Publication: Agricultural Commercialisation & Asset Accumulation on Smallholder Farms in Ethiopia

Abstract

The transition of farmers from subsistence to market-oriented agriculture is meant to reduce hunger, increase wellbeing and accelerate rural economic progress. While an impressive extant literature has analysed agricultural commercialisation effects on welfare from an income, expenditure and consumption perspective, authors place less attention on the implications on asset holdings, which is a more robust long-term measure of welfare. Using chickpea production in Ethiopia as a case, we assess the effects of chickpea commercialisation on household asset ownership and livestock holdings of smallholder farmers. We employ a household fixed-effects estimator to control for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity and account for possible endogeneity using an instrumental variable approach. For comparison purposes, we also evaluate the income effects of chickpea and examine impact heterogeneity using quantile regressions. Our results indicate a positive impact of agricultural commercialisation on assets, livestock ownership and income. We found commercialisation to benefit all farmers in terms of impact heterogeneity, though with higher gains for asset-rich households. Despite this rising asset inequality, we conclude that increased agricultural commercialisation can contribute to economic development of households and reduce rural poverty.

Tabe-Ojong, MP, Hauser, M, Mausch, K 2022, ‘Does Agricultural Commercialisation Increase Asset and Livestock Accumulation on Smallholder Farms in Ethiopia?‘, The Journal of Development Studies, DOI.

More CRC News

photo of albertus magnus platz in cologne

Peter Dannenberg Awarded Funding for Priority Programme Investigating the Sustainable and Crisis-Resilient Design of Supply Chains

Peter Dannenberg (Project C01 Future in Chains) will lead a new Priority Programme at the University of Cologne, funded by the German Research Fundation (DFG). ...
Read More »
image of an african savannah

New Publication: How Land-Use Change Shapes Carbon Storage in African Savannas

In this article, Liana Kindermann, Alexandra Sandhage-Hofmann, Wulf Amelung, Jan Börner, J., Ezequiel Fabiano, Maximilian Meyer and Anja Linstädter (Project A01 Future Carbon Storage) and ...
Read More »
picture taken at a workshop

Exploring Platformization in Africa: Insights from a Workshop on Digital Transformation

By Victoria Luxen (Project C01 Future in Chains). From February 24 to 27, 2025, I participated in the workshop “Writing about Platformization from Africa” at ...
Read More »
poster for a public lecture

CRC-TRR Public Lecture: Stefan Ouma

Mon | April 7th, 2025 | 16:00 – 17:30  (CEST) Between the City and the Countryside: Centering Accumulation in African Studies Prof. Dr. Stefan Ouma ...
Read More »
a Picture of the Thwake Dam in Kenya

New Publication: Infrastructural Promises and the Non-Economy of Anticipation – Lessons from the Thwake Dam

In this article, Arne Rieber, Eric Kioko and Theo Aalders (Project C03 Green Futures) examine how the promises of large-scale infrastructure projects shape community aspirations ...
Read More »
Scroll to Top