Land Use Practices: Sustainability Impacts on Smallholder Farmers

Ali Sher, Saman Mazhar, Iman Islami, Yenny Katherine Parra Acosta, Ramona Balc, Hossein Azadi and Hongping Yuan ()
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Ali Sher: School of Management, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Saman Mazhar: School of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Iman Islami: Rangeland Management Department, Faculty of Natural Resources and Marine Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Noor 46417-76489, Iran
Yenny Katherine Parra Acosta: Business Administration, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Bogotá 110111, Colombia
Ramona Balc: Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400294 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Hossein Azadi: Department of Geography, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Hongping Yuan: School of Management, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-21

Abstract: This study investigates the drivers of individual and joint adoption of sustainable land use (SLU) practices—specifically crop choice and soil and water conservation—and their impact on farm performance (crop revenue) and production risk (crop yield skewness). Using a farm-level dataset of 504 households across three agro-ecological zones in Punjab, Pakistan, we address selectivity bias through the newly developed multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) model. Additionally, we assess land use sustainability across ecological, social, and economic dimensions using a comprehensive non-parametric approach. Our findings identify key determinants of SLU adoption, including farmer education, access to advisory services, FBO membership, hired labor, climate information, farm size, and perceptions of drought and heatwaves. We demonstrate that joint adoption of SLU practices maximizes crop revenue and reduces production risk, lowering the likelihood of crop failure. The study further suggests complementarity between these SLU practices in enhancing crop revenue. Moreover, joint adopters of SLU practices significantly outperform non-adopters in ecological, social, and economic sustainability dimensions. We recommend improving access to public sector farm advisory services and climate information to enable farmers to make well-informed decisions based on reliable data. Implementing these measures can support the transition toward sustainable land management, helping to mitigate risks like crop failure and declining revenues, which threaten farm income.

Keywords: climate change; sustainable land use practices; farm performance; adaptations; sustainability dimensions; resilience; agro-ecological zones (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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