Cleaner Environmental Systems (Dec 2023)
The effect of organic and inorganic soil fertility management technologies on smallholder farmers’ net revenue and nutrition security: Evidence from southwest region of Ethiopia
Abstract
Technologies are better evaluated as packages, i.e., bundles of adoption decisions, rather than a segregate adoption, given the preeminent effect of the combinations on food and nutrition security, productivity, and other welfare outcomes. This study therefore assessed the effect of organic and inorganic soil fertility management technologies on net revenue and Nutrition security of smallholder farmers in Southwest Ethiopia. A multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) model, which captures both self-selection bias and the interactions between choices of alternative packages, was applied for this study since farmers’ adoption decisions are likely influenced by unobservable characteristics that may be correlated with the outcomes of interest. The investigation result revealed that, from the three adoption combinations of organic and inorganic soil fertility management technologies, joint adoption of the two technology groups was found to have a significant effect on both net revenue and Nutrition security simultaneously. Unlikely, the isolated adoption of the two soil fertility management technologies may not result in an intended nutrition security outcome. Thus, for the simultaneous improvement in net revenue and nutrition security, the study recommends concentrating on the joint practice of the two organic and inorganic soil fertility management technologies.
