Moti Jaleta

• Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

Agricultural technology adoption intensely improve agricultural production and it is a promising source for smallholder farmers’ means of achieving sustained well-being in Ethiopia. However, adoption of multiple wheat production technologies is not well practiced and its overall adoption level is low in the country. Hence, this study is aimed at id...

Agricultural technology adoption intensely improve agricultural production and it is a promising source for smallholder farmers’ means of achieving sustained well-being in Ethiopia. However, adoption of multiple wheat production technologies is not well practiced and its overall adoption level is low in the country. Hence, this study is aimed at id...

The aims of this study are to analysis adoption and impacts of conservation agriculture on poverty and resilience to drought in Eastern Ethiopia. Multi-stage sampling method was employed and four districts were randomly selected from Eastern Hararghe Zone. Using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2023 from 430 households, multinomial endogeno...

Low agricultural commercialisation due to low productivity and a lack of access to and use of improved seeds are common features of smallholders in the Ethiopian highlands. Seed-producer cooperatives (SPCs) were established and strengthened in these highlands to facilitate smallholders' access to improved seed. Using survey data collected from 425...

Acid soils are widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural lime can be used to alleviate production constraints associated with soil acidity, but lime is not widely available in the region, and it is unclear how profitable its use would be. To guide potential investments in lime market development, we estimated the profitability of acid soil...

Soil acidity is a major constraint to crop production in tropical regions. Although agricultural lime is one option to remediate acid soils, there is limited information on the potential returns on investments to liming by smallholders. Using survey data collected from 261 households in Rwanda, we estimated the crop-specific yield response to lime...

The dynamics in intra-household decision-making are often neglected in literature on the adoption of agricultural innovations. However, households' farm management decisions are often made following negotiations between female and male farmers. These may differ in terms of individual bargaining power and personal preferences. A better understanding...

Wheat is a vital cereal crop for smallholders in Ethiopia. Despite over fifty years of research on wheat varietal development, consideration of gendered trait preferences in developing target product profiles for wheat breeding is limited. To address this gap, our study used sex-disaggregated survey data and historical rainfall trends from the majo...

This study examines the extent to which wheat varieties supplied by the formal seed system align with the varieties demanded and used by farmers in Ethiopia. The framework of stated and revealed preferences drawn from the consumer preference theory is used to analyze farmer demand for different wheat varieties. We used official data from the formal...

A growing urban population and dietary changes increased wheat import bills in Africa to 9% per year. Though wheat production in the continent has been increasing over the past decades, to varying degrees depending on regions, this has not been commensurate with the rapidly increasing demand for wheat. Analyses of wheat yield gaps show that there i...

Enhancing farmers' access to improved seeds is essential to increase productivity and ensure food security in the Global South. However, for many socially marginalized groups, seed access is constrained by the weak institutions governing the input supply chains and the dissemination of information. Using cross-sectional survey data collected from 1...

Among smallholder maize farmers in Ethiopia (and similar areas in Africa), yield and stress tolerance traits in maize varieties are important. While high yields remain a major objective, breeding and seed system development programs are increasingly based on the recognition that farmers also have an interest in other agronomic and consumption trait...

Several recent studies that employed DNA fingerprinting to identify crop varieties on farmers' fields revealed a significant mismatch between perceived and actual adoption. Varietal misidentification may undermine seed market functioning, especially if low-quality seeds of age-old varieties are distributed through the same channels as seeds of rece...

During the post-Green Revolution era, numerous improved wheat varieties were released and disseminated to enhance tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and increase productivity. Still, in the wheat-based farming systems of the Global South, gender-based and other social inequalities continue to undermine equitable access to improved varieties,...

As the current crisis unfolds, international attention is focused on the many supply-related effects that compound existing failings and inequalities of the global food system, which were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. We may again see civil unrest as witnessed during the 2008 food crisis. The war in Ukraine and trade sanctions are triggering...

Since its domestication around 10,000 years ago, wheat has played a crucial role in global food security. Wheat now supplies a fifth of food calories and protein to the world’s population. It is the most widely cultivated crop in the world, cultivated on 217 million ha annually. This chapter assesses available data on wheat production, consumption,...

Climate change is a global phenomenon but disproportionately affects smallholder farmers, prompting them to use various coping and adaptation strategies to counter the problem. This study aimed to examine the trends of climate parameters, assess farmers’ perception of climate change, and identify the strategies of adaptation measures in central Eth...

