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Welfare and food security response of animal feed and water resource scarcity in Northern Ethiopia
Full text linkAbstract The scarcity of grazing and water for an animal has a negative effect on household welfare and food security either by affecting livestock production directly, affecting crop or off-farm income due to labor reallocation or through its direct impact on time leisure consumption. The economic impacts of resource (grazing and water) scarcity on welfare are undermined. Thus, a better understanding that is derived from the factual evidence is required. The first objective of this paper is to explore the link between natural resource scarcity and per capita food consumption expenditure (PCFE) as proxy for welfare and food security followed by the second objective of analyzing whether this effect is uniform across all quantile groups and there is gender differential effect using distance and shadow price as resource scarcity indicators. The paper used a relatively unique data set from a randomly drawn 518 sample farmers in Northern Ethiopia. To address our first objective, we employ the IV two-stage least square estimation for welfare and probit model for food security drawing on non-separable farm household model. Our estimates show that about 48% of the households were food secure while 52% were food insecure. Our results confirmed the theoretical prediction that resource scarcity affects household PCFE and food security adversely as predicted by the downward spiral hypothesis. The results indicate that animal feed and water scarcity have an important impact on welfare and food security. As expected, in aggregate, reducing time spent searching for water per day leads to an increase in PCFE and food security. Similarly, a decrease in time wastage for searching grazing increase PCFE and food security respectively, and an increment of PCFE and food security is achieved by a reduction in crop residue transporting time per day. The gender differential analysis signals that increasing resource scarcity results in low PCFE and food security, with the male are considerably likely to have less food consumption expenditure and being food insecure more as compared to female households. The total impact of time spent searching for water, grazing, and transporting straw on per PCFE is − 0.142%, − 0.102%, and − 0.092%, respectively, and decreasing reaching time to a water, grazing, and straw source by 0.6 min will increase PCFE by 354 ETB, 254 ETB, and 229 ETB for the median household. Depending on results from the quantile regression, the effect of water and feed scarcity is not uniform across the food consumption distribution
ANALYZING THE EFFECT OF PRODUCTION RISK AND TIME PREFERENCE ON THE USE AND CHOICE OF IMPROVED LIVESTOCK FEEDING PRACTICE IN ETHIOPIA
Full text linkA number of improved feeding practices such as stall feeding, rotational grazing, and tethering can help increase livestock productivity in Ethiopia. The main aim of this paper is to determine what factors affect the adoption of on such improved feeding practice; i.e. Stall Feeding (SF) and the choice of animal or season for its application. A bivariate probit model was estimated using observations from 367 rural farmers in Northern Ethiopia.
Production risk and the frequency of shock are found to be key determinants. As expected, the results from bivariate model revealed that the expected yield positively influenced SF adoption decision and its full-year application while yield variability and risk of yield failure had a negative effect on SF adoption decision and its full-year application. Likewise, previous animal shocks positively contribute to SF adoption. The major contribution of this paper is its explicit treatment of production risk, shock and time preference in the decision to adopt and apply SF. Expected benefits that the farmer can derive from low production risk due to SF adoption should be included in the promotion agenda of SF practice. The implication is that intervention that reduces the variance of return and exposure to downside risk are some desirable in the adoption and choice decision
Economic Implication of Grazing and Water Resource Scarcity on Households’ Welfare and Food Security in Tigrai, Ethiopia
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Exploring farmers’ seasonal and full year adoption of stall feeding of livestock in Tigrai region, Ethiopia
No full textAdoption of stall feeding (SF) of livestock was assessed in northern Ethiopia based on a household survey conducted in 2015. The study covered 21 communities in Tigrai to account for differences in agroecology. The purpose of this study was to understand the driving factors of full or seasonal SF adoption and its intensity. A Heckman selection model was used to estimate adoption and extent of adoption based on a model of technology adoption within an agricultural household framework, and Poisson Model for explaining the number of SF adopting seasons. The descriptive results indicate that 36% of the farmers were actually practicing SF in a full year whereas 55.6% were seasonal adopters in the study area. Empirical results of this study showed that our result is in favor of the Boserupian hypothesis indicating that small grazing land and large exclosure are associated with a higher probability of use of SF and with a higher number of SF adopting seasons. In a similar vein, small average village farm size stimulated SF adoption and adopting seasons, Availability of labor and a number of breed cows significantly increased the probability of using SF by 0.01% and 66% respectively. While animal shock had a marginal effect of 14%, factors such as access to information and early exposure increased SF adoption by about 18% and 6%. Similarly, the positive marginal effect of real milk price is 15%. However, SF appears to be less attractive to those farmers with more herd size and less crop residue
The response of farm labor and farm production to animal grazing and water resource scarcity in Northern Ethiopia
Full text linkPurpose. Rural households spend a large share of their daily time to search for grazing feed, water resource and collect straw by displacing labor time away from crop farming activities. This paper aims to analyze the economic effect of time spent looking for animal water and grazing areas on farm labor input and crop farm output.
