Farmers' Variety Attribute Preferences

Farmers’ Variety Attribute Preferences:
Implications for Breeding Priority Setting and

Agricultural Extension Policy in Ethiopia∗
Edilegnaw Wale∗∗ and Asmare Yalew∗∗∗
Abstract: Technological progress in Ethiopian agriculture is the slowest

by any standard, with rather very poor capacity to address the nation’s
problems of low agricultural productivity, poverty, and resource degradation.
This paper argues and attributes the low level of technology adoption and
impact to the discrepancy between the farmers’ needs and the attributes of
technologies generated. The empirical evidences have been generated based
on the analyses of coffee farmers’ variety attribute preferences, taking coffee
seedlings as production technologies. Attribute preferences of smallholder
farmers are governed by their contextual household characteristics, institu-
tional, and socioeconomic factors. According to the results, risk vulnerable
farmers prefer seeds adaptable to their local conditions and varieties with
stable yield attribute. On the contrary, farmers in more accessible areas and/or
those who are less concerned in securing subsistence income levels opt for
income maximizing attributes, namely, yield and marketability. The study
results have also shown the mechanisms of how farmers’ attribute preferences
change with development-oriented interventions. The paper demonstrates
why and how policy-makers should formulate context specific technology
development and agricultural extension strategies.
1. Introduction
Considering the relative importance of the agricultural sector and the
country’s comparative advantage and resource endowment (more labour
∗ This paper is a revised version of the paper presented at the Third International Conference on the
Ethiopian Economy, EEA, UN Conference Center, Addis Ababa, 2–4 June 2005. The authors wish to
thank two anonymous reviewers of the journal for helpful comments on the previous version of the
paper. Any possible remaining errors or omissions are the authors’ own responsibility.
∗∗ Corresponding author: Bioversity International, Regional Office for Sub-Saharan Africa, c/o
ICRAF, PO Box 30677, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya; tel. +254 20 7224500; fax: +54 20 7224501; e-mail:
e.wale@cgiar.org
∗∗∗ Akeleistraat 168, 6707 BR Wageningen, The Netherlands; e-mail: ayalew@planet.nl.

C The Authors. Journal compilation
C African Development Bank 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 379
380 E. Wale and A. Yalew
and less capital), the Ethiopian government is following an Agriculture

Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy.1 The strategy very
much focuses on improvements in the productivity of smallholder agriculture
by relying on the generation, transfer and diffusion of improved agricultural
technologies, and provision of credit and related public services. A green
revolution type of change is argued to be the basis of an agriculture-led growth
strategy for Ethiopia in particular and many sub-Saharan African countries in
general. Realization of the benefits of such a strategy, among others, would
require a delicate mix of policy and institutional reforms (Mulugeta, 1995).
Undoubtedly, transformation of Ethiopian agriculture and the outward shift
of the production possibility frontier would require adoption of improved
agricultural technologies and other interventions. Despite the very high yield
gap between on-farm trials and farmers’ fields (Mulugeta, 1995; Yalew et al.,
1995; Yalew, 1998), the level and intensity of technology adoption in Ethiopia
is very low by any standard. For instance, Sasakawa Global-2000 (1995) has
reported that only 5 per cent of farmers use improved seeds. According to
Kidane and Abler (1994), over 90 per cent of the agriculture is dependent
on local seeds. According to a national survey data of the Central Statistical
Authority, the proportion of area under improved seeds in the 2000/01 crop
season was reported to be about 2.84 per cent (Demese, 2004).
In Ethiopia, small farmers occupy more than 95 per cent of the cultivated
agricultural area (CIA, 2003; Pickett, 1991). Thus, the government’s small
farmer focused agricultural development policy scheme is commendable
from this angle. Low level of technology adoption by the small farmers
remains to be one of the factors for the slow agricultural transformation
and for the country’s stagnant agricultural economy. Much of the technology
adoption literature on Ethiopian agriculture (for example, Bezabih, 2003;
Degnet et al., 2003; Legesse, 2003; Chilot et al., 1996; Mulugeta and
Crawford, 1995; Kidane and Abler, 1994; Yohannes et al., 1990) has
attributed the low level of technology use to a variety of social, economic,
natural, and institutional factors. All in all, the reasons could either be that
farmers do not face the problem targeted by the technology or farmers’
practice is equal to or better than the technology or the technology does not
work or the technology costs too much. In this paper, it will be argued that lack
of fitness of technology attributes to farmers’ needs and circumstances is the
major factor hampering technology adoption in the country. This argument
will be empirically verified taking coffee seedlings and their attributes as
illustrative examples. Following the empirical analysis, the implications of
the results to variety development and extension policy are outlined.
In the next section, we present the main attributes of the agricultural
extension system in Ethiopia, emphasizing its deficiencies. Section 3
deals with the methodological framework outlining the underlying theo-
retical framework, the empirical model, and the data generation process.