Since its domestication some 9,000 years ago, maize (Zea mays L.; corn) has played an increasing and diverse role in global agri-food systems. Global maize production has surged in the past few decades, propelled by rising demand and a combination of technological advances, yield increases and area expansion. Maize is already the leading cereal in...

Empirical studies on the effects of governance structures on incentives have still received little attention in the wheat value chain research of developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of governance structures on actors' incentives in different functional nodes of the wheat value chain. This study used persona...

Industrial policy becomes one of the most debated issues in developing countries. Developing countries still need to advance their industries and accelerate the economic transformation through implementing proper industrial policies supporting this endeavor. This study examines the impacts of industrial policy on the regional economy in Ethiopia. T...

Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) practices considerably improved soil properties in maize–legume farming systems, resulting in increased crop productivity, reduced downside risk and increased farmers’ incomes across diverse agro-ecological zones in Ethiopia. • Crop residue retention, one of the components of CASI,...

Abstract The study examined the rate of maize adoption using farmer self identification and DNA fingerprinting in Ethiopia. Secondary data from the household survey data collected by Central Statistical Agency and DNA fingerprinting identified for maize varieties were used in the analysis. The findings of the study indicate that rate of maize adopt...

Wheat rusts are the key biological constraint to wheat production in Ethiopia—one of Africa’s largest wheat producing countries. The fungal diseases cause economic losses and threaten livelihoods of smallholder farmers. While it is known that wheat rust epidemics have occurred in Ethiopia, to date no systematic long-term analysis of past outbreaks...

Wheat yields in Ethiopia need to increase considerably to reduce import dependency and keep up with the expected increase in population and dietary changes. Despite the yield progress observed in recent years, wheat yield gaps remain large. Here, we decompose wheat yield gaps in Ethiopia into efficiency, resource, and technology yield gaps and rela...

Inorganic fertilizer is one of the key technologies that could enhance crop productivity. However, farmers are still using lower than the recommended rates and yet there are a lot of farmers who are not using fertilizers at all. In this study, we analyze determinants and profitability of fertilizer use using a survey data collected from 174 randoml...

This paper analyzes the socio-economic characteristics of households that affect husbands and wives' contributions to decisions regarding the use of income from crop and livestock sales in Kenya. Using a sample of 276 households, we apply a multinomial logit model to assess factors affecting decision-making. Results show that husbands make most dec...

Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in sub-Saharan Africa yet remains a net importer. Increasing domestic wheat production is a national priority. Improved varieties provide an important pathway to enhancing productivity and stability of production. Reliably tracking varietal use and dynamics is a challenge, and the value of conventional recall...

Climate constitutes a complex set of interrelated elements and its variability induces climate shocks; thus, leading to crop failures. The objective of this study was to analyze rainfall variability and extremes and investigate the effects on wheat and barley productivity at selected sites in Central Ethiopia. Standardized rainfall anomaly index, r...

In addition to experimental data, using information collected from farmers is vital to assess the performance of candidate farming technologies. The latter provides the basis for farmers’ assessments and adoption decisions. Using detailed georeferenced plot and household level data from Ethiopia, this paper estimates the impact of a set of sustaina...

Accurate identification of crop varieties grown by farmers is crucial, among others, for crop management, food security and varietal development and dissemination purposes. One may expect varietal identification to be more challenging in the context of developing countries where literacy and education are limited and informal seed systems and seed...

Unexpectedly lower yield outcomes (downside risks) challenge farmers’ use of external inputs that can enhance crop productivity. Using household-level panel data collected from Ethiopia, we estimated the effects of crop diversification through maize-legume intercropping/rotation on maize yield distribution and downside risk. Results from endogenous...

White lupin is an important grain legume in the Ethiopian farming system. However, farmers’ cultivars contain undesirable characters, such as high alkaloid level, are susceptible to diseases and low yielders. In order to ascertain the extent of these constraints with the farmers and document their experiences and practices on white lupin production...

Crops are variously susceptible to biotic stresses–something expected to increase under climate change. In the case of staple crops, this potentially undermines household and national food security. We examine recent wheat rust epidemics and smallholders’ coping mechanisms in Ethiopia as a case study. Wheat is a major food crop in Ethiopia widely g...

Innovations to improve staple crop germplasm can reduce poverty and otherwise improve farmer livelihoods through complex and multiple pathways. This paper reviews the evidence for one prominent pathway—through increased incomes (in cash and kind) for poor farmers who adopt the technology. An important determinant of poverty reduction is the ability...

