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Agricultural production in Ethiopia is largely dependent on seasonal rainfall. This has made the agriculture-based economy of the country extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climatic change. To reduce this risk, the government has introduced strategies that promote irrigation as a key policy priority. Despite this, there has been limited empirical evidence on the impact of practicing small-scale irrigation on household income. This study was, therefore, conducted to examine the impact of access to small-scale irrigation on farm-household income in GannaBossa district, Ethiopia.

A multistage stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select 289 study participants. The data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential data analysis techniques. Propensity score matching (PSM) and logit regression were applied to analyse the impact of irrigation utilization on farm households’ income and identify factors influencing farm households’ decisions about irrigation-utilization, respectively.

The results of the study indicated that access to irrigation has a positive and significant impact on farm-household income. Estimates of the PSM model also confirmed that the mean income of irrigating households is significantly higher than that of non-irritating households. Further analysis of the results of the regression model revealed that amongst the hypothesized predictors of irrigation utilization, family size, soil fertility status, access to credit, access to extension services and access to the market were found to be positive and significant determinants of irrigation utilization, while distance to a water source was found to be a negative and significant predictor of irrigation utilization.

The results of the study can inform development practitioners on how expanding access to irrigation can serve as one key driver in enhancing growth in agricultural productivity, increasing household income and contributing to the alleviation of rural poverty in areas with irregular rainfall and a high risk of drought.

Given the country’s irrigation potential and policy priorities, such empirical evidence informs decision-makers to make informed decisions regarding prioritizing irrigation interventions and expanding access and management in Ethiopia.

This study aims to measure the status of rural household food security across regions using multidimensional indicators. It also aims to identify the determinants of rural household food security in Ethiopia.

The study adopted descriptive and explanatory designs. It used data from the fourth wave of the Ethiopian socioeconomic survey that has 3,115 respondents. The authors constructed household food security index using variables that capture availability, access, utilization and stability dimensions of food security. The authors categorized households into relative food security groups, namely, alarming and moderately food insecure, as well as moderately and highly food secure. Beta regression model, which is widely used to analyze response variables that assume values between 0 and 1, is used to estimate the determinants of food security.

The study finds that 77.7% of rural households are food insecure. Of this, 90% are moderately food insecure. Regional variations in magnitude of food security showed that Harari, Gambella and Benshanguel Gumuz regional states are relatively better-off than other regions in Ethiopia. The study identified sex, education level, marital status, location and wealth status of households as significant determinants of food security.

This study sheds light on regional variations in multidimensional food security in Ethiopia. It thus challenged previous estimates of food security using uni-dimensional indicator. It highlighted the need for region-specific analysis of determinants and a follow up of tailored regional interventions.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0139

The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of spending one extra year in high school on early marriage and childbirth.

The study takes advantage of the education reform in 2007 that extended the years of high school education by one to conduct a quasi experiment. The marriage and fertility outcomes of women who completed a four-year senior high school education are compared to those who completed a three-year senior high school education.

The findings from the study indicate that the one-year extension in high school education led to a 4.75 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever marrying by age 27 and a 6.7 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever given birth. The authors demonstrate that the extension of the duration of high school education by one year has a heterogeneous effect, as it reduced the fertility and marriage outcomes of rural girls more than urban girls. The study reveals opportunity costs and confinement effects as possible mechanisms through which the policy affected early marriage and birth.

This study is one of the few studies that examine the impact of the duration of secondary school education on fertility and marriage. For Africa in particular, there is no such study. Thus, this study provides a unique contribution to the literature since available studies on this subject matter can only be found in advanced economies. Unlike other studies in Africa that use a design that provides the combined effect of duration of schooling and school enrolment on fertility and marriage, this design enables the authors to only look at the effect of duration of schooling on fertility and marriage.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0323

The purpose of this paper is to assess the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and its implication on improving the farming household food security status, their resilience and livelihood risk management of farmers.

This systematic review has followed procedures to accomplish the review, including literature searches, screening studies, data extraction, synthesis and presentation of the data.

