The adoption impact of wheat-chickpea double cropping on yield and farm income of smallholder farmers in Central Highlands of Ethiopia: the case of Becho district

This paper examines impacts of adoption of wheat chickpea double cropping on yield and farm income of smallholder rural farmers in Becho district, South West Shewa Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. The study used cross-sectional data collected from 203 smallholder farm households selected randomly through two-stage stratified random sampling technique. Propensity score matching was employed to analyze the impacts of adoption on yield and farm income. The result showed that adoption of wheat-chickpea double cropping has significant impact on yield and farm income of the group of adopter households compared to the group of non-adopters. With regard to yield, adopters harvested average wheat yield of 2120 kg/ha, while the non-adopters harvested average wheat yield of 1420 kg/ha. In addition, the treated households earned average annual farm income of about 709.125 Euro per year from sale of both wheat and chickpea as adopters; while the non-adopters earned average farm income of 129 Euro from sale of wheat. These results imply that scaling out of wheat-chickpea double cropping contributes to food security and rural livelihood improvement through yield and farm income increment. Hence, encouraging farmers towards adoption of wheat-chickpea double cropping is essential for improving livelihoods of rural households by properly addressing factors such as access to improved seeds, training on double cropping, involvement in non-farm income activities, access to broad bed maker (BBM), ownership of tropical livestock unit (TLU) and access to fertilizer.