This paper reviews agricultural mechanization and reduced tillage use in the context of sustainable intensification in developing country agriculture. The scoping review includes selected and contrasting cases – including Zimbabwe (manual systems), Bangladesh (2-wheel – single axle tractor systems), India (4-wheel – i.e. 2 axles tractor systems), K...

The lack of land ownership can discourage agricultural technology adoption, yet there is scarce evidence of the impact of land rental contracts on the adoption of improved crop varieties in developing countries. The current study investigates such impact using a nationally representative survey of Ethiopian maize farmers. In contrast to many previo...

We analyse the impact of intensity of tillage on wheat productivity and risk exposure using panel household-plot level data from Ethiopia. In order to control for selection bias, we estimate a flexible moment-based production function using an endogenous switching regression treatment effects model. We find that tillage has a complementary impact o...

In recent years, maize has gained prominence as an important staple crop in Ethiopia second only to teff in terms of acreage. Most of this is grown by semi-subsistence farm households whose livelihoods are tied to crop production and some livestock keeping. Therefore, an important policy question concerns the impact that the reported maize revoluti...

Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level. In this paper, we used probit regression and post-estimation simulations to identify the key micro (farm specific) and macro (country specific)...

Breeding crops for disease resistance is a sustainable approach to reduce yield losses. While significant research on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties exists, most studies have analyzed yield effects in general without distinguishing between different varietal traits and characteristics. Here, panel data from wheat farmers in Eth...

While it is often recognised that agricultural technology adoption decisions are intertwined and best characterised by multivariate models, typical approaches to examining adoption and impacts of agricultural technology have focused on single technology adoption choice and ignored interdependence among technologies. We examine farm- and market-leve...

Public agricultural research has been conducted in Africa for decades. While many studies have examined its aggregate impacts, few have investigated how it affects the poor. This paper helps fill this gap by applying a new procedure to explore the ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural Ethiopia. Plot-level yield and cost ch...

Temporally and spatially disaggregated market price data most useful for analysis, but data problems common, such as missing observations, outliers, short and incomplete series, etc. Cointegration not possible in such a case. Instead of adapting data to suit methods, we propose to adapt method to suit data.

Ethiopian agriculture is characterized by low productivity due to technical and socioeconomic factors. To improve this problem integration of modern technologies with an improved level of efficiency become more crucial. Accordingly, this study was conducted using Stochastic Frontier Production Function (SFPF) to estimate the level of Technical Effi...

The article estimates sector linkages, output, income and employment multipliers. It also measures the effects of industrial policy on income and consumption and wheat factory's outputs in aggregate terms. This study indicates that non-agro processing industry has relatively a weaker linkage with the rest of regional economy. The study found that t...

Crop management innovations are often not discrete fixed stand-alone options—and their adoption may imply various combinations and adaptations. This potentially confounds their impact assessment. This article assesses the resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of a crop management package revolving around minimum tillage in maize-based...

This paper examines the market participation gaps and their causes between female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) in Ethiopia using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach. The results showed that structural/coefficient effects accounted for 74 per cent (65%) of the differences between FHH and MHH in the net buyer (net s...

This chapter focuses on the adoption and turnover of cultivars of crops, such as soyabean, maize, pigeon pea, wheat, cassava, rice, potato, barley, yam, groundnut, bean, sorghum, cowpea, pearl millet, chickpea, faba bean, lentil, sweet potato, banana and pea, in Africa South of Sahara. The changes in on-farm productivity, poverty and food security...

This chapter focuses on the improved cultivar generation of various crops (maize, cassava, rice, bean, potato, cowpea, wheat, soyabean, sweet potato, yam, sorghum, groundnut, banana, chickpea, pigeon pea, barley, pearl millet, faba bean, lentil and pea) in Africa South of the Sahara. Information of cultivar output of these crops is also presented.

This book contains 21 chapters presenting the most comprehensive, accurate and informative view of the spread of improved crop cultivars in Africa south of Sahara. The importance of the diffusion and adoption of different crop cultivars and the impacts of the use of these improved cultivars are also discussed.

Employing nationally representative data, we investigate the impact of Sustainable Intensification Practices (SIPs) on farm households’ food security, downside risk and the cost of risk in Malawi. The analysis relies on a flexible moment-based specification of a stochastic production function in a multinomial endogenous switching regression framewo...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

Public agricultural research has been conducted in Africa for decades. While many studies have examined its aggregate impacts, few have investigated how it affects the poor. This paper helps fill this gap by applying a new procedure to explore the ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural Ethiopia. Plot-level yield and cost ch...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

Conservation agriculture (CA) is being promoted as an option for reducing soil degradation, conserving water, enhancing crop productivity, and maintaining yield stability. However, CA is a knowledge- and technology-intensive practice, and may not be feasible or may not perform better than conventional agriculture under all conditions and farming sy...

