Recuperating dynamism in agriculture through adoption of sustainable agricultural technology - Implications for cleaner production

Sustainable agricultural technologies are being touted as a requirement for a sustainable world in many parts of the globe. Consequently, they have become a critical issue in the development policy agenda for Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite several studies conducted on the adoption of Sustainable agricultural technologies, they remain poorly understood in Mali. Thus, research that could inform policies capable of simultaneously addressing low agricultural productivity and environmental degradation is obstructed. To begin to fill this research gap, we use cross-sectional data from rice farmers in Mali. Stochastic production frontier is adopted for rice production and technical efficiency analysis in a one-step estimation using maximum likelihood method. The results reveal that adoption of the system of rice intensification, a sustainable agricultural technology, is consonant with cleaner production concept. Particularly, adopters are more technically efficient than non-adopters. The policy implication is that, if all farmers adopted system of rice intensification, their efficiency would increase by 17% while waste in production would reduce to 4.8%. Therefore, our study puts forward substantial empirical evidence to encourage the adoption of system of rice intensification as it could eventually enhance agricultural sustainability.