Abstract

Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa faces increasing uncertainty and instability due to climate change and variability. Rising temperatures, irregular rainfall, and the low adoption of adaptive technologies have intensified production risks, particularly among smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture. Despite contributing less than five percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the region remains highly vulnerable to climate extremes, with profound implications for food production, income stability, and household welfare. In Nigeria, where agriculture supports the rural livelihoods, the risks of yield loss and crop failure have become more frequent, undermining progress toward food security and sustainable rural development.
To address these challenges, governments and development organizations have promoted Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Practices (SAIPs). However, despite widespread advocacy, adoption rates of SAIPs remain low, raising important questions about whether farmers have been able to take advantage of these practices. While existing studies have analysed the impact of adopting individual SAI practices, there is limited empirical evidence on how the combined adoption of multiple SAIPs impact production risk.
This study seeks to fill that gap by examining the impacts of adopting SAIPs on production risks among rural farming households in Nigeria. The analysis uses the four waves of nationally representative panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture for Nigeria (2010/11-2018-19). The study employs a Multinomial Endogenous Switching Regression model with Correlated Random Effects to address issues of self-selection and unobserved heterogeneity among households.
Farmers’ adoption decisions are categorized into four regimes: non-adoption of SAIPs, adoption of soil and water conservation only, adoption of drought-tolerant maize variety only, and joint adoption of both practices. Short-run deviations in rainfall variability and temperature stress from long-term climatic averages are used as instrumental variables to identify the causal effects of adoption decisions. Production risk is assessed using a translog production function that estimates three moments of the yield distribution: expected yield, yield variance, and yield skewness, representing productivity, variability, and exposure to downside risk, respectively.
We found that the likelihood of adoption increases with education, access to extension and climate information, livestock ownership, and farm size. Membership in farmer-based organizations and perceived exposure to drought also positively influence adoption decisions. In contrast, older farmers and those engaged in off-farm work are less likely to adopt.
The analyses also show that the joint adoption of SAIPs significantly enhances farm performance and reduces exposure to risk relative to single or non-adoption. On average, households that jointly adopt soil and water conservation and drought-tolerant maize varieties achieve 17–36% higher expected yields, 25–40% lower yield variability, and about 20% lower downside risk exposure. These results corroborate the notion that complementary practices provide synergistic benefits—boosting productivity while stabilizing output under climatic stress. Subgroup analysis reveals important heterogeneity. Farmers with better access to credit, extension, and climate information gain substantially more in terms increase expected yield and reducing yield variability and downside risk.
The findings highlight several policy implications. First, policies that promote the integrated adoption of complementary practices are likely to generate greater productivity and resilience gains than those targeting single interventions. Second, since education of the household head, access to extension services, and weather information significantly influence the likelihood of adopting SAIPs, strengthening extension systems, improving access to climate information, and providing targeted farmer training can help close adoption gaps, enhance crop yields, and reduce farmers’ exposure to climate-related production risks.