Livelihood Impacts of Improved Cassava Varieties in Uganda

Abstract

In Uganda, smallholder cassava farmers largely depend on unregulated, informal cassava seed sources that normally operate without inspection and certification. As a result, the use of latently diseased planting materials had thrived unabated in the country. However, since recently, a growing number of farmers have been using certified planting materials of improved cassava varieties (ICVs) following the establishment of a community-based commercialized seed system called the Cassava Seed Entrepreneurship (CSE) initiative. The planting materials produced by the CSE initiative are subject to inspection and certification by the mandated authorities. In this article, we seek to demonstrate whether certification of planting materials of ICVs has led to improved livelihood through increased cassava productivity. To this end, we applied the endogenous switching regression model (ESR). The data used in the study came from a representative sample of 609 households in the major cassava growing regions of Uganda. The results show that adoption of certified planting materials of ICVs has statistically significant positive effects on cassava productivity and household welfare, pointimg to the need for policy support aimed at increasing and sustaining public investments in variety genetic improvement, seed inspection and certification