The African Association of Agricultural Economists conducted its 5th International Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the 23rd-26th September. The theme of this conference was "Transforming smallholder agriculture in Africa: The role of policy and governance".
As part of the invited panel sessions, the Association hosted a Case Study Competition to encourage graduate students and young scholars with an interest in the development of African agriculture to share their views. Studies had to be related to the impact of agriculture on the welfare of agricultural households. These Case Studies were peer reviewed and the best three were selected for presentation and one was awarded the prize.
Paper "Does minimum tillage improve livelihood outcomes of smallholder farmers? A micro-econometric analysis from Zambia" written by Hambulo Ngoma, PhD student at the School of Economics and Business, came out as a top paper and won the the Graduate Students and Young Scholars' Case Study Competition. The paper assesses the impacts of minimum tillage – the main component of conservation agriculture – on smallholder farmer livelihoods in Zambia.
Specifically, it assesses the impacts of adopting minimum tillage on household income, crop income and crop revenue using an endogenous regression framework applied to cross sectional survey data from 751 plots in Zambia. Hambulo used the endogenous switching regression framework to account for heterogeneity in the decision to adopt minimum tillage or not and to consistently predict actual and expected outcomes for adopters and non-adopters.