C African Development Bank 2007
Farmers’ Variety Attribute Preferences 381
The variables employed in the econometric analysis are then described

in Section 4. Regression results and related discussions are also pre-
sented in this section. The last section concludes and draws the policy
implications.
2. An Overview of the Agricultural Extension System in

Ethiopia
Literally, the contribution of research and extension to small farmers’
agriculture in Ethiopia is far less than satisfactory. A variety of extension
programmes have been launched in Ethiopia, though often at limited scale.
The most important ones include:
• the comprehensive package projects such as Chilalo Agricultural Devel-

opment Unit (CADU), Arsi Rural Development Unit (ARDU) and so on
since 1967;
• the Minimum Package Programs (MPPs), 1971 until 1985;
• the Peasant Agriculture Development Extension Program (PADEP), 1985;
• the training and visit system, since the early 1980s; and
• the extension package programme, also called the participatory demon-
stration and training extension system (PADETES), since the mid 1990s.
Basically, each one was thought to be designed based on observed

shortfalls of its predecessor. The comprehensive package projects were found
to be expensive and less applicable to the small-scale farmers. Thus, the MPPs
were pursued. Like their predecessors, the principal beneficiaries of MPPs
were found to be still wealthy farmers. Consequently, MPPs were replaced by
PADEP. It is rather enthralling that the contemporary extension programme
is more or less the same as that which had been attempted in the late 1960s.
Nevertheless, the new agricultural extension programme (PADETES), which
essentially emphasizes the package approach, was thought to be formulated
based on critical evaluation of the past extension efforts practised in the
country.
All the extension strategies attempted so far in the country are basically
top-down approaches reflecting interests and constraints of researchers and
extension workers. Researchers and extension workers are considered to be
superior to the farmers in designing the required technological interventions.
The extension services were exercised with a trial and error style pre-
occupied with more short-term objectives. They lack vision and strategic
planning. Their coverage was biased (mainly benefiting well-to-do farmers)
and very limited (Belay, 2003). Most of the extension attempts have been
foreign aid driven (with their respective conditionalities) which were rather

expensive and hard to replicate. In short, they fail to consider the contextual
realities of smallholder agriculture.
Limited use of recommended technological changes was mainly attributed
to assumed characteristics of the farmers (for example, ignorance, laziness,
conservatism). Another shortfall is the lack of effective linkage and coor-
dination among organizations engaged in agricultural research, technology
development and multiplication, technology dissemination, and extension
services.
Apart from the participatory dearth and the aforementioned institutional
problems, in Ethiopia extension agents are used for political objectives, as
government spokesmen, and agents for other government bureau (Belay,
2003). The range of non-extension duties assigned to them (such as tax
collection, credit collection and so on) has jeopardized their relations with
the small farmers (Mulugeta, 1995). The ideology and politics of each
government regime is rather mixed up with the agricultural extension
business. In this respect, the activities of the prevailing extension programme
are not very different from that of its predecessors. The package extension
programme is considered as a panacea, as if it can work everywhere in
the country. It is never designed to be context specific. The bottom line of
the package programme is the assumption that improved varieties (or other
technologies) are, for instance, superior or profitable for all farmers operating
in the so-called ‘high potential areas’. But this is not necessarily the case as
the comparative advantage of the improved and local varieties of crops, for
instance, varies across farmers and localities (Wale, 2003). Further, with the
prevailing package programme, farmers who are participating in the package
are privileged in all other public services at the disposal of the extension
agent. In the last decade, participation in the extension package has been a
precondition for getting access to credit and fertilizer (Wale, 2004).
More importantly, the number of participating farmers in the package
programme is taken as an evaluation criterion of success. Extension agents are
evaluated and promoted based on the number of farmers they have managed to
involve in the package, not the impact of the package on farmers’ agricultural
productivity and livelihoods. Some studies have shown that the achievements
in yield and profits for those that are involved in the extension programme
do not seem to be significantly better than those that are not involved in
the programme (Nigussie and Mulat, 2003). Thus, technologies have to be
evaluated based on their livelihood impacts, not the number of participating
farmers which assumes pre-emptively that the technologies are superior to
farmers’ practices.
To sum up, the agricultural extension services and the research processes
practised in Ethiopia essentially lack proper account of farmers’ preferences,
criteria and conditions. Belay (2003), for instance, has noted that the
extension programmes and policies in the country have been formulated

