Adoption of climate-smart agriculture technology in drought-prone area of India – implications on farmers' livelihoods
Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies
ISSN: 2044-0839
Article publication date: 15 July 2021
Issue publication date: 4 October 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Laser land leveling (LLL) is a climate-smart technology that improves water use efficiency and reduces risk in crop cultivation due to weather variability. Hence, this technology is useful for cultivating water-intensive crops in a sustainable way. Given this background, the state government of Karnataka initiated to promote LLL in drought-prone districts and selected Raichur district for implementation. Moreover, farmers in this district had observed drought situation during monsoon paddy growing season in 2018. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the importance of LLL technology for paddy cultivation under drought conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
A primary survey with 604 farmer households had been conducted in Raichur in 2018. Among them, 50% are adopters of LLL who have been selected purposively and rest 50% are non-adopters who have grown paddy in the adjacent or nearest plot of the laser-leveled plot. The adoption and causal impact of LLL has been estimated using propensity score matching, coarsened exact matching and endogenous switching regression methods.
Findings
The result reveals a positive and significant impact of LLL on paddy yield and net returns to the farmers. The results indicate an increment of 12 and 16% in rice yield and net income, respectively, for LLL adopters in comparison to the non-adopters of LLL.
Research limitations/implications
The major limitation of the study is that it does not adopt the method of experimental study due to certain limitations; hence, the authors employed a quasi-experimental method to look at the possible impact of adoption of LL.
Originality/value
There have been various agronomic studies focusing on the ex-ante assessment of the LLL. This study is an ex-post assessment of the technology on the crop yield and farmers' income in a dry semi-arid region of India, which, according to the authors, is the first in this approach.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study has been conducted with the financial support from both Department of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka (through ICRISAT, Hyderabad) and CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The authors are deeply grateful to all the donors for adequate financial support for successful implementation of the primary survey and subsequent analysis. While conducting primary survey in Raichur district, the research team received extensive support from the scientists and faculties from the University of Agriculture Science, Raichur. Last but not the least, the authors are thankful to all farmers and research staff of CGIAR institutions based in the study area for co-operation and help.
Citation
Pal, B.D., Kapoor, S., Saroj, S., Jat, M.L., Kumar, Y. and Anantha, K.H. (2022), "Adoption of climate-smart agriculture technology in drought-prone area of India – implications on farmers' livelihoods", Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 824-848. https://doi.org/10.1108/JADEE-01-2021-0033
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited