期刊名称：International Journal of Economics and Empirical Research (IJEER)
印刷版ISSN：2311-3871
电子版ISSN：2310-5232
出版年度：2014
卷号：2
期号：2
页码：36-43
出版社：The Economics and Social Development Organization (TESDO)
摘要：Ethiopia has failed to produce enough food to feed its population and the country has remained as one of the poorest countries in the world. Land degradation has been identified as one of the most serious problems that threaten the sustainability of agriculture in the country. In an effort to address this problem, the government has given due attention for soil and water conservation in the country. However, definitive and quantitative information regarding soil conservation and its interactions with farm productivity is lacking.we evaluate the impact of soil conservation interventions on technical efficiency of smallholder farm households in Arsi Negelle district of Ethiopia using cross sectional data collected from randomly selected 160 sample households during 2011/12 production season. Stochastic frontier method has been used to extract the efficiency scores from the production function and to measure the impact of conservation practices on technical efficiency; Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was employed. The logistic regression estimation of factors affecting participation in soil conservation revealed that educational level of the household head, farming experience and frequency of extension contact significantly affected the participation decision of households in soil conservation. In matching processes, kernel matching with band width of 0.5 was found to be the best matching algorism. This method was also checked for covariate balancing with a standardized bias, t-test, and joint significance level tests. The results revealed that households that participate in conservation practice have got an improvement of 3.16 percent in technical efficiency than those households that were not participated which shows participation has a significant, positive and robust impact on the outcome variables. Therefore, policy makers and other stockholders should give due attention in soil conservation.