and implemented without due considerations to the farmers’ opinion and

traditional knowledge. By all accounts, the extension approach was defective
not only because it was not participatory but also because of its inflexible
and top-down nature (Befekadu and Berhanu, 1999).
In conclusion, a well-articulated national agricultural research and ex-
tension policy is not yet in place in Ethiopia (Demese, 2004). Thus,
there is a need to rethink the country’s agricultural extension policy. The
demand for agricultural technologies has to be derived from within the
farmers’ preferences and endowments. Farmers’ rejection (non-adoption)
of a technology could be because its contents are incompatible with their
needs, aspirations and conditions. If technologies are not in harmony with
farmers’ circumstances, their chance of resulting in successful impacts will
as usual be marginal. Taking this prevailing reality, this paper argues that
understanding farmers’ technology attribute preferences can serve as an input
in the design of participatory and context specific research and extension
policy in the country. Taking coffee variety attributes as an example, it
presents empirical evidences supporting the contention that lack of fitness
of technology attributes to farmers’ needs and circumstances is the major
factor hampering agricultural technology adoption in Ethiopia.
3. Methodology
3.1 The Theoretical Framework
The theory presented here is drawn from Lancaster’s (1966) characteristic

model and Roy’s (1952) safety-first framework. Among other things, it shows
how market access and risk concerns influence farmers’ variety attribute
preferences.
To start with, suppose Q p and Q s denote quantity of coffee produced and
sold, respectively. Q p minus Q s will, then, be quantity of coffee consumed
or stored for future use. Consider also that C 1 , . . . ,C n denote household
consumption of other on-farm produced or purchased goods. Assuming a
well-behaved utility function, the farmers’ problem can be presented in terms
of utility as:
Max : U = U (Q p − Q s , C1 , . . . , Cn /1 ) (1)
where 1 refers to the vector of household level contextual factors affecting
the utility function.2
Farmers’ variety attribute preferences are the derived outcomes of
their needs, endowments, and circumstances. Based on the types of seed
technologies they actually use, their revealed variety attribute preferences
can be derived through examining the attributes of the varieties being used.
Thus, the central research question is: Assuming that farmers have access

to n varieties of coffee in a given village with n, less than n or more than n

attributes, which of these attributes will be preferred? Why?
For the sake of convenience in presenting the specific hypotheses, the
attributes considered in the empirical analysis are grouped into income
stabilizing (environmental adaptability and income stability) and income
maximizing (yield and marketability) attributes. If a given factor increases
the demand for income stabilizing variety attributes, this is construed to
the hypothesis that the factor decreases the demand for income maximizing
variety attributes. Based on how the variety attributes are related to markets, it
can be hypothesized that while income stabilizing attributes are the preferred
traits by farmers with limited market access, income maximizing variety traits
are preferred by those farmers with better market access.
The other variable worth considering is risk, which can be modelled
following Roy’s safety first approach. Risk free on-farm endowment
(FN income ) is computed for each farm household as the sum of the value
of livestock (V live ) and other risk-free income sources3 (Y NF ) which include
annual estimated income from perennial crops, non-farm income sources,
off-farm income sources, and unearned income sources, i.e.
Vlive + YNF = FN income (2)
The farmer’s objective is, thus, to minimize the chance that FN income would
be a less than subsistent level of income (Basic req ), i.e.
Min P(FN income < Basicreq ) ⇒ P(FN income − Basicreq < 0)
⇒ P(Risk proxy < 0) (3)
Accordingly, it can be hypothesized that farmers will take high-yielding
and marketable varieties if Risk proxy is positive and they will take income
stabilizing attributes if it is negative. This assertion is in line with a previous
research result, i.e. the higher the value of assets (per adult) kept by the
household, the higher the allocation to low-risk activities (Dercon, 1996).
In our case, the low risk activities are varieties with better environmental
adaptability and yield stability attributes.
3.2 The Empirical Model

j
Suppose Z i is a vector of attributes of coffee varieties in the choice set and
1 is the vector of characteristics of farmers reflecting their endowments,
concerns and preferences. Then, utility from coffee is given by:
Uc = f (Z 1F V , . . . , Z mFV , Z 1I V , . . . , Z nIV /1 ) (4)
where Z iFV are the attributes of farmers’ varieties and Z iIV
are the attributes of
improved varieties. From the available choice set, the ith farmer will select
the combination of variety attributes that will maximize the derived utility.

