Cargando…
Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change
This paper demonstrates how crop diversification impacts on two outcomes of climate smart agriculture; increased productivity (legume and cereal crop productivity) and enhanced resilience (household income, food security, and nutrition) in rural Zimbabwe. Using data from over 500 smallholder farmers...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer International Publishing
2016
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951382/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27478752 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2802-4 |
_version_ | 1782443698243502080 |
---|---|
author | Makate, Clifton Wang, Rongchang Makate, Marshall Mango, Nelson |
author_facet | Makate, Clifton Wang, Rongchang Makate, Marshall Mango, Nelson |
author_sort | Makate, Clifton |
collection | PubMed |
description | This paper demonstrates how crop diversification impacts on two outcomes of climate smart agriculture; increased productivity (legume and cereal crop productivity) and enhanced resilience (household income, food security, and nutrition) in rural Zimbabwe. Using data from over 500 smallholder farmers, we jointly estimate crop diversification and each of the outcome variables within a conditional (recursive) mixed process framework that corrects for selectivity bias arising due to the voluntary nature of crop diversification. We find that crop diversification depends on the land size, farming experience, asset wealth, location, access to agricultural extension services, information on output prices, low transportation costs and general information access. Our results also indicate that an increase in the rate of adoption improves crop productivity, income, food security and nutrition at household level. Overall, our results are indicative of the importance of crop diversification as a viable climate smart agriculture practice that significantly enhances crop productivity and consequently resilience in rural smallholder farming systems. We, therefore, recommend wider adoption of diversified cropping systems notably those currently less diversified for greater adaptation to the ever-changing climate. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4951382 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Springer International Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49513822016-07-29 Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change Makate, Clifton Wang, Rongchang Makate, Marshall Mango, Nelson Springerplus Research This paper demonstrates how crop diversification impacts on two outcomes of climate smart agriculture; increased productivity (legume and cereal crop productivity) and enhanced resilience (household income, food security, and nutrition) in rural Zimbabwe. Using data from over 500 smallholder farmers, we jointly estimate crop diversification and each of the outcome variables within a conditional (recursive) mixed process framework that corrects for selectivity bias arising due to the voluntary nature of crop diversification. We find that crop diversification depends on the land size, farming experience, asset wealth, location, access to agricultural extension services, information on output prices, low transportation costs and general information access. Our results also indicate that an increase in the rate of adoption improves crop productivity, income, food security and nutrition at household level. Overall, our results are indicative of the importance of crop diversification as a viable climate smart agriculture practice that significantly enhances crop productivity and consequently resilience in rural smallholder farming systems. We, therefore, recommend wider adoption of diversified cropping systems notably those currently less diversified for greater adaptation to the ever-changing climate. Springer International Publishing 2016-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4951382/ /pubmed/27478752 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2802-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Research Makate, Clifton Wang, Rongchang Makate, Marshall Mango, Nelson Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title | Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title_full | Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title_fullStr | Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title_full_unstemmed | Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title_short | Crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
title_sort | crop diversification and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in zimbabwe: adaptive management for environmental change |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951382/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27478752 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2802-4 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT makateclifton cropdiversificationandlivelihoodsofsmallholderfarmersinzimbabweadaptivemanagementforenvironmentalchange AT wangrongchang cropdiversificationandlivelihoodsofsmallholderfarmersinzimbabweadaptivemanagementforenvironmentalchange AT makatemarshall cropdiversificationandlivelihoodsofsmallholderfarmersinzimbabweadaptivemanagementforenvironmentalchange AT mangonelson cropdiversificationandlivelihoodsofsmallholderfarmersinzimbabweadaptivemanagementforenvironmentalchange |