Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia

Governments and development agencies increasingly promote agro-clusters as a pathway to improving smallholder incomes and ensuring inclusive rural development through mitigating production and market risks. However, there is very limited empirical evidence to support this promise. We use a large far...

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Autores principales: Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr., Dureti, Guyo Godana
Formato: Journal Article
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Wiley 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140423
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author Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
Dureti, Guyo Godana
author_browse Dureti, Guyo Godana
Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
author_facet Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
Dureti, Guyo Godana
author_sort Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
collection Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace)
description Governments and development agencies increasingly promote agro-clusters as a pathway to improving smallholder incomes and ensuring inclusive rural development through mitigating production and market risks. However, there is very limited empirical evidence to support this promise. We use a large farm household survey of about 4000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia growing cereals like teff, maize, wheat, maltbarley and sesame to examine the relationship between agro-clusters and smallholder welfare and poverty. Using instrumental variable estimators, we establish a positive association between agro-clusters, household income and per capita income. Agro-clusters are also shown to reduce poverty and poverty gaps. Our results are robust over different agro-cluster proxies and alternative estimators, such as the augmented inverse probability weighting estimator. We also show that our findings are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias. Moving beyond average effects and in the interest of understanding heterogeneous effects, we use quantile regressions at different income levels. We find that agro-clusters are associated with welfare gains for all households. However, the most significant gains are observed for the wealthier households. Despite this regressive association, our findings suggest that agro-clusters may be useful in making farming more profitable with significant welfare implications.
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spelling CGSpace1404232025-10-26T13:02:24Z Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr. Dureti, Guyo Godana models households welfare poverty rural areas Governments and development agencies increasingly promote agro-clusters as a pathway to improving smallholder incomes and ensuring inclusive rural development through mitigating production and market risks. However, there is very limited empirical evidence to support this promise. We use a large farm household survey of about 4000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia growing cereals like teff, maize, wheat, maltbarley and sesame to examine the relationship between agro-clusters and smallholder welfare and poverty. Using instrumental variable estimators, we establish a positive association between agro-clusters, household income and per capita income. Agro-clusters are also shown to reduce poverty and poverty gaps. Our results are robust over different agro-cluster proxies and alternative estimators, such as the augmented inverse probability weighting estimator. We also show that our findings are unlikely to be driven by omitted variable bias. Moving beyond average effects and in the interest of understanding heterogeneous effects, we use quantile regressions at different income levels. We find that agro-clusters are associated with welfare gains for all households. However, the most significant gains are observed for the wealthier households. Despite this regressive association, our findings suggest that agro-clusters may be useful in making farming more profitable with significant welfare implications. 2023-02 2024-03-14T12:09:29Z 2024-03-14T12:09:29Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140423 en Open Access Wiley Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.; and Dureti, Guyo Godana. 2023 Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia. Journal of Agricultural Economics 74(1): 100-115. https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12497
spellingShingle models
households
welfare
poverty
rural areas
Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
Dureti, Guyo Godana
Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title_full Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title_fullStr Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title_short Are agro-clusters pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia
title_sort are agro clusters pro poor evidence from ethiopia
topic models
households
welfare
poverty
rural areas
url https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140423
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