Low, Allan (author / CIMMYT, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
1988
Published:
UK: Elsevier Applied Science Publishers
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C06486
A farm-household economics approach is used to illuminate Mellor's labour constraint/rapid urbanization problem in the Southern African context. It is viewed as a rational decision by rural households to combine the benefits of indigenous land-use arrangements with the advantages of non-farm wage employment. The implications of this analysis for the design of technology consistent with the objectives and constraints of farm households are then discussed in relation to some general experiences in Southern Africa. (original)
Agricultural Economics (Amsterdam, Netherlands), GIS-derived measures of location and space have increasingly been used in models of land use and ecology. However, they have made few inroads into the literature on technology adoption in developing countries, which continues to rely mainly on survey-derived information. Location, with all its dimensions of market access, demographics and agro-climate, nevertheless remains key to understanding potential for technology use. The measures of location typically used in the adoption literature, such as locational dummy variables that proxy a range of locational factors, now appear relatively crude given the increased availability of more explicit GIS-derived measures. This paper attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of integrating GIS-measures into analysis of technology uptake, for better differentiating and understanding locational effects. A set of GIS-derived measures of market access and agro-climate are included in a standard household model of technology uptake, applied to smallholder dairy farms in Kenya, using a sample of 3330 geo-referenced farm households. The three technologies examined are keeping of dairy cattle, planting of specialised fodder, and use of concentrate feed. Logit estimations are conducted that significantly differentiate effects of individual household characteristics from those related to location. The predicted values of the locational variables are then used to make spatial predictions of technology potential. Comparisons are made with estimations based only on survey data, which demonstrate that while overall explanatory power may not improve with GIS-derived variables, the latter yield more practical interpretations, which is further demonstrated through predictions of technology uptake change with a shift in infrastructure policy. Although requiring large geo-referenced data sets and high resolution GIS layers, the methodology demonstrates the potential to better unravel the multiple effects of location on farmer decisions on technology and land use.