Competition for crop residues between livestock feeding and soil mulching is a major cause of the low and slow adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa. Retaining crop residues in the field is not only a prerequisite for CA but may also be the most viable option for African farmers to retain their fields in a productive state...

This paper investigates impact heterogeneity in the adoption of improved maize varieties using data from rural Tanzania. We used a generalized propensity-score matching methodology, complemented with a parametric econometric method to check the robustness of results. We found a consistent result across models, indicating that adoption increased foo...

Efficient input supply and service delivery may call for a hub approach where all the necessary inputs and services are supplied in a coordinated manner, either by a single supplier or by several and separate entities in a given geographical location accessible to beneficiaries. Based on experience from Ada’a milk shed in central Ethiopia, this pap...

Soil fertility depletion is considered one of the main biophysical limiting factors for increasing per capita food production for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption and diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs), as a way to tackle this challenge, has become an important issue in the development policy agenda in the...

Conservation agriculture (CA) has received a lot of attention over the last few decades and has become the topic of a heated and polarized debate in Africa. On one hand, ‘believers’ are promoting CA with a religious zeal, whilst on the other hand, ‘heretics’ are questioning the suitability of CA for the majority of African smallholders. In this pap...

This paper examines the role of market price information dissemination on the co-integration of grain market prices in Northern Ethiopia. Results are based on bi-monthly retail price data on wheat and teff commodities collected from six markets in the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia. The data has 55 observations for each of the two crops in each...

Using simultaneous-equation models, this paper examines whether there is interdependence between smallholder’s net market positions in crop and live animal markets under mixed crop-livestock system. Household level data collected in 2009 from 1075 sample households in 10 districts of Ethiopia are used for this analysis. Results confirmed the existe...

This paper analyses the impact of the intensity of improved maize varieties adoption on food security and poverty using data collected in 2010 from maize-legume farming systems in rural Tanzania. We used a continuous treatment approach using generalized propensity score matching and parametric error correction approaches to reduce potential biases...

Soil fertility depletion is considered the main biophysical limiting factor to increasing per capita food production for most smallholder farmers in Africa. The adoption and diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs), as a way to tackle this impediment, has become an important issue in the development policy agenda for sub-Saharan Afric...

The Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers project adopted a “participatory market oriented commodity value chain development” approach, to address problems and potentials for haricot bean production in Alaba Special District, in Southern Ethiopia. With an emerging export market potential, attention needs to be paid n...

In 2005 the IPMS project introduced a participatory market oriented value chain approach in Alaba and apiculture was identified as one of the priority marketable commodities. Amongst the problems and potentials identified in the apiculture value chain were lack of knowledge and skills to operate the modern beehives, low occupancy rate, lack of bee...

This article examines the role of institutional services of credit, input supply, and extension in the overall commercial transformation process of smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia. Survey data collected in 2006 from 309 sample households in three districts of Ethiopia are used for the analyses. Tobit regression models are used to measure the ef...

Existing literature suggests the influence of household wealth on farmer's technology adoption decisions. In 2007, this study was conducted to provide a clearer understanding of how differences in household wealth affect the way in which other variables influence adoption decisions. Using data from 369 households in Adama and Adami Tulu Jido Kombol...

The 19 chapters included in this book provide an overview of research conducted within the framework of the collaborative research programme on 'Regional Food Security Policies for Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Economies' (RESPONSE). The programme aimed to identify strategic options for agricultural and rural development in less-favou...

This chapter assesses farm household land and labour allocation decisions under imperfect factor and product markets. A non-separable farm household model is adapted to obtain econometric estimates of land and labour allocation decisions under different market participation regimes. Survey data obtained from a sample of 154 farm households producin...

This article provides an empirical analysis of farm-gate tomato price negotiations under asymmetric information. Regression models are estimated to analyze when and by how much sellers stick to their initial ask prices and what explains the variation in the initial ask-offer price spread. Detailed information on 66 farm-gate tomato transactions and...

Vita. Thesis (doctoral)--Wageningen Universiteit, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-89).

Soil fertility depletion is considered one of the main biophysical limiting factors for increasing per capita food production for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption and diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs), as a way to tackle this challenge, has become an important issue in the development policy agenda in the...