The Role of Cooperatives in Promoting Climate-Smart Agriculture: Panel Evidence From Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change threatens the livelihood of millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. This paper investigates whether cooperatives could promote climate-smart agriculture among their members and, through spillover effects on nonmembers in their villages, among their communities at large. For this purpose, we use panel data collected among smallholder farm households in Ethiopia. We find that (i) cooperative membership is positively associated with the number of adaptation practices adopted by farm households; (ii) this association increases with the number of cooperatives of which farm households are members; and (iii) nonmembers in villages with cooperatives adopt more adaptation practices than farm households in villages without cooperatives, although results are statistically significant only for certain types of cooperatives. These results suggest that considering different levels at which climate change adaptation occurs merits greater attention among researchers and policymakers. For example, enhancing the institutional capacity of and creating partnerships with cooperatives could facilitate the implementation of climate change adaptation policies and strategies, including at the farm level.