Bekele Shiferaw

Resource degradation and adoption of land conservation technologies in the Ethiopian Highlands: A case study in Andit Tid, North Shewa

This paper reports results from a study of resource degradation and conservation behavior of peasant households in a degraded part of the Ethiopian highlands. Peasant households choice of conservation technologies is modeled as a two-stage process: recognition of the erosion problem, and adoption and level of use of control practices. An ordinal logit model is used to explain parcel-level perception of the threat of the erosion problem and the extent of use of conservation practices. Results show the importance of perception of the threat of soil erosion, household, land and farm characteristics; perception of technology-specific attributes, and land quality differentials in shaping conservation decisions of peasants. Furthermore, where poverty is widespread and appropriate support policies are lacking, results indicate that population pressure per se is unable to encourage sustainable land use. The challenge of breaking the poverty-environment trap and initiating sustainable intensification thus require policy incentives and technologies that confer short-term benefits to the poor while conserving the resource base.

Poverty, market imperfections and time preferences: of relevance for environmental policy?

Rates of time preference (RTPs) of rural households in Indonesia, Zambia and Ethiopia have been measured using hypothetical questions about preferences for current versus future consumption. In general, the rates were found to be very high. Factors influencing or correlated with the personal rates of time preference were investigated through regression methods. OLS was the technique used in the estimation. Market imperfections, particularly in credit and insurance markets lead to variation in RTPs. Poverty in assets, or cash liquidity constraints, was leading to or correlated with higher rates of time preference. The poor are, therefore, less likely to invest in environmental conservation. In Zambia, independent estimates of risk preferences were made. More risk-averse people tended to have lower RTPs. The results support the hypothesis that poverty and/or liquidity scarcity lead to high RTPs. Poverty reduction may thus reduce the RTPs of the poor and reduce the intertemporal externality due to high RTPs. The high average RTPs indicate, however, that complementary policies may be needed to ensure sufficient levels of investment in conservation. Another logical implication is that institutionalization of private property rights may not be a sufficient tool to initiate sustainable resource management.

Soil Erosion and Smallholders' Conservation Decisions in the Highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract Soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental problems in Ethiopia. Coupled with growing populations, falling per capita food production and worsening poverty, loss of productive land due to land degradation undermines rural livelihoods and national food security. Despite their awareness of the erosion problem, peasants investments in land have been limited. We use an applied nonseparable model to simulate conservation decisions. Pervasive market imperfections, poverty and high rates of time preference seem to undermine erosion-control investments. Lack of technologies which provide quick returns to subsistence-constrained peasants also seem to deter such investments. Lower private incentives to internalize the intertemporal land degradation externality may require public intervention.

INTEGRATING GENETICS AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR TECHNOLOGY TARGETING AND GREATER IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN THE SEMI-ARID TROPICS

Good management of natural resources is the key to good agriculture. This is true everywhere - and particularly in the semi-arid tropics, where over-exploitation of fragile or inherently vulnerable agro-ecosystems is leading to land and soil degradation, productivity decline, and increasing hunger and poverty. Modern crop varieties offer high yields, but the larger share of this potential yield can only be realized with good crop management. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), working over a vast and diverse mandate area, has learned one key lesson: that technologies and interventions must be matched not only to the crop or livestock enterprise and the biophysical environment, but also with the market and investment environment, including input supply systems and policy. Various Natural Resource Management (NRM) technologies have been developed over the years, but widespread adoption has been limited for various reasons: technical, socio-economic and institutional. To change this, ICRISAT hypothesizes that A research approach, founded on the need to integrate a broad consideration of technical, socio-economic and institutional issues into the generation of agricultural innovations will result in a higher level of adoption and more sustainable and diverse impacts in the rainfed systems of the semi-arid tropics. Traditionally, crop improvement and NRM were seen as distinct but complementary disciplines. ICRISAT is deliberately blurring these boundaries to create the new paradigm of IGNRM or Integrated Genetic and Natural Resource Management. Improved varieties and improved resource management are two sides of the same coin. Most farming problems require integrated solutions, with genetic, management-related and socio-economic components. In essence, plant breeders and NRM scientists must integrate their work with that of private and public sector change agents to develop flexible cropping systems that can respond to rapid changes in market opportunities and climatic conditions. The systems approach looks at various components of the rural economy - traditional food grains, new potential cash crops, livestock and fodder production, as well as socio-economic factors such as alternative sources of employment and income. Crucially the IGNRM approach is participatory, with farmers closely involved in technology development, testing and dissemination. ICRISAT has begun to use the IGNRM approach to catalyse technology uptake and substantially improve food security and incomes in smallholder farm communities at several locations in India, Mali, Niger, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

Population Pressure and Land Degradation in the Ethiopian Highlands: A Bio-Economic Model with Endogenous Soil Degradation

