Farmer Perceptions and Responses to Soil Degradation in Swaziland

Improving women's purchasing power through land-enhancing technologies: The case of bio-reclamation of degraded lands in Niger

In Niger, about 50% of the land surface is composed of degraded lateritic soils, and rural women farmers have limited access to productive land. Targeting largely marginalized rural women with bio-reclamation of degraded land (BDL) technologies restores their rights to earn a livelihood through agriculture. This study examines the determinants and impacts of land-enhancing technology on women farmers in Niger. Data were collected from 1,205 randomly selected women farmers in the Maradi and Zinder regions. The sample included 69% of participants into BDL program and 31% of non-participants. To account for selection bias from observable and unobservable factors, an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model was used to estimate the impact of BDL technology on women's household income. A simple probit model was used to analyze the determinants of participation. The results show that key determinants of participation in BDL include income level before participation in BDL, household size, age of participants, number of women in the household, number of children under 5 years old, sex of household head, age of household head, and institutional support. Participation in BDL positively influences participants' income (+14%); non-participants may not benefit from participating as they would probably lose 31% of their income, and the impact of participation in BDL varies widely across regions. Before the advent of BDL, the income of non-participants was higher than that of participants by 25%. It can be inferred that BDL is a pro-poor technology that is not beneficial to all women farmers. This study makes a critical contribution to the literature on land-enhancing technologies. It suggests that the impact of land-enhancing technologies, such as BDL, is closely linked to spatial, economic, environmental, temporal, and cultural contexts. Accordingly, land-enhancing technologies should target locations with large percentages of degraded farmlands and the poorest farmers. These results contribute to food security and poverty alleviation policies in rural dryland areas.

Understanding the Effects of China's Agro-Environmental Policies on Rural Households' Labor and Land Allocation with a Spatially Explicit Agent-Based Model

Understanding household labor and land allocation decisions under agro-environmental policies is challenging due to complex human-environment interactions. Here, we develop a spatially explicit agent-based model based on spatial and socioeconomic data to simulate households' land and labor allocation decisions and investigate the impacts of two forest restoration and conservation programs and one agricultural subsidy program in rural China. Simulation outputs reveal that the forest restoration program accelerates labor out-migration and cropland shrink, while the forest conservation program promotes livelihood diversification via increasing non-farm employment. Meanwhile, the agricultural subsidy program keeps labor for cultivation on land parcels with good quality, but appears less effective for preventing marginal croplands from being abandoned. The policy effects on labor allocation substantially differ between rules based on bounded rational and empirical knowledge of defining household decisions, particularly on sending labor out-migrants and engaging in local off-farm jobs. Land use patterns show that the extent to which households pursue economic benefits through shrinking cultivated land is generally greater under bounded rationality than empirical knowledge. Findings demonstrate nonlinear social-ecological impacts of the agro-environmental policies through time, which can deviate from expectations due to complex interplays between households and land. This study also suggests that the spatial agent-based model can represent adaptive decision-making and interactions of human agents and their interactions in dynamic social and physical environments.

Is investment in Climate-Smart-agricultural practices the option for the future? Cost and benefit analysis evidence from Ghana

A majority of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries depend to a large extent on agriculture for food security and income. Efforts aimed at improving farm-related profitability are therefore important to improving livelihoods among smallholder farmers. In Ghana, for example, smallholder farmers that depend on agriculture face serious risks especially those related to climate change and variability and soil degradation. Notwithstanding these dangers, evidence of the published literature on how best to tackle these challenges is limited. Over the recent decades, however, there has been advancement by programs channelling resources into Climate-Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices to improving smallholder livelihoods and food security. The interest in advancing investment in CSA practices is a key pathway that has the potential to significantly reduce the negative effect of climate change and variability risks on smallholder farmers livelihoods. Investing in CSA practices is also a key pathway to improving farm yield per unit area. Consequently, smallholder farmers are adopting and implementing CSA practices. Despite that, a gap still exists on the profitability of undertaking such an investment, as this is key in determining the sustainability of CSA practices. On this basis, the present study undertook a detailed cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of seven CSA practices identified with smallholder farmers in the coastal savannah agro-ecological zone of Ghana. A total of 48 smallholder farmers that had adopted these practices were studied. Three CBA indicators namely the net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR) and payback period (PP) were assessed for each of the seven CSA practices. The results showed that out of the seven CSA practices examined, six of them were profitably suitable for adoption and scaling up from the perspective of smallholder farmers as well as the public perspective. The finding from this study, therefore, fill the current information gap in the literature on the costs and benefits of adopting CSA practices on household livelihoods in Ghana. Such a finding is critical to the promotion and scaling up the adoption of CSA practices by smallholder farmers and serve as a basis of formulating appropriate guidelines and policies for supporting CSA practices.

A Double Hurdle Estimation of Sales Decisions by Smallholder Beef Cattle Farmers in Eswatini

Beef cattle farmers are in an ideal position to advance their income through marketing; however, the subsector is characterized by low market participation. Wealth preservation and prestige from cattle accumulation outweigh market incentives, thereby jeopardizing the integration of farmers into organized market systems. Therefore, the study was set to examine the determinants of farmers’ sales decisions in cattle marketing. Understanding determinants of sales decisions is an indispensable base for establishing sustainable development policy frameworks that maximize rural economic growth. Descriptive statistics and a double-hurdle model were applied on cross-sectional data collected from 397 farmers through personal interviews aided by a structured questionnaire. Herd size (74.1%), ecological zone (32.4%), slaughters (22.1%), pregnant cows (18.2%), experience (15.0%) and breed type (11.4%) revealed statistically significant effects on the probability of market participation. The key determinants of the level of market participation (p < 0.01) included extension, married marital status, pasture availability, cows, heifers, market distance, market information and market channel 2 (individual). Education, experience, non-farm income, expenses and laborers were significant at p < 0.05. Widowed marital status and market channel 1 (processor) were found to be significant at p < 0.1. Extension adjustments and institutionalization of market linkages are recommended to assist farmers in increasing marketable surplus.