The impact of climate smart agriculture practices on the technical efficiency of wheat farmers in northwestern Ethiopia

Wheat is one of the most important cereal crops cultivated in a wide range of agro-ecologies in Ethiopia. It is also the source of food for the majority of Ethiopian people, next to maize. However, factors such as climate change and other challenges have contributed to its consistently low productivity. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the impact of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSAPs) (wheat row planting, crop rotation and improved wheat variety in isolation and in combination) on the technical efficiency of wheat farmers. The data were generated from 385 randomly selected wheat producers, encompassing 702 plots across three prominent wheat-producing districts in northwestern Ethiopia. A stochastic production frontier (SPF) with selection correction model and a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MNESR) model were applied to estimate the technical efficiency and the impact of CSAPs on technical efficiency, respectively. The estimated mean technical efficiency of wheat farmers was 84.5%, ranging from a minimum of 32.8% to a maximum of 99.8%. The MNESR model result showed that the adoption of CSAPs in isolation or in combination considerably improved wheat farmers’ technical efficiency. The highest technical efficiency was recorded when farmers implemented all three CSAPs simultaneously within a single plot, rather than when they adopted them separately. This implies that policymakers and stakeholders should promote the adoption of a combination of CSAPs to enhance wheat productivity.