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Soil and Water Conservation technology adoption and labour allocation: Evidence from Ethiopia

Francisco Fontes

Published 2020 in World Development

ABSTRACT

Abstract Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) technologies are viewed as part of a solution to increase the resilience of the agriculture sector to climate change. Research has shown that SWC technologies are effective at controlling erosion and increasing yields but are labour intensive. However, the quantification of their labour impacts remains an important research gap. In this paper, I estimate the labour impacts of adopting SWC technologies in Ethiopia. Using an endogenous Switching Regression Model (ESRM), I find that adopting SWC technologies increases plot-level adult labour by 35%. Impacts on child labour depend on the number of adults in the household. Specifically, estimated impacts range from 29% for the full sample to 78% for the sub-sample of households with fewer than three adults. I also find some evidence of negative self-selection in the case of child labour, which suggests that adopters have a comparative advantage since they are able to adopt the technology with smaller impacts on child labour as a result of unobservable characteristics. The estimated labour impacts also provide a plausible explanation for why farmers may not adopt SWC technologies despite their economic profitability. Ultimately, the paper argues that understanding the heterogeneity and magnitude of the labour impacts is an important part of understanding potential trade-offs of adopting SWC technologies. Given the estimated labour impacts, policies that relax the household’s labour constraints could be an effective mechanism to spur the adoption of labour-intensive environmentally agricultural practices, while minimizing potential negative effects.

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