Poverty and Farmers’ Attitude towards Risk: Evidence from Hawzen Woreda, Tigray, Ethiopia.
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study focuses on the link between farmers‟ attitude towards risk and poverty while adopting fertilizer input. The starting point is the safety first model of Moscardi and de Janvry who found some associations of socioeconomic variables to risk. The multi stage random sampling method is used to select both sample areas and respondents. A total of 120 respondents from four “Tabias” each having 30 respondents were used for the analysis.
Based on the safety first model individuals were categorized according to their risk attitude- risk lover, risk neutral, and risk averse. We found that 57 and 63 farmers are risk lovers and risk neutral respectively. Result from the multivariate regression shows that high yield variety seeds, proportion of wheat farm to total farm size, and proportion of wheat income to total income have a negative statistically significant effect. On the other hand, source of finance significantly affects risk attitude positively. However, poverty has no significant effect on it.
The study argues, therefore, that investment on developing high yield varieties and timely dissemination are important. On top of this, with the increasing population pressure, it is recommending to design policies that reduce dependence on agriculture.
Key words: Safety First Model, FGT, Multivariate regression, Poverty, Risk, Hawzen, Tigray
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Keywords
Safety First Model, FGT, Multivariate regression, Poverty, Risk, Tigray, Hawzen