Agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement: improved maize varieties in rural Ethiopia

Abstract

Adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households, including increased productivity, incomes, and food consumption. However, possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature. This article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties (IMVs) on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural Ethiopia. The conceptual linkage between IMV adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model. Instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores to be positive and significant. Quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes. Finally, by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation, it is found that the increase in own-produced maize consumption is the major channel through which IMV adoption affects child nutrition.JEL classifications: I15, O33, Q16, Q18

Crop improvement, adoption, and impact of improved varieties in food crops in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Anthropometry has been shown in the literature to be a good indicator of child nutritional status but collecting anthropometry adds substantial survey costs. The data show that maize adoption has led to statistically significant increases in child nutritional status and that the primary pathway through which this impact is felt is through increased own-consumption of maize (Zeng et al, 2014).…”

“…1 The DIIVA impact studies include Ethiopia/maize (Zeng et al, 2014), Rwanda/Uganda/beans (Larochelle et al, 2014) and the SSA-wide study (Fuglie and Marder,Chapter 17) presented in this volume. In addition, DIIVA impact case studies include an evaluation of the impacts of improved rice in Tanzania and Nigeria (Diagne et al, 2014) and of improved sorghum and millet in northern Nigeria .…”

“…Measuring either of these variables introduces increased survey complexity. The DIIVA studies focusing on poverty impacts Larochelle et al, 2014;Zeng et al, 2014) use different approaches. Zeng et al and Ndjeunga et al focus on household income, which, in agricultural contexts, is difficult to measure owing to seasonality, diverse sources of income generation and potential for strategic behaviour on the part of respondents (Deaton, 1997;Deaton and Zaidi, 2002).…”

Econometric analysis of improved maize varieties and sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) in Eastern Zambia

“…We complement our results by also estimating the impacts of improved maize using a semi-parametric propensity score matching (PSM). However, to our knowledge, none of the studies have tried to establish a causal link between improved agricultural technologies such as improved maize varieties and child malnutrition using rigorous impact evaluation methods except Zeng et al (2014). They use Instrumental Variable (IV) methods to show that adoption of improved maize varieties improves the nutritional status of children in Ethiopia.…”

“…One of the drawbacks of most IV methods is that they only assume an intercept effect which may under-or over-estimate the impacts of adoption. Zeng et al (2014) also assumed that the characteristics and resources of adopters and non-adopters have the same impact on outcome variables (i.e., homogenous returns to their characteristics and resources). In this study, we control for selection and endogeneity bias that may potentially arise due to correlation between unobserved household characteristics and observed health outcomes using the ESP approach.…”