most promising policy option.

Keywords:

• adoption
• agricultural extension
• food security
• smallholders
• socio-demographic

correction

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank the financial support of the fiat panis Foundation (project no: 29/2017) and scholarship from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (reference: 91591599). We also gratefully thank the consultation support of German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The suggestions by Dr Marwan Benali and Prof. Xiaohua of George August University, Goettingen, Germany are also gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

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

Authorship

This paper is co-authored by Bernhard Brümmer (BB) and Jan Barkmann (JB): Muhammad Bilal (MB) and JB conceptualized the design of the research. MB carried out survey and collected data. MB analysed data and interpreted. BB and JB assisted in interpretations, constructive comments, and important feedbacks at various stages of the research and drafting of this paper.

Notes

1. Tehsil is below the district administrative unit with a formal government in context to Pakistan.

2. The estimations with continuous dependent outcomes variable require movestay command (Lokshin & Sajaia, 2004) and also require fulfilling the assumption of exclusion restriction to validate selection instruments (Aakvik et al., 2005), regretfully, we failed to find the sufficient selection instruments for the continuous dependent variable for outcomes equation.

3. We used switch_probit command (Lokshin & Sajaia, 2011) that is flexible for binary dependent outcomes variable. The estimations were carried out using STATA version 15.

4. We acknowledged the potential endogeneity in the variables i.e., off-farm income sources and the ownership of farm machinery in outcomes equation, failure to find a sufficient instrument, we drop all potentially endogenous variables in outcomes equation from the main model, but interestingly, the magnitude and sign of TT and TU remains almost the same (see, Tables A6 and A7 in Appendix A). Therefore, based on highly significant likelihood ratio test LR ${\chi }^2$ (12) = 35.99 at less than 1%, we include these variables in the main model presented above.

5. We also investigated potential endogeneity in the variable access to credit for the controlled models, therefore, we use the variable credit received in the main model presented above, which translates the number of respondents who actually received credit. The negative sign associated with credit received can be interpreted as respondents who actually received credit are those with low food security status (higher HFIAS score) than those who do not actually received credit (Di Falco et al., 2011).

6. For robustness, we separately executed a model for exclusive CMBs adopters versus exclusive SCPs adopters (N = 222). We have found similar evidence of the negative and the significant value of TU and the positive and significant value of TT on food security status but a slight difference in magnitude. That further validates and proved our hypothesis of positive food security effects of exclusive CMBs adoption (see, Table A8).

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was offered by the Foundation fiat panis [project no: 29, 2017]. This research was supported by scholarship from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan [reference: 91591599, 2016-2020]. This research has also been supported by the continuous consultation support of German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Notes on contributors

Muhammad Bilal

Dr Muhammad Bilal PhD, He is currently a lecturer at the School of Business & Economics, Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He got PhD from Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany. His research interest includes different aspects of food systems, sustainable development, innovation in agricultural technologies, smallholders, and multinational corporations in agriculture sector.