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Understanding the livelihoods related impacts of soil and water conservation and decision
behaviours of smallholder farmers would be a significant step toward improving
environmental conditions, while ensuring sustainable and increased agricultural
production. Hence, the objectives of this study include: analysis of households‟ food
insecurity and vulnerability to food insecurity and its influencing factors; assessment of
factors affecting choice decision of soil and water conservation structure, and evaluation
of impact of soil and water conservation adoption on food insecurity and related
vulnerability outcomes of farming households. A multi-stage stratified sampling procedure
was used to identify a sample of 408 sample households (200 adopters and 208 non-
adopters) and also 790 plot-level observations from three districts in eastern Ethiopia. The
study used both primary and secondary data. To address the research objectives, the study
used descriptive statistics and various econometric models. The logit model results show
that food insecurity of farm households was significantly influenced by age of household
head, family size in adult equivalent, use of irrigation, adoption of soil and water
conservation, and coping strategies. The Three-step Feasible Generalized Least Squares
estimation results indicate that age of household head and family size were found to have a
negative and significant influence on expected food consumption expenditure.
Furthermore, using improved seed, total cultivated land, using soil and water conservation,
received credit were significant predictors with positive influence on expected food
consumption expenditure. Based on the intensity of their vulnerability, households were
grouped as chronic food insecure (24.27 %), transient food insecure (11.77 %), highly
vulnerable-food secure (18.38 %), and low vulnerable-food secure (45.59 %). Moreover,
the study indicated that 54.01 % of households are vulnerable to food insecurity, which is
by higher than the current incidence of food insecurity (36.02 %). The multivariate probit estimation results indicated that out of hypothesized explanatory variables education level,
family size income, contact with development agent and erosion problem, livestock
ownership, age and sex of household head, number of plots, off-farm activity and received
credit were significant factors for farm-level adoption of stone bund, soil bund and bench
terracing conservation technologies. Endogenous switching regressions and propensity
score matching result indicated that, adoption of soil and water conservation not only
positively impacts the per capita food consumption expenditure and net crop value, but
also significantly reduced the probability of farmers being food insecure, vulnerability to
food insecurity, as well as being transient and chronically food insecure. |
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