The Impact Of Cluster Farming On The Productivity Of Smallholders In Major Wheat Producing Areas Of West Shewa Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

The idea of the Agricultural cluster was introduced in Ethiopia together with Agricultural commercialization cluster as a means of integrating different prioritized interventions in the transformation Agenda, targeting a limited number of high-value commodities during the first GTP of Ethiopia, mainly supporting smallholder farmers in increasing crop productivity and to transform from subsistence to commercial oriented farming. The overall objective of the research was to evaluate the impact of wheat cluster farming on smallholder’s productivity in major wheat producing areas of Ambo and Dendi districts of West Shewa Zone Oromia Region. In this study multi-stage sampling procedure was followed to select Districts, kebeles and households based on their wheat production potentials and popularized wheat cluster farming. From each Districts, four rural kebeles totally eight Kebeles were purposively selected. Finally, 240 sample respondents were selected using simple random sampling from both Districts. Econometric model’s Binary probit and Propensity Score Matching were used to estimate propensity score and cluster farming impact on wheat productivity in the study areas. The probit model results indicated that participation on off farm activity, extension contacts, accessibility of credit, land holding, access to training, farmers field day and farming experiences are the variables that influenced farmers decision to participate agricultural cluster farming positively and significantly while age of the household head was negatively and significantly affected the participation decision of both groups. By using PSM model the impact assessment result revealed that farm productivity of treated groups earned 2241 kgha-1 while untreated groups earned 2060.9 kgha-1 which indicating the effective level of significance. That is the average farm productivity of the treatments is greater than average farm productivity of matched (control) groups. The result indicates that the propensity of participation decision of wheat cluster farming has resulted in a positive and statistically significant difference between both groups in terms of wheat productivity by households. Therefore, findings of this study suggest that cluster farming can greatly increase household productivity. Therefore, initiatives in agriculture policy that aim to popularize this agricultural strategy is highly important in order to maximize the benefits of cluster farming in enhancing production