We apply a bio-economic modelling approach to trace important relationships between population pressure, poverty and management of land resources for a crop-livestock economy characterised by serious land degradation in the Ethiopian highlands. Our objective is to examine the interlinkages between population pressure and poverty, their impacts on household welfare and land management, and the consequent pathways of development in a low potential rural economy. Farm households are assumed to maximise their discounted utility over the planning horizon in a multi period model, where the management of the resource base has feedback effects on the stock and quality of the resource base. Market imperfections lead to non-separability of production and consumption decisions of farm households. The models trace the dynamic interactions between crop and livestock production, the resource base, consumption preferences, and partial integration of the household economy into markets. Simulation results indicate that under high population pressure, land becomes more expensive, relative to labour. This induces labour-intensive conservation investments when off-farm employment is limited and labour is not in scarce supply. Availability of credit and fertiliser, however, seem to discourage labour-intensive conservation efforts. When markets are imperfect, poverty in vital assets (e.g. oxen and labour) limits the ability or the willingness to invest in conservation.

Peasant Agriculture and Land Degradation in Ethiopia: Reflections on Constraints and Incentives for Soil Conservation and Food Security

Summary Bekele Shiferaw and Stein T. Holden, ‘Peasant Agriculture and Land Degradation in Ethiopia: Reflections on Constraints and Incentives for Soil Conservation and Food Security’, Forum for Development Studies, 1997:2, pp. 277–306. This article provides a broad overview of the problems of land degradation, agricultural stagnation, and food security in Ethiopia. It uses existing theories of agricultural development and change, environmental/resource economics, and the economics of rural organisation to identify possible causes for deterioration of the environmental resource base and chronic food insecurity in the country. The problem of rural poverty and its linkages with environmental degradation and the regulating role of population pressure, technologies, rural markets, land rights, political instability, and government policies is emphasised. Some empirical findings based on a larger study conducted in the highlands of Ethiopia are provided to support the theoretical issues. Results indicate that r...

5 Rural Institutions and Imperfect Agricultural Markets in Africa: Experiences from Producer Marketing Groups in Kenya

Many Sub-Saharan African countries have liberalized their economies and developed poverty reduction strategies aimed at opening up new market-led opportunities for economic recovery and accelerated growth. The outcomes of these policy reforms have, however, been quite mixed (Winter-Nelson and Temu 2002; Dorward and Kydd 2004; Fafchamps 2004). Many smallholder farmers continue to engage in subsistence agriculture and are therefore unable to benefit from liberalized markets. Structural problems of poor infrastructure (Kydd and Dorward 2004; Dorward et al. 2005) and lack of market-enabling institutions (World Bank 2002, 2003) continue to characterize the subsector, contributing to high transaction costs, coordination failure, and pervasive market imperfections. Moreover, partial implementation of reforms and policy reversals in terms of increasing the use of discretionary trade policy instruments by the state or parastatal marketing boards have tended to mute the positive effects of liberalization (Jayne et al. 2002; Jayne, Chapoto, and Shiferaw 2009). Although the opportunities afforded by liberalization have not been fully exploited, the expectation that removing or rationalizing state marketing boards would open opportunities for the private sector to take over these functions has not been fully realized in many areas. This is mainly because of underdeveloped infrastructure and missing institutions that support the proper functioning of markets. The private-sector traders are unlikely to offer input and output marketing services to smallholder producers in such less favored areas, where market infrastructure or enabling institutions are weak or missing. Lack of such infrastructure and institutions diminishes the incentives for the private sector to invest in agribusiness development and the provision of marketing functions, especially for food staples and other low-value grains produced in these areas. However, avenues exist in market institutions that make use of collective action to complement government and private-sector responses for enhanced coordination in rural commodity markets. This is because the individual marketing of produce may not make economic sense due to small quantities, large spatial distances from input and output markets, and the associated high transportation costs, all characteristics of small-scale production in Sub-Saharan Africa. 5 Rural Institutions and Imperfect Agricultural Markets in Africa: Experiences from Producer Marketing Groups in Kenya

Assessing the economic and environmental impacts of conservation technologies: a farm-level bioeconomic modelling approach.

This chapter illustrates how a multiperiod bioeconomic household-level model, in which changes in resource quality have feedback effects on future land productivity, can be used to explore the economic and environmental impacts of natural resource management technologies and policies. This model is used to test the influence of land scarcity and asset poverty on incentives to undertake sustainability investments in Andit Tid, in the central highlands of Ethiopia. The results show how land scarcity could drive conservation investments, while poverty in vital assets such as oxen and labour could deter investments in land and water management. The welfare and environmental impacts are very modest but are highest when the conservation technology does not reduce short-term crop yields. Otherwise, the level of adoption of these technologies and their effects on poverty and soil degradation are significantly reduced even when family labour is not limiting