Welfare Impact of Organic Fertilizer Adoption: Empirical Evidence From Nigeria

Abstract

Soil fertility depletion is acknowledged to adversely influence agricultural productivity and welfare status of rural farming households. Studies have shown that organic fertilizer utilization tends to rejuvenate the soil, thereby enhancing its productive capacity. This study seeks to estimate the welfare impact of organic fertilizer adoption among agricultural households using the 2018/2019 Nigeria General Household Survey (GHS). The novelty of this study is in the use of propensity score matching (PSM) and endogenous treatment regression (ETR) to address biases that may arise from both observed and unobserved factors. Results show that the adoption of organic fertilizers positively and significantly impacts the welfare of farmers, particularly when sources of unobserved characteristics of agricultural households are accounted for. The heterogeneity impact results show that female household heads, agricultural households that had access to credit, and farm household residents in the southern region of Nigeria significantly gained more from the adoption of organic fertilizers. In addition, a check for time effect reveals that the adoption of organic fertilizers does not result in an immediate welfare effect; the effect is, however, positive and significant over time. This suggests that adoption does not only improve soil and mitigate against climate impact, but it also has a higher likelihood of providing long-term and sustainable welfare impact for agricultural households. The results point to the need for policies and programs to promote and sustain the adoption of organic fertilizers among agricultural households through addressing existing institutional barriers such as extension and credit facilities.

Does simultaneous adoption of drought‐tolerant maize varieties and organic fertiliser affect productivity and welfare outcomes? Evidence from rural Nigeria

“…We found a similar significant effect for D 0 M 0 , D 1 M 0 and D 0 M 1 packages in the per capita food expenditure model and D 0 M 1 in the productivity model. This implies that a larger household size puts pressure on resource needs which can result in poor welfare status (Anyanwu, 2014; Oyetunde‐Usman et al., 2021). Also, for per capita total expenditure outcome estimation, increasing the log of hired labour cost is significantly associated with higher per capita total expenditure for packages D 1 M 0 and D 0 M 1.…”

Effects of risk perception and agricultural socialized services on farmers' organic fertilizer application behavior: Evidence from Shandong Province, China

“…Although the Chinese government has been promoting the technology of replacing chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer in recent years, the actual application rate of organic fertilizer is not satisfactory, and the utilization rate is only 40.2% ( 10 ). Organic fertilizer application behavior (OFAB) refers to the investment decision-making behavior of agricultural production and management entities in applying organic fertilizers such as farmyard manure and commercial organic fertilizer in agricultural production in order to maximize profits ( 11 , 12 ). As the main body of agricultural production and operation, farmers have the direct decision-making power of fertilizer application.…”

Impact of environmental literacy on farmers’ agricultural green production behavior: Evidence from rural China

“…On the other hand, some studies have used multiple questions with binary selection variables to ask farmers about their AGP behavior, and used a count dependent variable measuring the number of AGP behavior adopted by farmers. These studies adopted Ordered Probit model and Poisson model to investigate the influencing factors (Bopp et al, 2019;Oyetunde-Usman et al, 2021).…”