Abstract:
Adoption of improved agricultural varieties in Africa is low. This situation is not different
in Ethiopia. Though increasing yield is a priority, mere increase in production do not
motivate farmers to adopt new varieties. When farmers are able to produce more and can
sell in the output markets, they will have much more incentive to adopt the new varieties
and be productive. This study, therefore, aims at evaluating the impact of adoption of
improved maize varieties on farmers’ market participation in three woredas of the Oromia
regional state, Ethiopia. The study utilized cross-sectional household level data collected
by CIMMYT in 2012/2013 from 300 randomly selected sample households. Both
descriptive and econometric methods have been used to analyze the data. The descriptive
analyses results show the existence of significant mean and proportion difference between
adopters and non-adopters in terms of HHH age, education, family size, livestock
ownership, land holding, distance to main market, accesses to output and input markets,
access to extension services, and access to credit in favour of adopters. The results of the
logit model show that adoption of the improved maize varieties among households was
found to be positively influenced by adult-literacy, family size, livestock wealth, access to
output market and credit access for the new varieties. On the other hand, farmer
associations, distance to main markets and fertilizer credit influenced adoption negatively.
Moreover, the results of the ATE model show a robust and positive increase in marketed
maize grain per household which ranges from around 442kg in the case of kernel-based
matching at bandwidth of 0.05 to 483kg in the case of radius matching at a radius of 0.03
at p<0.01. The results from this study revealed that the significant impact of adoption on
improving the farmers’ participation to output markets. Therefore, it is recommended to
promote adoption of the improved varieties as it is essential for inducing farmers’ market
participation that helps them in generating income and in improving their lives.
