摘要
Unsustainable land use management and the resulting soil erosion are among the most pervasive problems in rural Ethiopia,where most of the country’s people live,jeopardizing food security.Despite various efforts to introduce soil conservation measures and assess their costs and benefits,it is unclear how efficient these measures are from an economic point of view in securing food production.This paper examines the costs and benefits of three soil conservation measures applied in the country in three different rural districts facing different degrees of soil erosion problems using survey data collected from 750 farm households.A production function is estimated to quantify the costs and benefits of more sustainable land use management practices.We show that the soil conservation measures significantly increase productivity and hence food security.Comparing the costs and benefits,the results indicate that implementing soil conservation measures would benefit farm communities in the case study areas through increased grain productivity and food security.
基金
The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research(NWOWOTRO)is gratefully acknowledged for funding this project.We are also grateful for the co-funding received from the Institute for Environmental Studies,VU University Amsterdam.A word of thanks goes to Ted Veldkamp and Jurre Tanja from the VU University Amsterdam for their help with the on-site pre-testing of the survey and focus group discussions,and Dr.Melesse Temesgen and Mr.Sebsib Belay from Addis Ababa University for their assistance in organizing the pre-test and data collection.Finally,we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this paper.As always,the authors remain sole responsible for the content of the paper.
