Adoption Dynamics of Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Practices and Their Impacts on Household Wheat Productivity Under Recurrent Climate Shocks: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia
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Date
2026-06-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI) is widely promoted to raise wheat productivity among smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. However, recurrent climate shocks and weak insurance and credit markets make sustained adoption difficult. Most existing studies rely on cross-sectional or short-panel data and therefore cannot adequately capture true state dependence, complementarities, or reverse causality. This study examines the adoption dynamics of seven SAI practices and their impact on household wheat productivity under recurrent climate shocks in rural Ethiopia. Using three waves (2021, 2023, and 2025) of the Resilience to Climate Change (RCC) panel covering 598 households, the study applies a Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) framework that jointly estimates seven adoption equations and a wheat yield equation, controlling for self- selection, unobserved heterogeneity, and reverse causality. Three main findings emerge. First, past adoption significantly raises the probability of current adoption for six of the seven practices, indicating true state dependence; the exception is Soil and Water Conservation (SWC), whose lagged effect is insignificant. Second, no individual SAI practice significantly increases wheat yield on its own (joint Wald 𝜒2(7) = 11.73, p = 0.110). Strong error correlations particularly between improved seed and row planting (ρ = 0.478, p < 0.01) and between intercropping and row planting (ρ = 0.428, p < 0.01) show that practices function as complementary bundles. Third, households that persistently adopt the integrated input-plus-NRM package (regime R3) achieve a 57% higher wheat yield than non-adopters (R0). Recurrent climate shocks erode the persistence of chemical fertilizer and SWC adoption by 4.4 and 4.5 percentage points, respectively, and push households toward low-cost fallback practices such as organic manure. These results imply that agricultural policy should move beyond promoting isolated technologies toward supporting integrated, shock-resilient adoption strategies. This insight forms the basis of the Triple-P (Promote–Protect–Persist) framework proposed in the study. Keywords: Sustainable Agricultural Intensification, Technology Complementarities, State Dependence, Recurrent Climate Shocks, Conditional Mixed Process, Ethiopia
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Sustainable Agricultural Intensification, Technology Complementarities, State Dependence, Recurrent Climate Shocks, Conditional Mixed Process, Ethiopia