Background : Invasive aquatic weeds like water hyacinth are of a great concern in Ethiopia, posing particular problems on aquatic biodiversity and fisheries in major water bodies and agricultural land in the surrounding water bodies. The study was aimed to analysis of the effect of water hyacinth on the livelihood of smallholder rice farmers around the Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Methodology : Two districts and four Kebeles adjacent to Lake Tana and well known in rice production were purposively selected for the study. Individual interviews and key informants’ checklists were used as data collection methods to achieve the desired objectives. Results : The result showed that 48% of the rice cultivated land was infested by water hyacinth and 32.08% of rice farm area was not harvested totally due to Water hyacinth infestation in the study year. It showed a statistical significance mean difference on yield of rice between affected and non-affected plots, it could reduce by 1944 kg/ha. Moreover, households perceived that water hyacinth makes land preparation and crop production difficult, dehydrates farmland, reduces fish production, and contaminates water, destruction of animal feeds, causes disease on humans and animals. Smallholder rice-producing sampled households perceived that the rice production has been decreasing due to the spread of water hyacinth. Farmers by themselves implemented different adaptation strategies to resist the water hyacinth problem. The major adaptation strategies implemented by smallholder farmers are participating in water hyacinth removing campaigns or weeding, constructing a fence around their farm to defend the coming water hyacinth weed before invading their rice farms, and switching off from farm activity to other income-earning activities. The study results revealed that 73% and 91.5% of the sampled households received rice production extension services and information regarding water hyacinth, respectively. Recommendation : To solve the problems of water hyacinth effects participatory approach to control water hyacinth, support farmers to produce crop in off season using irrigation, promote agricultural technologies and assist them to search other income earning activities.
Research background: Maize is the most important cereal crop produced by most households in Ghana for income and household food security.Despite its economic importance, not much study has been carried out on maize profit efficiency in Ghana, hence this study. Purpose of the article:This study estimated profit efficiency of maize farmers in the Sagnarigu municipal of Ghana to understand producers' profit efficiency level and its determinants as well as the challenges faced by maize producers.Methods: Data was sourced from small-scale maize producers while stochastic frontier analysis was applied to estimate a Cobb-Douglas profit function that simultaneously identified the sources of inefficiency.Kendall's coefficient of concordance was used to analyse the constraints facing maize producers.Findings & Value added: The findings indicated that maize farmers produced at 71% profit efficiency.This is one of very few studies on profit efficiency of Ghanaian maize farmers.The result means that 29% of the achievable maximum profit was forfeited as a result of production inefficiency.Educational attainment and access to agricultural extension service decreased the level of profit inefficiency while age, herd ownership and membership of farmer organization increased profit inefficiency level of farmers.The most critical challenges reported by farmers were financial constraints, high cost of ploughing and difficulty in acquiring chemical fertilizer.The study recommends that access to agricultural extension service should be improved to cover more farmers while efforts should be made to expand educational access in rural areas to enhance the profit efficiency of farmers.
Research background: Despite a growing interest in the role of time and risk preferences in explaining technology adoption, empirical studies that investigate this behavior are scant. Numerous studies have attempted to identify the determinants of adoption of new technologies. However, those studies failed to capture the duration of time farmers will take to adopt a given technology using a proper model such as duration model. Purpose of the article : This study developed a technology adoption theoretical model that incorporates time and risk preferences in addition to household level characteristics. Using this model, we tested whether impatience and risk aversion delays or expedites stall-feeding adoption or not. Methods: Using cross sectional data of 518 sample farmers from Ethiopia, both semi-parametric (Cox PH) and parametric (Weibull PH and Weibull AFT) models have been applied to estimate the conditional probability of SF adoption. This enables us to convey information not only on why a farmer adopted, but also on the timing of the adoption decision. Findings : As expected, our results indeed show that, the time of stall-feeding adoption increases with discount rate. Individuals who are patient and risk loving adopt stall-feeding sooner than individuals who are impatient and risk averse. Likewise, farmers who are more less-averse adopt SF technology latter compared to farmers who are risk neutral. The estimated results also revealed that economic incentives (i.e. prices) was found to be the most important determinants of the time farmers wait before adopting new technologies. While higher output price significantly accelerates SF adoption, higher input price decelerates the adoption period. The expected milk yield (first moment) had a positive significant effect on the adoption decision, indicating that higher expected mean, on average decreases farmers’ time to adopt. Findings in this study suggest that, land and labor endowment shorten the time to adopt SF. However, market distance delay the adoption of SF. Moreover, access to information, education of household head, breed cow ownership, and location of the farmer, accelerated the likelihood of early SF adoption. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is one of the first adoption studies to have incorporated time and risk preference in its parametric and semi-parametric adoption analysis.
Research background: There is limited understanding of reasons, promoting discontinuance especially from dairying activities farming in mixed farming systems where exit happens earlier than the complete exit from agriculture, Purpose of the article: This study explores the households and farm associated economic factors that influence the farmer's intention to 'discontinue' from the smallholder dairy sector, in the changing context of increasing demand; poor participation of youth in agriculture; urbanisation and increasing role of non-farm sector in the Indian economy.Methods: A total of 384 dairy households representing three different crop livestock systems were selected on a proportionate basis from the existing datasets of dairy households for the research.Descriptive and binominal logit regression was used for analysis of the data. Findings, value added & novelty:The major findings are that more than half of households have an intention to discontinue or downsize their dairying operations and almost all are demotivating next generation to take up dairying.Moreover, in households with no crop activity, using high inputs and having low level of attitude towards dairying and in areas with poor markets are likely to discontinue.In the long run inadequate income from dairying, value system and developments in non-farm sector are driving discontinuance.
Research background: Biofortified maize are products of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering, which produce crops with special traits of interest resistance to pests and diseases, tolerance to the herbicide, high yield, salt tolerance, submergence, nitrogen efficiency, etc. It is not just about technological advances and the development of a new product, ascertaining the factors that could stimulate demand, and creating awareness about the benefits of biofortified crops are crucial for this new enhanced variety of maize to make an impact. Purpose of the article: The research was conducted to determine the factors influencing farmers’ willingness-to-pay for biofortified maize in Gwagwalada Area Council, of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria, to identify the stimulating factors and challenges confronting farmers' willingness-to-pay for biofortified maize. Methods: The multistage sampling technique was adopted for the study and used to select a total of 100 maize farmers for this study. Primary data were collected from the respondents using a well-structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Two-limit Tobit Model, which was used to identify the factors influencing farmers' willingness-to pay for biofortified maize. Findings,
