Adoption of maize varieties on smallholder farmers' market participation in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia.

Agricultural technologies have been introduced to Ethiopia. Farmers adopt such technologies for bettering their livelihoods by increasing farm production. However, increasing production by itself may not necessarily enhance farmers' livelihoods. Among other factors that can result in enhanced livelihoods, farmers should be linked to output markets to sell their surplus production. This paper evaluates whether the adoption of improved maize varieties increases farmers' output market participation. From data collected by CIMMYT from three woredas of Oromia Region in Ethiopia, 300 sample households were randomly selected for the purpose of this study. Average Treatment Effect (ATE) regression based on propensity score matching (PSM) as well as matching algorithms were utilized to evaluate whether adoption creates market participation for farmers. Results of the PSM show that maize technologies had a robust and positive impact on farmers' output market participation. The matching algorithms also confirm a robust and positive increase in marketed maize output for adopting farmers which ranges from around 442 kg in the case of kernel-based matching at bandwidth of 0.05 to 483 kg in the case of radius matching at a radius of 0.03 at p < 0.01. The results make it plausible to draw implications that adoption increases marketed output and market participation and thereby can uplift smallholder farmers' livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]