Agriculture in Ethiopia
Agriculture in Ethiopia. Photo: Istock.

The Impact of Improved Seed Adoption on Nutrition Outcome – A Panel Endogenous Switching Regression Analysis

EfD Discussion Paper
1 February 2023

Meseret B. Abebe, Kefyalew Endale

Abstract

A large body of literature in development economics has investigated the impact of improved agricultural technologies on productivity and the welfare of smallholder farmers. This paper studies the impact of new technologies on a relatively under-researched outcome variable of interest, nutrition security. We use a two-step panel Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) on two rounds of household panel data from rural Ethiopia and show that improved seed adoption resulted in a significant increase in households’ protein, fat, and iron consumption. Improved seed adopter households also exhibit a significantly larger household diet diversity index, implying that they consume a wide range of nutritious food items. The results suggest that the impact of the adoption of improved agricultural technologies may be significantly larger than what has been documented by previous studies.

Keywords: Technology adoption; Food security; Nutrition; Vulnerability; and Ethiopia

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Publication reference
EfD Discussion Paper 23-01
Publication | 8 February 2023