Let the probability that the ith farmer chooses the jth variety attribute be
Pij and denote the choice of the ith farmer by Y i = (Y i1 , Y i2 , . . ., Yij ) where
Yij = 1 if the jth attribute is selected. Otherwise, all other elements of Y i are
zero. If each farmer is observed only a single time, the likelihood function
of the sample of values Yi1 , . . . , Yi j is:

m
Yij
L= Pi1Y i1 Pi2Y i2 . . . Pi j ; i = 1, . . . , n; and j = 1, . . . , m (5)
j=1
where n is the number of farmers and m is the number of variety attributes.

Using the maximum likelihood maximization procedure and assuming that
each farmer is maximizing utility (Uij = μ i j + ε i j ), the probability that
farmer i chooses variety attribute 1 among m attributes is given by:
Pi1 = Pr [Ui1 > Ui2 , Ui1 > Ui3 , . . . , and Ui1 > Uim ]
= Pr [εi1 − εi2 > μi2 − μi1 , εi1 − εi3 > μi3 − μi1 , . . . ,
and, εi1 − εim > μim − μi1 ] (6)
Maintaining our notation that Uit = μ it + ε it and taking exp(μ it ) instead of
μ it to ensure non-negative probability leads to:
exp{μit }
⇒ (7)
exp{μi1 } + exp{μi2 } + . . . + exp{μi j }
Writing μ it = xit β and constraining one of the coefficients (B 1 ) to zero for
the sake of identification4 and assuming that the errors (ε i j ) are independently
and identically distributed leads to the following multinomial logit (MNL)
model:

exp xit β exp xi j β
P {yi = t} = = ,
1 + exp xi2 β2 + . . . + exp xi j β j
M−1
1+ exp xi j β j
k=1
j = 1, 2, . . . , z. (8)
where the x’s are the explanatory variables and β’s are the corresponding
coefficients. This model is used to predict the probability that a farmer prefers
a certain variety attribute and how that preference is conditioned by market,
risk, and other household contextual factors.
The sign of the marginal effects and the sign of the coefficients is not
necessarily the same (Greene, 2000), as it can be seen from Equation 9
below:

∂ Pj j

= Pj β j − Pk βk = P β j − β̄ . (9)
∂Xj k=0

For this reason, in the results section, we are reporting only the marginal
effects which are relevant for the interpretation of the results and conclusions
drawn.
3.3 The Data Generation Process
The data were collected from eight Peasant Associations (PAs) in South
Western Ethiopia (Jima Zone).5 Jima Zone is selected purposively, based on
the relative importance of coffee in this region. From each district, 2–3 PAs
were purposively selected based on their agro-ecological representativeness
and relative importance of the crop.
Following the stratification of the farm households in the respective
groups, a total of 266 individual farm households were randomly selected,
proportionately from each stratum. The selected sample farmers were
then interviewed using a structured questionnaire. The details of the data
generation process are available in Wale (2004).
4. Results and Discussion
4.1 Descriptive Statistics
When farmers were asked to choose between improved and local seedlings,
73 per cent of them opted for improved coffee seedlings, mainly for reasons
of disease resistance and better yield. The other 18.8 per cent opted for
indigenous coffee trees, mainly for the attributes of less demand for intensive
management and better adaptation to the local environment. The rest of them
(8.2 per cent) seem indifferent; they wanted to have both local and improved
varieties (mainly for satisficing purposes).
The sample farmers prefer the local variety for its drought tolerance
attribute. Most farmers have reported that the improved coffee varieties give
relatively higher yield. Improved coffee varieties are also found to be better
in yield stability, which could mainly be attributed to their disease resistance.
Still, most farmers seem content with the local coffee varieties if not its poor
disease resistance character. To these farmers, the local coffee trees require
less intensive management (such as less weeding and hoeing frequency).
Local varieties are also believed to give some level of output even during
harsh weather seasons. The most important variety attributes for which the
farmers favour the improved coffee trees are better yield, early maturity, and
better tree age.
Table 1 defines the variables considered ( 1 ) to explain variety attribute
preferences (Attribute) in the MNL regression. Descriptive statistics (mean

