Examining the Effect of Animal Resource Scarcity on Farm Labor and Farm Production in Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Rural households in Ethiopia suffer from the scarcity of grazing land and water. This article examines the economic impact of time spent looking for water and grazing lands for livestock on crop farming labor and crop output based on a nonseparable farm household model. We estimated a general Cobb-Douglas production function using 518 farmers in Ethiopia. Our results confirm a negative relationship between labor input to crop farming and resource scarcity. On average, a 1% reduction in the time spent looking for water, grazing, and straw led to an increase in food production by 0.16%, 0.28% and 0.33%, respectively.