Food Security and Household Welfare Impacts of Adoption of Improved Groundnut Varieties in Nigeria

Abstract

The sustainability of the global food system is continuously a critical concern, especially among smallholder rural farming households in the developing world. The increased use of improved technologies is continuously promoted as a more cost-effective and potentially more sustainable method of improving rural households’ food security and welfare. This study analyzes the impacts of improved groundnut varieties (IGVs) on rural farming household income and food security using plot and household-level data from 1311 households in five states in Northern Nigeria. Endogenous regime-switching methods were used to analyze the impact of adopting the IGVs on income, vulnerability to food insecurity and food security status. We assess the treatment effects on the treated (ATT) and the counterfactual case of non-adopters (average treatment effect on the untreated (ATU)). The empirical results suggest the IGVs have significant positive effects on the households’ per capita income, reduction of the vulnerability to food insecurity, and improvement of the likelihood of being food secure. The data suggest a general trend of dis-adoption of long-released IGVs with time. The study concludes that despite the low adoption rate, IGVs have significant positive impacts on smallholder farmers’ income and food security outcomes. Policy interventions need to focus on addressing barriers to adoption of IGVs at scale, including transforming seed systems to ensure wide-scale access to the technologies and opening up more grain market opportunities.