Farmers' preferences for crop variety traits: Lessons for on-farm conservation and technology adoption

Abstract

Although in-situ conservation is increasingly considered an efficient way of conserving plant genetic resources, little is known about the incentives and constraints that govern conservation decisions among small farm holders in developing countries. Using a choice experiment approach, we investigate Ethiopian farmers' crop variety preferences, estimate the mean willingness to pay for each crop variety attribute, and identify household specific and institutional factors that govern the preferences. We find that environmental adaptability and yield stability are important attributes for farmers' choice of crop varieties. Farmers are willing to forgo some income or output in order to obtain a more stable and environmentally adaptable crop variety. Among other things, household resource endowments (particularly land holdings and livestock assets), years of farming experience, and contact with extension services are the major factors causing household heterogeneity of crop variety preferences. Based on our experimental results, we derive important policy implications for on-farm conservation, breeding priority setting, and improved variety adoption in Ethiopia.

Farmer preference for improved corn seeds in Chiapas, Mexico: A choice experiment approach

“…Our results are consistent with other studies that considered high yields, resistance to diseases, and lower price as main drivers for selecting improved seeds (Asrat et al, 2010;Sibiya et al, 2013;Waldman et al, 2017).…”

“…Windle & Rolfe (2005) used this methodology to analyze alternatives for agricultural diversification in Australia. This method has also found use in organic agriculture (Meas et al, 2015), food traceability (Wu et al, 2015), maintenance programs for plants and animals (Roessler et al, 2008;Asrat et al, 2010;Birol et al, 2012), and provision of ecosystem services (Villanueva et al, 2017). However, empirical applications of DCE regarding farming innovations are few.…”

“…Thus, in our profiling analysis, we also included the perception towards improved seed and risk attitude. Risk attitudes and opinions toward improved seeds were assessed via two principal component analyses (PCA) following the previous studies (Asrat et al, 2010;Birol et al, 2012;Li et al, 2012;Valdivia et al, 2015). Table 6 shows the profiles of different segments.…”

Linking the economy to the ecosystems: land use change and ecosystem services valuation at basin level

“…For relatively small and simple choice experiment, this seems to be a realistic assumption (Train 1998). The coefficient of compensation/reward coefficient is specified to be fixed because keeping at least one parameter facilitates estimation and the distribution of the Marginal Willingness to Accept (MWTA) or the Marginal Willingness to Pay (MWTP) is then simply the distribution of the random parameter (Asrat et al 2010). Note that a fixed compensation/reward coefficient does not imply that response to compensation is assumed to be the same for all respondents (Hensher et al 2005a).…”

“…Orthogonality between the attributes was the foremost criterion in this experiment design in which all attributes are statistically independent (Hensher et al 2005b). Attributes of the additional alternatives are then constructed by cyclically adding alternatives into the choice set based on the attribute level (Asrat et al 2010). The choice sets were randomly assigned into two groups where each farm household had to make eight choices.…”