Investment In Soil Conservation In Northern Ethiopia: The Role Of Land Tenure Security And Public Programs

By B. Gebremedhin, S. Swinton. 2003

608 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soil erosion seriously threatens the future agricultural productivity of Ethiopia's highlands. In analyzing the determinants of soil conservation investments there, this study goes beyond the conventional physical factors to examine institutional, social capital and public program effects. The double hurdle statistical analysis from 250 farms in the Tigray region reveals different causal factors for soil conservation adoption versus intensity of use. The determinants of adoption of soil conservation measures vary sharply between stone terraces and soil bunds. Physical propensity toward erosion (e.g., slope, slope shape and soil texture) and land suitability for conservation helped determine conservation investments in all cases. But institutional and social determinants of investment differed importantly between bunds and terraces. Long-term investments in stone terraces were associated with secure land tenure, labor availability, proximity to the farmstead, and learning opportunities via the availability of food-for-work projects. By contrast, short-term investments in soil bunds were strongly linked to insecure land tenure and the absence of food-for-work projects. Farm beneficiaries of public soil conservation programs were less likely to invest privately in either type of conservation practice. Social capital, as measured by farmer perception of community pressure to curb soil erosion, did not contribute significantly to either kind of conservation investment. The intensity of stone terrace adoption (measured as meters of terrace per hectare) was determined by expected returns but not by capacity to invest. Higher intensity of stone terrace construction was favored by fertile-but-erodible silty soils in (rainy) highland settings that offered valuable yield benefits from soil conservation. Intensity of terracing was also greater in remote villages where limited off-farm employment opportunities made construction costs relatively low. Previous research has highlighted the need for public policy interventions to supplement private incentives to make soil conservation investments in erosion-prone mountain areas. Our results highlight the importance of the right kind of public interventions. Direct public involvement in constructing soil conservation structures on private lands appears to undermine incentives for private conservation investments. When done on public lands, however, public conservation activities may encourage private soil conservation by example. Secure land tenure rights clearly reinforce private incentives to make long-term investments in soil conservation.

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Citations in the corpus

Adoption of multiple sustainable agricultural practices in rural Ethiopia (2013, methodology): “The adoption models include several explanatory variables based on the economic theory and empirical literature on the adoption of sustainable land management and integrated natural resource management (D’Souza et al., 1993; Neill and Lee, 2001; Isham, 2002; Arellanes and Lee, 2003; Gebremedhin and ”
Cropping system diversification, conservation tillage and modern seed adoption in Ethiopia: Impacts on household income, agrochemical use and demand for labor (2013, unknown): “Most previous adoption studies (e.g., Gebremedhin and Scott, 2003; Kassie et al., 2010, 2011) have focused on an analysis of a single SAP using single equation models (e.g., probit or logit).”
How Can African Agriculture Adapt to Climate Change? A Counterfactual Analysis from Ethiopia (2012, background): “This view is also documented in Ethiopia by Shiferaw and Holden (1998), Gebremedhin and Swinton (2003), Bogale, Taeb, and Endo (2006) and Mekonnen (2009).9 It is assumed that the covariate vector Zi is uncorrelated with the idiosyncratic unobserved stochastic component , that is,ηij .”
Tradeoffs and Complementarities in the Adoption of Improved Seeds, Fertilizer, and Natural Resource Management Technologies in Kenya (2016, background): “Soil bunds, on the other hand, are embankments made by ridging soil on the lower side of a ditch along a slope contour (Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003).”
Tenure Insecurity and Investment in Soil Conservation. Evidence from Malawi (2013, background): “Fewer studies have considered the relationship between tenure insecurity and investments in soil conservation (Gebremedhin & Swinton, 2003).”
Determinants of farmers' willingness to pay for soil conservation practices in the southeastern highlands of Ethiopia (2004, background): “Empirical studies in different parts of Ethiopia reported a positive and significant effect of the slope of a plot on the decision to adopt soil conservation structures (Shiferaw and Holden, 1998; Bekele and Drake, 2003; Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003).”
Technical Efficiency among Peasant Farmers Participating in Natural Resource Management Programmes in Central America (2009, background): “González and López (2007) and Coelli and Fleming (2004) follow similar arguments to implement their SDF studies among peasant farmers in less favourable areas, namely, Colombia and Papua New Guinea, respectively.”
The superior effect of nature based solutions in land management for enhancing ecosystem services. (2018, background): “Due to the widespread soil erosion taking place there have beenmany projects focusing on on-site soil and water conservation techniques (Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003; Amare et al., 2014; Lemann et al., 2016).”
Social determinants of soil and water conservation in rural Kenya (2008, methodology): “This result is consistent with other studies on the impact of tenure security and soil conservation improvements (Besley, 1995; Shiferaw & Holden, 1998; Gebremedhin & Swinton, 2003 ).”