Based on the result of the review, the determinants of CSA adoption can be categorized into five categories, including demographic factors (age, sex, family size, dependency ratio, education), economic factors (land size, household income, livestock ownership), institutional factors (extension services, training access, credit services, farm input, market distance), environmental factors (agroecology, change in precipitation, slope of land) and social factors (cooperatives membership, farmers perception). The result also shows that applying CSA practices has an indispensable role on increasing productivity, food security, income, building resilient livelihoods, minimizing production risk and alleviating poverty. This concluded CSA practice has a multidimensional role in the livelihood of agrarian population like Ethiopia, yet its adoption was constrained by several factors.

This review mainly emphasizes on the most commonly practiced CSA strategies that are examined by different scholars.

Post-harvest losses are becoming a huge issue worldwide and are predominantly severe in developing countries. Seeking ways to control post-harvest losses is important because losses decrease farm income by more than 15% for approximately 480 million small-scale farmers.

The study engaged Wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Standards Measurement Studies–Integrated Survey on Agriculture, to examine the impact of soil technology such as fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and certified crops on post-harvest losses in Nigeria. The study engaged descriptive statistics, logit regression and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyse the data.

The study found that approximately 38% of the household harvest was lost along the value chain. In addition, the results showed that among the indicators of soil technology, crop certification has a significant impact on the reduction of post-harvest losses. The implication is that from the nearest neighbour and kernel-based matching, the use of certified crops by households contributed to 1.62 and 1.36% reduction in post-harvest losses, respectively. In contrast, pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser use had no significant impact on post-harvest losses.

One of the limitations is that this study applied the PSM, the model did not account for endogeneity. Therefore, in examining this concept, further studies should consider applying other impact model such as the difference-in-difference to account for endogeneity.

While previous studies have examined how ICT adoption, storage mechanisms and value chain among others help to minimise post-harvest losses, the aspect of how soil technology can reduce post-harvest losses has been a subject of exclusion in the extant literature. This study empirically examines the impact of soil technology adoption on post-harvest losses in Nigeria.

This paper aims to analyze the legal framework of land degradation in Asia and provide market shared liability as a new theory to solve a problem regarding the difficulty for judges to determine the percentage of compensation for corporations responsible for land degradation. This paper aims also presents a theory to solve the problem of the vacuum of legal responsibility theory, which can make corporations proportionally responsible in terms of causing land degradation.

This was done through legal research methods, mainly with systematical interpretation. The approach used in this paper is conceptual, statute and comparative approach.

By analyzing the related legal norms, it can be understood that in Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, there are regulations regarding land degradation. However, the regulations in these countries are not specific and tend to focus on nature conservation, which has an impact on handling land degradation. Therefore, it needs special regulation to deal with land degradation. One of the things that need to be regulated about land degradation is a market shared liability.

This research is limited to regulation in the Asia region. By analyzing the regulation, this paper will provide an analysis about the land degradation regulation mechanism in Asia and give an analysis about market shared liability as one of the solution to handling land degradation. Having the same ground rules will create synergies between countries in Asia to handle land degradation.

This paper is the first systematic legal research comparing regulations from three nations in Asia on land degradation and the first paper to provide market shared liability as a solution to handling land degradation.

Sustainable development is inseparable from rational and responsible use of resources and promotion of green entrepreneurship. The contemporary green development agenda encompasses climate, economic, technical, social, cultural, and political dimensions. International efforts to greening the global development are conducted by the major economies, including China as the world’s largest consumer of energy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. China is aware of its environmental problems, as well as of its part of the overall responsibility for the accomplishment of the sustainable development goals. By means of the decarbonization efforts, the latter are integrated both into the national development agenda (the concept of ecological civilization) and China’s international initiatives (the greening narrative within the Belt and Road Initiative). Over the past decade, China has made a breakthrough on the way to promoting green entrepreneurship and greening of its development (better quality of air and water, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and organic farming). On the other hand, emissions remain high, agricultural land loses productivity, and freshwater resources degrade due to climate change. In conventional industries (oil, coal mining, and electric and thermal energy), decarbonization faces an array of impediments. In this chapter, the authors summarize fundamental provisions of China’s approach to building an ecological civilization and measures to reduce emissions and achieve the carbon neutrality status within the nearest decades. The analysis of obstacles to the decarbonization of the economy and possible prospects for the development of green entrepreneurship summarizes China’s practices for possible use in other countries.

