Production and supply of food crops is underpinned by various factors starting from pre-planting to postharvest farming activities. Productivity of available resources, development of new crop varieties adapted and resistant to multiple agroecologies, crop diseases and other underlying constraints, and the need to design relevant policy interventions required to bring about technical progress in respective sectors and subsectors appear to be the basic structural features of crop research and production in Ethiopia.
This study is designed to assess the adoption, production, productivity, efficiency and supply of two major crops widely produced in Ethiopia (wheat and faba bean). It is particularly aimed to analyze and validate (1) major crop production constraints and their incidence, prevalence and intensity of crop damage; (2) production, intensity of input use, adoption of improved inputs, supply and participation in output markets; (3) productivity, efficiency, and underlying sources of efficiency differentials and inefficiency effects among producers; and (4) agricultural innovations, yield gaps, and technical change in wheat and faba bean production.
The study makes use of three major sources of data (cross-sectional and timeseries) and primary data (collected form key experts). One of the datasets is Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) obtained from Central Statistical Agency (CSA) collected in 2013/14. It is a socioeconomic survey of about 5262 households operating on about 30000 fields of all crops produced in the country. For this study, data on households, crop fields, input use, crop output, production shocks and crop damage, market participation and supply, and other covariates on 1387 wheat and 475 faba bean fields are considered. Data related to development and release of new crop technologies are obtained from Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (M0ANR). Timeseries data on patterns of production, yield, and supply available at the global database of FAOSTA since 1961 are also utilized.
The study has employed methods supposed to be more relevant and rigorous. Systematic review of existing studies undertaken since 2007 in Ethiopia have been critically conducted with rigorous review procedures including formulation of the research questions, identification of relevant publications and their quality assessment, summary and interpretation of the review findings.
Analysis and interpretation of secondary data has also been extensively used to allow for empirical support to the review findings. Adoption of improved inputs (seed and fertilizer) for wheat production and the determinant factors thereof are identified by a seemingly unrelated (SUR) bivariate probit model. Market participation and intensity of participation by smallholder wheat and faba bean producers is analyzed by Heckman sample-selection models. Stochastic production frontier (SPF) models with half normal distribution are employed to estimate the productivity of factor inputs used for wheat and faba bean production by smallholder farmers. Efficiency scores are predicted from the frontier models, analyzed across different sets of covariates, and accordingly stylized and documented. Two-limit Tobit model is used to identify the underlying sources of efficiency differentials and inefficiency effects for both wheat and faba bean. Time trend growth model of wheat and faba bean yield is analyzed to estimate the technical change attained in wheat and faba bean production. Gap between attainable and actual yields of new crop varieties is analyzed and compared by their yield performance and resistance to diseases on research stations.
Published as FARA Research Report Volume 4 No: 5 (2019)