Impact of adoption of climate smart agriculture practices on farmer's income in semi-arid regions of Karnataka

Context

Semi-arid regions are one of the most vulnerable regions of climate change to agriculture. Karnataka, a semi-arid state of India has warmed by 0.4 °C with declining trends in average annual rainfall by 10 % over the last century, is highly vulnerable to climate change. To adapt with this climate change impact, Government of Karnataka along with CGIAR institutes and agriculture universities had initiated the Bhoo-Samrudhi program in 2013 to promote climate smart agriculture practices in the state. The primary aim of this program was to enhance crop productivity by 25 % and farmers income by 20 %.

Objective

Firstly, this study aims to identify who adopts CSA practices and at what scale? Secondly, how much additional income farmers earn by adopting CSA practices as compared the non-CSA but improved agricultural practices, and the traditional practices. Thirdly, this study estimates marginal increase in farmers income at difference scale of adoption of CSA practices. Finally, this study identifies possible challenges and opportunities in upscaling the adoption of CSA practices in the state.

Methods

A primary survey using a semi-structured questionnaire was conducted among the selected 1466 farmer households in four districts of Karnataka (Bidar, Chikballapur, Dharwad, and Udupi). The sample consisted of 833 adopter farmers and 633 non-adopter farmers. Non-adopter farmers were those who were following traditional practice of crop cultivation and rest of the farmers are treated as adopters. The study used multinomial logistic regression to explore what made adopter farmers different from non-adopter farmers. Further, we had applied propensity score matching and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment methods to estimate the impact of scale of adoption of CSA practices on farmers income.

Results and conclusions

The results highlighted that landholding size, education levels, and asset ownership likely affect the adoption of various levels of CSA practice intensification. Moreover, the impact of adoption on farmers' income is estimated to be Rs. 4845 for low intensified, Rs. 6801 for medium intensified, and Rs. 7858 for highly intensified farmers, in comparison to the improved technology adopters. Therefore, we can conclude that adoption of single technology may not be able to solve the problem, instead technology intensification can be a more effective mechanism to deal with the vulnerabilities and create resilience against climate change.

Significance

Technology adoption has been a proven method to improve agricultural productivity as well as income of the farmers in semi-arid regions across the globe. However, an upcoming method to improve food and livelihood security is through sustainable technological intensification. Thus, this study contributes to providing empirical and evidence-based policy suggestions to promote technology intensification instead of just promoting one single technology. Therefore, technology intensification can be considered as a package of multiple technologies for the farmers to improve their crop and land productivity, and to gain higher economic return.