Farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay for climate-smart agricultural technologies on rice production in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Climate change is a critical environmental issue that has threatened sustainable rice production in Nigeria. The application of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) technologies by smallholder farmers is vital for sustaining rice production in the face of climate change impacts. We investigate rice farmers’ preferences and elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for CSA technologies, using the contingent valuation method (CVM). We find that most farmers do not utilize innovative CSA technologies. The CSA technologies most preferred by farmers are drip irrigation, drainage management, and weather-based rice agro-advisories. At the same time, they are willing to pay $115.63 annually for CSA, notably: $40.25 for knowledge-smart, $31.02 for water-smart, $17.97 for nutrient-smart, $17.72 for weather-smart, $6.82 for carbon-smart, and $1.85 for energy-smart technologies. Age, gender, access to credit, education, extension visit, farm size, and social group membership are significant predictors of farmers’ choices.

Key policy insights

• Identifying and prioritizing farmers’ preferred CSA technologies would enable them and other relevant stakeholders to make investment decisions.

• Given farmers’ low willingness to pay for CSA technologies, incentives such as subsidies and interest-free loans should be provided to boost uptake.

• Committing a substantial amount of money to credit facilities would help scale up CSA technologies’ adoption.

• A robust framework on the revitalization of agricultural extension services would increase extension visits, helping to scale up farmers’ adoption of CSA technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate-smart agriculture
• willingness to pay
• sustainability
• adaptation
• rice production

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Nigeria is a member of most of the global climate change protocols. The Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) the government submitted to the COP21 climate summit contains its climate change adaptation and mitigation targets. The country aims at increasing food security by engaging farmers and the private sector. However, little has been done in terms of actions (The Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2015).

2 Detailed specifications and discussion of the model are available in Kriström (1997).

3 “The NRI is defined as the national average of the total annual precipitation weighted by its long-term average” (FAO, 2020). The cereal production data is from the World Bank (2020a).

4 Food production data is from the World Bank (2020c).