Table 1: Descriptive statistics

Explanatory Standard
variables Description Mean Deviation
Age Age of the household head 46.3 13.7

Agesqur The square of ‘age’ 2332.5 1383.5
Educathh Education level of the household head 2.98 3.2
Anyincom Income source outside agriculture (1 – yes; 0 – 0.25 0.43
no)
Timarket The walking time needed to reach the nearest 44.67 33.03
market (in minutes)
Cofland Proportion of land allocated for coffee as a 0.54 0.3
percentage of total land holding
Risk proxy Risk proxy as given by FN income minus Basic req −546.24 659.46
Labor Farmers’ ranking of the importance of labour 5.4 2.9
shortage as a production constraint
Land Farmers’ ranking of the importance of land 3.3 2.7
shortage as a production constraint
Capita Farmers’ ranking of the importance of 2.4 1.75
working capital as a production constraint
Govrank Farmers’ ranking of the importance of 5.78 2.14
extension, input supply, and farm
implements as production constraints
Naturank Farmers’ ranking of the importance of natural 3.9 1.64
factors (pests, disease, weather, and
drought) as production constraints
Village∗ Village dummies for Harro, Kela Guda, 0.14, 0.13 0.35, 0.33
Kilole Kirikir, Gibe Boso, Halo Sebeka, and 0.13, 0.11 0.33, 0.31
Sebeka Debiye, respectively 0.15, 0.14 0.35, 0.34
∗ Villages called Bulbulo and Yachi Urechi are left as a reference.
Source: 2001/2002 survey data.
and standard deviation, SD) of the respective explanatory variables are also
reported in this table.
Before passing into the regression results, this section will conclude
by explaining how the response variable (Attribute) is constructed. To
elucidate farmers’ derived demand for variety attributes, they were given
a chance to make a choice among alternative variety attributes (yield, yield
stability, environmental adaptability, marketability, and disease resistance).
These attributes were identified during the key informant interviews. About
29.3 per cent of the farmers opted for yield and yield stability each.
The other 21.8 per cent, 13.9 per cent and 5.64 per cent of the farmers
opted for environmental adaptability, marketability, and disease resistance,
respectively. In the multinomial logit regression analysis, the dependent
variable (Attribute), takes five discrete values (0 – yield, 1 – yield stability, 2
– environmental adaptability, 3 – marketability, and 4 – disease resistance).
Disease resistance is taken as a reference in the regression.

Table 2: MNL marginal effect estimates of farmer characteristics

influencing farmers’ variety attribute preferences
Dy/Dx: Yield Dy/Dx: Dy/Dx:
Variable Dy/Dx: Yield stability Adaptability Marketability
Age 0.0148 −0.0079 −0.0069 −0.00001

