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Estimating the causal effect of improved fallows on environmental services provision under farmers' field conditions in Chongwe, Zambia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2014

Elias Kuntashula  and
Eric Mungatana
Elias Kuntashula
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected]
Eric Mungatana
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of Pretoria, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The provision of environmental services on-farm by the improved fallow (an agroforestry technology) has largely remained empirically untested in sub-Saharan Africa. Where effects of planting trees have been used to estimate the impacts on consumption of fuel wood from public land, actual estimates of the size of fuel wood consumption changes have been lacking. Using data from a survey of 324 households in the Chongwe district of Zambia, we tested the hypothesis that households embracing improved fallows use less fuel wood from public land since the technology provides wood as a by-product. Estimates from ordered probit and matching strategies showed that the technology had a significant causal effect of reducing the consumption of fuel wood from public land. Therefore, in addition to promoting it for soil fertility improvement, the extension messages should explicitly reflect the technology's potential to provide on-farm environmental quality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 80 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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