Impacts of Extension Services and Social Capital Influenceon Conservation Agriculture Adoption and HouseholdFood Security Improvements

Abstract

There are limited empirical studies that explore how agricultural extension services and local institutions influence conservation agriculture adoption and household food security. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the potential impacts of extension services and local institutions (social capital) on conservation agriculture and food security. A cross-sectional data is collected from 350 randomly selected farmers in northern Ethiopia. The propensity matching method and endogenous switching regression are used to control for selection bias from observed and unobserved factors. Results indicate that extension services and social capital have significant and positive effects on adopting conservation agriculture and improving household food security. Farmers under the treated groups have higher per capita food consumption, per capita expenditure and food security levels than counterpart farmers. Besides, the rate of adoption of conservation agriculture for the treated farmers is relatively higher than for other farmers. This confirms that extension services, formal institutions and informal groups have motivated farmers to adopt conservation agriculture and replenish risks of food insecurity shocks. Therefore, governments, researchers, academicians, NGOs, development practitioners and others actors should exert utmost efforts and investments to empower local institutions and strength agricultural extension services, which are viable options to stimulate farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture in drought-prone areas of the country.