This study aims to understand how climatic drivers of change will affect rural communities living in the hot semiarid region of Bhokardan Taluka of Jalna district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. In the context of the economic and social change they are experiencing, the concern is to evolve ways that enable them to cope with, adapt to and benefit from these challenges.

The focus of most of the climate change studies is on the short- to long-term trends of weather parameters such as rainfall, temperature and extreme weather events. The impact of climate variability and changing patterns on the local communities, the local economy, livelihoods and social life in specific geographies is less explored.

As the impacts of climatic and nonclimatic drivers of change are cross-sectoral, diverse, multidimensional, interlinked and dynamic, this study has adopted a transdisciplinary “research-in-use” approach involving multidisciplinary teams covering the aspects such as changes in land use and land cover, surface and groundwater status, edaphic conditions, crops and livestock, climate analysis including projected changes, socioeconomic analysis, people’s experience of climate variability and their current coping strategies and resilience (vulnerability) analysis of communities and various livelihood groups.

The study was based on the peoples’ perspective and recommendation based on the local communities ability to cope up with climate change. However, a statistical analysis perspective is missing in the present study.

Based on these findings, a set of implementation-focused recommendations are made that are aimed at conserving and enhancing the resilience of the foundations that uphold and sustain the social and economic well-being of the rural communities in Bhokardan taluka, namely, land, water, agriculture, livestock, food and nutrition security, livelihoods, market access and social capital.

There will probably be nine billion people on the earth by 2050, meaning food consumption will rise dramatically. Pakistan, the fifth most populous nation in the world, is rapidly expanding its population, making it difficult for the nation to sustain its food supply. Unfortunately, the country's focus on ensuring food security has not kept up with the demographic shifts in its population. However, innovative solutions are sorely needed in the face of several worldwide problems, especially in the crucial agriculture sector. This underscores the need to integrate sustainable financial practices. Considering these circumstances, this research thoroughly examines the intricate relationship inside Pakistan between financial stability (FS), agricultural subsidies, and productivity. Acknowledging the underlying intricacies and asymmetries at work, this study aims to analyze the complex relationships influencing the nation's agricultural production.

The research tries to shed light on the subtle processes at the intersection of financial stability, agricultural subsidies, and agricultural productivity through a comprehensive investigation of these multiple challenges. A non-linear autoregressive distributive lag (NARDL) technique is used, using a dataset from 1980 to 2022.

The results show that FS has a mixed impact on agricultural productivity, both positive and negative. Increasing FS_POS has a beneficial influence on agricultural output, linked to a notable 1.404% increase in output. On the other hand, increasing FS_NEG causes a significant 11.441% decrease in agricultural output, demonstrating its negative impact on output. Subsidies for agriculture also have asymmetric impacts; SUB_POS and SUB_NEG influence variations in agricultural productivity. A substantial 2.414% rise in agricultural output is shown by SUB_POS, demonstrating its noteworthy beneficial influence. Conversely, SUB_NEG adds a relatively small increase of 1.659% in agricultural output. However, the different amounts of each person's contribution show how subtle their effects are.

The current study is limited to the relationship between financial stability, agricultural subsidies, and agricultural productivity, considering the inherent complexity and asymmetries at work in Pakistan only. Further studies are required in Asian markets to have a bigger picture of the agricultural sector.

Considering these critical empirical findings, the report recommends strategic strategies to promote long-term agricultural growth in Pakistan. These include providing integrated financial services customized to farmers' needs, such as credit, insurance, and savings alternatives. Transparency and efficiency in procedural frameworks and the formation of efficient public-private partnerships should be prioritized. Furthermore, improving agricultural subsidy schemes emerges as a crucial priority. Targeting marginalized farmers more effectively and optimizing distribution through transparent, digitally driven systems can significantly improve program performance.