Land degradation, drought and food security in a less‐favoured area in the Ethiopian highlands: a bio‐economic model with market imperfections

By Stein T. Holden, B. Shiferaw. 2004

232 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents a bio-economic model of Andit Tid, a severely degraded crop-livestock farming system with high population density and good market access in the highlands of Ethiopia. Land degradation, population growth, stagnant technology, and drought threaten food security in the area. Drought or weather risk appears to have increased in recent years. The bio-economic model is used to analyse the combined effects of land degradation, population growth, market imperfections and increased risk of drought on household production, welfare and food security. We find that the indirect effects of drought on household welfare through the impact on crop and livestock prices are larger than the direct production effects of drought. Provision and adoption of credit for fertiliser, although risky in itself, may lead to increased grain production and improved household welfare and food security. Provision of credit may have a negative effect on conservation incentives but this effect may be mitigated by linking a conservation requirement to the provision of credit for fertiliser. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/082b2f777a8be61e1f12900bc19fa242e429c2f5

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Citations in the corpus

Gains in Maize Genetic Improvement in Eastern and Southern Africa: II. CIMMYT Open-Pollinated Variety Breeding Pipeline (2017, background): “Furthermore in marginal areas where the risk of crop failure due to drought is high, farmers minimize the risk by not investing annually in inputs such as hybrid seed (Holden and Shiferaw, 2004).”
Methods to Assess Costs of Drought Damages and Policies for Drought Mitigation and Adaptation: Review and Recommendations (2013, methodology): “Applications of this method are found in Kulshreshtha and Klein (1989); Rosenberg (1993); Holden and Shiferaw (2004), and Fischer et al. (2005).”
Adoption and adaptation of natural resource management innovations in smallholder agriculture: reflections on key lessons and best practices (2009, background): “Holden and Shiferaw (2004) test the effect of access to input credit (seed and fertilizer inputs) on adoption of sustainable soil and water management strategies in Ethiopia.”
Managing vulnerability to drought and enhancing livelihood resilience in sub-Saharan Africa: Technological, institutional and policy options (2014, background): “However, the indirect effects of drought on environmental degradation and reduced household welfare through its impact on crop and livestock prices could be larger than its direct effects (Zimmerman and Carter, 2003; Holden and Shiferaw, 2004).”
An agent-based simulation model of human-environment interactions in agricultural systems (2011, methodology): “2.2 Extensions to bio-economic modeling MP-MAS shares features with bio-economic farm household models, such as those developed by Schuler and Sattler (2010), Roetter et al. (2007), Holden and Shiferaw (2004), and Kuyvenhoven et al. (1998).”
The Economic Impacts of Droughts: A Framework for Analysis (2017, background): “…(2000) Grafton and Ward (2008) Integrated Assessment Analysis, Biophysical-Agroeconomic Models Kulshreshtha and Klein (1989), Rosenberg (1993) Holden and Shiferaw (2004) Fischer et al. (2005) Integrated Assessment Analysis, Hydrological-Economic Models Booker et al. (2005), Ward et al.…”
A review of types of risks in agriculture: What we know and what we need to know (2020, unknown): “Farmers’ decision making evolves in a context in which multiple risks occur simultaneously, such as weather variability and price spikes or reduced market access (Holden and Shiferaw, 2004; Harvey et al., 2014; Lazzaroni and Wagner, 2016).”
The roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in Africa (2014, background): “Holden and Shiferaw (2004) also demonstrate the importance of price risk in a crop–livestock system in the highlands of Ethiopia due to covariate risk.”
Non-farm income, household welfare, and sustainable land management in a less-favoured area in the Ethiopian highlands (2004, methodology): “Earlier versions of this model include Shiferaw et al. (2000, 2001), Holden and Shiferaw (2004) and Holden et al. (2002).”
Review article: assessing the costs of natural hazards - state of the art and knowledge gaps (2013, background): “Combined biophysical and agro-economic models integrate crop models with the economic assessment and are thus speciﬁcally focused on agriculture (Kulshreshtha and Klein, 1989; Rosenberg, 1993; Holden and Shiferaw, 2004; and Fischer et al., 2005).”