Quantifying the smallholder farmers’ choice of sustainable agricultural practices and productivity in the context of climate change- Evidence from maize based farming households in Nigeria

In this study, we examine the impact of adoption of sustainable agricultural practices on productivity of maize farmers in Nigeria using multivariate probit model and endogeneity corrected frontier model. Our study is motivated by the extant literature showing the sensitivity of Nigeria’s agricultural sector to the impact of climate change and the subsequent effect on smallholder farmers. Hence, our contribution to the literature is in four folds. One, we adopt a novel estimation technique, endogeneity corrected stochastic frontier model, which controls for biasedness and inconsistency in the effect of adoption of sustainable practices while accounting for the endogeneity of both frontiers and the inefficiency variable. Two, we establish that variables such as age of the household head, gender, farming experience, farm size, years of formal education, membership of association, access to extension service, location and access to credit significantly impact the farmers’ choices and adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. Three, we find that quantity of farm size, seed, fertilizer, the interaction of labour with farm size, herbicides and fertilizer, and the interaction of farm size with seed, herbicides and fertilizers contain significant predictive content for the efficiency of maize production in Nigeria. Finally, we show that technical inefficiency is a function of age, gender, farming experience, membership in association, access to extension services, access to credit, mean annual rainfall and sustainable agricultural practices adoption index. We therefore conclude, that adoption of sustainable agricultural practices by the maize farmers will reduce the negative impact of climate change and increase the efficiency maize production in Nigeria. The findings of our study have important implications for government and investors in the agricultural sector.