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Adoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in Ethiopia

By: Contributor(s): Material type: ArticleArticleLanguage: English Publication details: United Kingdom : Elsevier, 2014.ISSN:
  • 0306-9192
Subject(s): Online resources: In: Food Policy v. 44, p. 272-284Summary: This article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally-representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in Ethiopia. We adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics. We expand this further with the generalized propensity score (GPS) approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables. We find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties. This study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor, and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services. Policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in Ethiopia.
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Peer review

Peer-review: Yes - Open Access: Yes|http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=0306-9192

This article evaluates the impact of the adoption of improved wheat varieties on food security using a recent nationally-representative dataset of over 2000 farm households in Ethiopia. We adopted endogenous switching regression treatment effects complemented with a binary propensity score matching methodology to test robustness and reduced selection bias stemming from both observed and unobserved characteristics. We expand this further with the generalized propensity score (GPS) approach to evaluate the effects of continuous treatment on the response of the outcome variables. We find a consistent result across models indicating that adoption increases food security and farm households that did adopt would also have benefited significantly had they adopted new varieties. This study supports the need for vital investments in agricultural research for major food staples widely consumed by the poor, and efforts to improve access to modern varieties and services. Policies that enhance diffusion and adoption of modern wheat varieties should be central to food security strategies in Ethiopia.

Wheat CRP FP1 - Maximizing value for money, social inclusivity through prioritizing WHEAT R4D investments

Socioeconomics Program

Text in English

Elsevier|CIMMYT Informa No. 1872

INT3096|INT3210

CIMMYT Staff Publications Collection

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