Available online at www.centmapress.org, Policy implications from findings suggested that improved access to credit, production factors (like land, labor) enhancing the bargaining power of smallholder farmers can significally increase farm-level adaption to climate change.
15 pages, Food security and agricultural-led industrialisation are pivotal development objectives in Ethiopia. One of the main challenges this country faces is increasing agricultural productivity by integrating smallholder farmers into a high-value agricultural commodity supply chain. This paper examines an integrated project—the Agricultural Value Chains Project in Oromia (AVCPO)—that aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholders in the Bale Zone by involving them in the production of high-quality durum wheat and linking them to the pasta industry via farmers’ cooperatives. Using primary data collected in 2014 and retrospective information, this paper investigates the AVCPO’s effects on the quantity of cereal production, the share of cereals that have been sold through cooperatives, food security, and education. In order to account for potential violations of the exclusion restriction assumption, an instrumental variable approach is applied, together with three additional estimation strategies.
The results suggest that the project has had a large and positive effect on gross and net values of cereal production per hectare, as well as on the share of production sold to pasta makers through cooperatives. These benefits accrue equally to land-rich and land-poor farmers. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the AVCPO has improved educational outcomes and reduced food insecurity, without affecting crop rotation practices. Overall, our findings point to the effectiveness of the project. Before replicating or scaling up this intervention, however, it is necessary to understand how to better involve poorer farmers and which adjustments are needed if the areas selected have a lower potential than Bale Zone.
16 pages., via online journal., This study was conducted in Ethiopia to determine the use of mobile phones in agriculture. The study included 320 household heads who owned mobile phones. Data were collected using an interview schedule. The results revealed that the majority (90.6%) of household heads made phone calls for agricultural purposes. Over three quarters (85.9%) of the household heads received phone calls related to agriculture. Short message service (SMS) was poorly used. It is concluded that mobile phones are playing an important role as an informational medium. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture in Ethiopia needs to develop a mobile-based agricultural information dissemination system to enhance information delivery to rural farming households.
pgs. 137-158, Online ISBN: 978-981-10-8126-2, Online book chapter in Heshmati, H. and Yoon, H., Growth and Development in Ethiopia: Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, Springer, Singapore., Applying logit regression models, we present the factors that determine the tax compliance attitude of individual smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. The evidence presented in this article is based on the 5th Afrobarometer Survey (2014). We find some similarities and some differences with earlier studies in factors that are correlated with the tax compliance attitude of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. We argue that tax compliance is a function of individual smallholder farmers and related variables and confirm that people who are happier with open administration arrangements have a tax compliant attitude. Those farmers who perceive that their ethnic group thinks that they have been treated unfairly are less likely to have a tax compliant attitude. Smallholder farmers’ tax knowledge is also significantly correlated with a tax compliant attitude in Ethiopia. We identify a taxpayer’s satisfaction with local government officials as another determinant of tax compliance. These findings are robust to different econometric specifications.
21 pages, In this study we explain the concepts, determinants and imperatives of boundary in smallholder producers’ cooperatives both conceptually and empirically. The conceptual framework indicates the importance of the type of goods (being a club good or not) and range of activities that a cooperative provides to its members in defining a competitive boundary. Using unique organisational and market level data from Ethiopia, we then test empirically whether the observed (weak) performance of producers’ cooperatives in Africa is explained by their organisational boundary – the type and range of goods or services they provide to members. The empirical results confirm that the competitiveness of producers’ cooperatives is significantly correlated with the type and number of services – i.e. cooperatives that provide club goods and a limited range of services are found to be more competitive. The results also suggest that a considerable number of cooperatives in Ethiopia engage in markets where they do not have competitive advantage. Overall, we demonstrate the importance of properly defining a viable boundary – proper selection of services (or markets) and limiting the range of services – for improving the competitiveness of membership-based producer cooperatives in Africa.
