Identifying Farmers’ Derived Demand to Maintain Sorghum Genetic Diversity in Tehuldere Woreda, South Wollo Zone, Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
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 resource conservation in Ethiopia is the main objective of this paper.
Farmers’ preferences for varieties conditioned on different preference parameters are the
theoretical basis for this study. Count index and Shannon index are used to measure the onfarm 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.
Key words: crop genetic resource, derived demand, on-farm conservation, in situ, ex situ,
survival strategy, Poisson regression, Tobit regression model.
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Keywords
Crop genetic resource, Derived demand, On-farm conservation