Examining the impact of conservation agriculture on environmental efficiency among maize farmers in Zambia

Abdulai, Abdul-Nafeo; Abdulai, Awudu

doi:10.1017/s1355770x16000309

Cited by 59 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Generally, the Cobb-Douglas and the translog production frontiers are the commonly used functional forms in the production frontier literature. Several empirical studies have employed the translog frontier [25,[28][29][30][31][32], and have demonstrated that its estimates are better than those of the Cobb-Douglas. This study adopts the translog frontier after performing statistical tests on the significance of the squared and cross product terms of the explanatory variables.…”

Section: Empirical Model Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Environmental-Technology Gaps of Rice Farms in Distinct Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana

et al. 2019

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Rice (Oryza sativa) is an important food staple and a cash crop, which is cultivated in all the ten regions of Ghana under varying agro-ecological conditions. These conditions also reflect the production technologies used and the total farm output. In an attempt to determine the potential sources of production shortfalls on rice farms in Ghana, this paper estimates the production efficiency and the environmental-technology gaps of rice-producing households in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah agro-ecological zones of Ghana. The paper adopts the stochastic metafrontier framework, which permits technology-related inefficiency effects to be extricated from managerial inefficiency effects for appropriate policy formulation. In contrast to past studies, the empirical findings reveal that farms in the two agro-ecological zones adopt heterogeneous production technologies due to differences in their production environments. This is indicated by the estimated mean environmental-technology gap ratios of 0.95 and 0.50, and mean metafrontier technical efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.42 for farms in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah zones, respectively. These findings call for agricultural policy formulation in Ghana to be targeted at the prevailing environmental conditions of the various agro-ecological zones rather than being all-inclusive in addressing the extant inefficiencies in the rice production systems of Ghana.

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Section: Empirical Model Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Environmental-Technology Gaps of Rice Farms in Distinct Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana

et al. 2019

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“…regressed on specific household socioeconomic characteristics, using the FRMs, following the example of recent studies (e.g., Abdulai and Abdulai, 2017;Ogundari, 2014;Ramalho, Ramalho, and Henriques, 2010). We report the specification of the test statistic for each of the FRMs 8 (logit, probit, loglog, and cloglog).…”

Section: Determinants Of Technical and Environmental Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Land Management Practices and Technical and Environmental Efficiency among Smallholder Farmers in Ghana

Issahaku

Abdulai

2019

J. Agric. Appl. Econ.

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The study examines the effects of adoption of sustainable land management practices on farm households’ technical efficiency (TE) and environmental efficiency, using household-level data from Ghana. We employ selectivity biased-corrected stochastic production frontier to account for potential bias from both observed and unobserved factors. The empirical results show that adopters exhibit higher levels of TE and output, compared with the nonadopters. However, the results reveal that adopters are found to use excess herbicides that could have adverse environmental consequences. The results also reveal that extension services and access to credit positively and significantly correlate with TE.

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“…A full description of the variables used in the analysis is presented in Table 1. The variables considered were selected based on a review of previous theoretical and empirical climate change related studies [10,15,36,[43][44][45][46][47][48]. The response variable is the expression of awareness of climate change and its risks to agriculture (alias climate change awareness), which equals 1 if the respondent replied "Yes" to the question: "Are you aware of climate change and its consequences on agriculture?…”

Section: Study Area and Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our hypotheses are that information sources positively affect climate change awareness among smallholder farm households, because it is through such sources that climate change information may be conveyed by relevant institutions. Following a review of literature on climate change [10,29,30,34,36,[45][46][47][48], our expectation is that the expression of climate change awareness and climate change adaptive measures have a positive relationship between them. Thus, as shown in Table 1, we considered a variety of adaptive factors that we hypothesize to affect expression of awareness of change among farmers.…”

Section: Study Area and Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Are They Aware, and Why?” Bayesian Analysis of Predictors of Smallholder Farmers’ Awareness of Climate Change and Its Risks to Agriculture

2020

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While climate change threatens global food security, health, and nutrition outcomes, Africa is more vulnerable because its economies largely depend on rain-fed agriculture. Thus, there is need for agricultural producers in Africa to employ robust adaptive measures that withstand the risks of climate change. However, the success of adaptation measures to climate change primarily depends on the communities’ knowledge or awareness of climate change and its risks. Nonetheless, existing empirical research is still limited to illuminate farmers’ awareness of the climate change problem. This study employs a Bayesian hierarchical logistic model, estimated using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methods, to empirically determine drivers of smallholder farmers’ awareness of climate change and its risks to agriculture in Zambia. The results suggest that on average, 77% of farmers in Zambia are aware of climate change and its risks to agriculture. We find socio-demographics, climate change information sources, climate change adaptive factors, and climate change impact-related shocks as predictors of the expression of climate change awareness. We suggest that farmers should be given all the necessary information about climate change and its risks to agriculture. Most importantly, the drivers identified can assist policymakers to provide the effective extension and advisory services that would enhance the understanding of climate change among farmers in synergy with appropriate farm-level climate-smart agricultural practices.

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Examining the impact of conservation agriculture on environmental efficiency among maize farmers in Zambia

Cited by 59 publications

References 48 publications

Evaluating the Environmental-Technology Gaps of Rice Farms in Distinct Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana

Evaluating the Environmental-Technology Gaps of Rice Farms in Distinct Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana

Sustainable Land Management Practices and Technical and Environmental Efficiency among Smallholder Farmers in Ghana

“Are They Aware, and Why?” Bayesian Analysis of Predictors of Smallholder Farmers’ Awareness of Climate Change and Its Risks to Agriculture

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