Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Agricultural Productivity in Ethiopia: Does Agroecology Matter?

Menale Kassie, Precious Zikhali, John Pender () and Köhlin, Gunnar
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Gunnar Köhlin

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: This paper uses data from household- and plot-level surveys conducted in the highlands of the Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia to examine the contribution of sustainable land-management practices to net values of agricultural production in areas with low- and high-agricultural potential. A combination of parametric and nonparametric estimation techniques is used to check result robustness. Both techniques consistently predict that minimum tillage is superior to commercial fertilizers—as are farmers’ traditional practices without use of commercial fertilizers—in enhancing crop productivity in the low-agricultural potential areas. In the high-agricultural potential areas, by contrast, use of commercial fertilizers is superior to both minimum tillage and farmers’ traditional practices without commercial fertilizers. The results are found to be insensitive to hidden bias. Our findings imply a need for careful agroecological targeting when developing, promoting, and scaling up sustainable land-management practices.

Keywords: agricultural productivity; commercial fertilizer; Ethiopia; low and high agricultural potential; minimum tillage; propensity score matching; switching regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 Q12 Q15 Q16 Q24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Agricultural Productivity in Ethiopia: Does Agroecology Matter? (2009)
Working Paper: Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Agricultural Productivity in Ethiopia: Does Agroecology Matter? (2009)
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