Conference name, dates, place

International Conference on Contemporary Development Issues in Ethiopia, August 16-18, 2001, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Document Type

Paper

Presentation Date

8-2001

Abstract

Government policies often attempt to create simultaneous impact on economic efficiency and equity. The Ethiopian government optimistically has targeted to simultaneously achieve at improvement in agricultural efficiency (growth) and equitable distribution of the benefits by all farmers in the whole part of the country. However, many scholars most often argue that growth and equity are inversely related in most development processes. Thus, the main objective of the paper was to evaluate the interhousehold and interregional technology adoption pattern (implies both growth and equity). The conceptual relationship of growth and equity, and experiences in adoption studies were first assessed. Then three ecological potentials with 150 sample size each (a total of 450) were studied using Probit Model.

The study result has shown that only 35.5% of the sample adopted. The beneficiaries of the extension were relatively the resource rich farmers of which the largest proportion were concentrated in the high potentials areas. The high potential areas benefited remarkably higher net returns to land and management from the use of same technology than the other areas. Thus, alike the previous extension approaches used in the country and as supported by lists of literature, the new extension system could not be also free from such bias at least in the short-run. Conclusively, differential adoption of technology within a certain period of time can be regarded as a natural phenomenon. Hence, efforts to enable both the poor and the rich to equally adopt agricultural technology would rather imply substituting equity for growth at a very low level of the economy status that has immeasurable social cost. For countries like Ethiopia, which is at a very low level of economic status, focusing on growth through increasing the farm productivity of the potential adopters in the short-run, and designing special programs for the poor to follow their footsteps is suggestible. Otherwise, the country may remain behind while pulling both the poor and the rich together.

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