Identifying Farmers' Derived Demand to Maintain Crop Genetic Diversity: The Case of Local Sorghum Varieties; Evidence from Tehuldere Woreda; South Wollo Zone: Ethiopia.
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Date
2007-11
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A.A.U
Abstract
To make operational on-farm crop genetic conservation strategy in Ethiopia, we have
to understand the factors that determine farmers' for managing portfolios of crop
varieties. Identifying farmers ' derived demand for sorghum varieties and drawing
policy implication for on-farm genetic resources conservation in Ethiopia is the main
objective of this paper. Farmers' preferences for varieties conditioned on different
preference parameters are the theoretical bas is for this study. Count index and
Shannon index are used to measure the on-farm sorghum genetic diversity of the
studied area. Poisson and Tobit regression models are estimated using a rural
household survey data collected from 205 households in Tehuledere Woreda, Amhara
National Regional State of Ethiopia.
The findings of empirical estimation shows that family size of the household, land
characteristics, concern factors, number of oxen ownership and access to cash crops
are promoting factors for variety richness of sorghum genetic diversity in farm
household. On the contrary, the most important factors detaching the link between
farmers survival strategy and sorghum genetic diversity are access to extension
services, experience on using improved varieties, access to road infrastructure and
access to market services. The results imply that on-farm crop genetic resource
conservation will be negatively correlated to the over-all agricultural development in
a specific region. Therefore, there is a need for flexible incentive structures to
maintain CGRs diversity
at a social optimum and to off-set the negative effect of
development interventions.
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Keywords
: Crop genetic resource, derived demand, on-farm conservation, in situ, ex situ, survival strategy, Poisson regress ion, Tobit regression model.