Methodology / approach. To address our objectives, a general Cobb-Douglas production function was estimated using a unique dataset from 518 sample farmers in Tigrai, Ethiopia drawing on a non-separable farm household model.
Results. The results favor the hypothesis of a negative relationship between crop output and resource scarcity. In aggregate, the findings confirm that reducing time spent looking for water, grazing and straw by 1 % leads to an increase in food production by 0.155 %, 0.279 % and 0.328 % respectively. Similarly, the shadow price variables are significant, have the expected negative sign and are consistent with the theory. The sign of other factors are consistent with the prediction of the economic theory.
Originality / scientific novelty. The noble contribution of this paper is, unlike previous studies, we collected information on the entire set of crop production, along with the distance to grazing, water and crop residue of each household. This paper considers three important resources for an animal such as grazing, water and crop residue, of which the first two have not been explored well. The use of distance level and shadow price as resource scarcity indicators is an extra benefit to the literature.
Practical value / implications. The results of this paper provide an interesting picture of stallholders in Ethiopia. As expected, it appears that time spent searching for animal water and feed has a significant and negative effect on labor and crop output. Our results got the evidence of a negative relationship between labor input to crop farming and resource scarcity
UNDERSTANDING FARMERS SEASONAL AND FULL YEAR STALL FEEDING ADOPTION IN NORTHERN ETHIOPIA
Full text linkAdoption of stall feeding (SF) as well as choices of animals and seasons for its application were assessed in northern Ethiopia in 2015 using a household field survey. The study was conducted in 21 communities to account for differences in agro ecology and to better understand the adoption process. A Heckman selection model was used to estimate adoption and extent of adoption based on a model of technology adoption within an agricultural household framework. A Poisson model was also applied to explain the number of SF adopting seasons. Further a multinomial logit model was estimated in order to reinforce understanding of the choices. The purpose of this study was to understand the driving factors of full or seasonal SF adoption and its intensity as well as animal and seasonal choices. The study results indicate that farmers actually practicing SF in a full year are 36% while those of actual seasonal adopters are 55.6%. The choice of animals allocated to SF include cow (40%), ox (31%) and other animals (29%) of the given sample indicating feeding cow under SF takes the largest share. Similarly, the choice for season were, 65% full year, 29 % wet (summer and autumn) and 6% dry (winter and spring), implying that more than half of the sample farmers practice SF the year round. Empirical results of this study showed that result is in favour of the Boserupian hypothesis indicating that small grazing land and large exclosure are associated with a higher probability of use of SF and with a higher number of SF adopting seasons throughout the year. In a similar vein, small average village farm size stimulated full SF adoption and SF adopting seasons, Availability of labour relative to farm size and a number of breed cows significantly increased the probability of using SF by 0.01% and 66% respectively. While animal shock appeared to have a marginal effect of 14%.The finding also revealed that factors such as access to information and early exposure increased the probability of SF adoption by 18% and 6%. Similarly, the positive marginal effect of real milk price is 15%. However, SF appears to be less attractive to those farmers with more herd size relative farm size and less crop residue. Regarding the intensity of SF adoption, while total labour time, farm size positively affect the extent of SF adoption, total herd size and grazing land ratio negatively influence farmers’ extent of SF adoption in all seasons
Does it pay to switch from free grazing to stall feeding? Impact of stall feeding practice on household welfare in Tigrai Ethiopia
Full text linkIn this paper, efforts were made to the impact of full and seasonal stall feeding technology on households’ economic, ecological, and social welfare outcome indicators in rural Northern Ethiopia using data obtained from the survey of 518 rural farmers. In order to address our primary objective, an endogenous switching regression model was applied. The overall result indicated that SF adoption ensures significant gains in terms of the specified outcome indicators. Using endogenous switching regression models, we estimated different outcome indicators for both adopters from adoption (ATT), and non-adopters had they adopted (ATU). It is identified that there would be a decline of 21% in milk production and productivity if adopters would not have adopted this technology while non-adopters are estimated to increase their milk production and productivity by 100 and 48% if they would adopt this technology. The results further show that SF adoption had a significant increment in the lactation period. An increase of consumption expenditure by 17% from FSF and 44% in the case of SSF could be considered significant on livelihoods for smallholder farmers. On average, adoption of SF increased manure use in the range of 258–294 kg for adopters. The results showed that SF has decreased the propensity of hiring labor by about 29% and purchase of animal feed by 31%. We have found that participation in SF, on average, decreased total cattle stock by 1 TLU but increased the probability of keeping milking cow by 23%. The adoption of SF increased the likelihood of participating in an animal sale market by 29% for adopters and by 47% for non-adopters had they decided to adopt. The adoption of SF leads to a gain in a number of plants of 11 trees and 29 m of physical construction for the typical adopter and 36 trees and 133 m if the typical non-adopter were to adopt the SF technology on their plots. The adoption process also increased the propensity of growing trees by 19% and decreased household animal shock experience by a probability of 19% for adopters and about 15%
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Does population pressure induce farm intensification? Empirical evidence from Tigrai Region, Ethiopia
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