Effects of Conservation Tillage Technology Adoption on Wheat Yield, Water Use and Household Poverty

The interaction of population growth, technological improvement and climate change have impacted severely on agricultural and environmental sustainability. In Iran, conventional tillage practice has resulted in soil erosion and loss of soil organic matter. In this regard, Conservation Agriculture (CA) forms part of this alternative paradigm to agricultural production systems approaches and can be regarded as a means to enhancing food productivity, reducing poverty, and mitigating the consequences of climate change in rural households. The objectives of this study were to examine the determinants and impacts of CA technology on wheat yield, poverty gap and water use. To this end, an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model was employed to estimate the impacts of CA technology on continuous variables such as wheat yield, poverty gap and water use. A sample of 260 farmers from Zarghan district was selected for interview collection of necessary farm level data. The results indicated that in the select equation of ESR model, ten coefficients (out of 12) are significant at the 5% level or higher. Knowledge of soil quality, access to credit, access to information, education, farm size, ownership of machinery, participation in agricultural extension activities and farmer’ perception have positive and significant effects on the probability of adopting CA. In contrast, variables such as the distance to shopping center and number of land parcels have negative and significant influence on adoption. Also, the results of ESR model and counterfactual analysis showed that wheat yield would increase by 1.05 tons and poverty gap and water use would decrease by 20% and 910 cubic meters per hectare respectively if farmers adopt CA technology.