Agesqur −0.00024 0.00023 0.000017 5.3e–08
Educathh −0.064 0.0493∗∗ 0.015∗ −0.00002
Anyincom 0.0505 −0.1024 0.052 0.00003
Timarket −0.0022∗ 0.0015 0.00068∗ −3.5e–06∗∗
Cofland −0.103 −0.1057 0.209 −0.00025
Risk proxy 0.0015∗∗∗ −0.0009∗∗ −0.00057∗∗∗ 1.09e–06∗∗∗
Labor −0.016∗ 0.0412 −0.0255∗ −0.00003∗∗
Land −0.022 0.0079∗ 0.0141∗ 9.4e–06
Govrank 0.0751∗∗∗ −0.0486 −0.027 0.00007∗∗∗
Capita −0.024 0.0010 0.023 −0.00003
Naturank 0.0298∗ 0.0373∗ −0.067 −0.00005
Harroa −0.048∗∗ 0.133∗∗∗ −0.020∗∗ −0.0651∗∗∗
Kelagudaa 0.0033∗∗∗ −0.043∗∗∗ 0.040∗∗∗ −0.00012
Kelokiri −0.070 0.139 −0.069 −0.00007
Gibebosoa 0.671∗∗∗ −0.416∗∗∗ −0.255∗∗∗ 0.00008
Halosebea 0.476∗∗∗ −0.351∗∗∗ −0.126∗∗∗ 0.0012
Sebekdeba 0.752 −0.473∗∗∗ −0.283∗∗∗ 0.0037∗∗∗
Notes:
a Dy/Dx is for discrete change of dummy variable from 0 to 1. Number of observations is 230.
∗∗∗ , ∗∗ and ∗ are meant to signify the significance of the corresponding coefficient estimates at 1%, 5%,
and 10%, respectively.
Two-tailed test is used for those variables with unpredictable relationships a priori and one-tailed test
otherwise.
Source: 2001/2002 survey data.
4.2 Regression Results and Discussion
The model correctly predicted about 73 per cent, 82 per cent, 96 per cent and
65 per cent of farmers’ preferences for yield, yield stability, environmental
adaptability and marketability attributes, respectively. The overall prediction
capacity of the model is found to be 80 per cent. More details on the
performance of the model can be found in Wale (2004). The marginal effects
are reported in Table 2.
By and large, the MNL marginal effects show that factors (farmer
characteristics) inducing higher demand for income maximizing attributes
(yield and marketability) restrain the demand for survival maximizing
attributes (yield stability and environmental adaptability). The farmers from
more accessible areas and those who are less concerned with securing
a subsistence income level opt for income maximizing variety attributes.
Whereas farmers from less accessible areas and those who are more
concerned with potential future income shocks portray more propensities
for survival maximizing attributes.

In general, we learn from the empirical results that there are specific types
of varieties which are demanded by household specific features. Thus, taking
a variety as a production technology, variety attributes are important adoption
factors. In other words, farmers will adopt technologies that have attributes
that suit their needs and circumstances. This thesis has got empirical support
from previous studies (for example Batz et al., 1999; Pingali et al., 2001;
Adesina and Baidu-Forson, 1995; Adesina and Zinnah, 1993; Negatu and
Parikh, 1999). Accordingly, the chance of a variety / technology to stay on
farmers’ fields is a function of the extent to which it embeds the important
attributes relevant to the farm households. Attributes of varieties are crucial
for farmers’ decisions to utilize the varieties of a given crop (Wale, 2004;
Edmeades et al., 2004). Farmers’ cultivar preferences vary according to
their household characteristics (Haugerup and Collinson, 1990). The central
message here is that crop variety technologies can be successfully promoted
if research and extension policy-makers give due attention to farmers’ variety
attribute preferences during the design of variety development and extension
strategies.
Farmers’ attribute preferences are the outcomes of their contextual
characteristics and the characteristics of their working environment,6 which,
in turn, reflect their concerns. Farmers’ concerns are the outcomes of their
contextual characteristics and the working environment in which they are
operating. Subject to their contextual household characteristics, the supply
of varieties and their attributes, farmers grow crop varieties that address their
concerns. Understanding farmers’ variety attribute preferences is, therefore,
extremely helpful to identify their priority concerns, prioritize research
activities, and evaluate research and extension programmes.
Changes in the farmers’ working environment or contextual characteristics
and difference in the level and type of concerns will have important
implications to the extension strategies to be in place and adoption processes.
For instance, as land and labour get scarce, farmers’ demand for yield
increases. In contrast, a decrease in the opportunity cost of land and labour
will increase farmers’ demand for yield stability. This could be because those
farmers facing higher opportunity cost of land and labour or having a better
chance to get off-farm job opportunities and more rewarding cash crops are
not mainly concerned with survival maximizing attributes. As a result, they
have more of a profit maximizing objective expressed by a higher demand
for yield attributes. Farmers who are less concerned with natural problems
(disease, drought and pests) have been found to have higher demand for
yield.
Furthermore, the results show that because of their effect on farmers’
utility, rural development interventions (in the areas of infrastructure
development, poverty reduction, and market access) will change the utility
of the different variety attributes to farmers and thereby affect their variety

attribute preferences and seed technology adoption. For instance, if irrigation

is made accessible to most small-scale farmers, they will have less preference
for attributes like drought resistance and environmental adaptability. Hence,
those varieties which have these income stabilizing attributes will be replaced
by other varieties which can be productively used with irrigation. Thus,
farmers who expect good prospect for availability of rural development
services (input supply, farm implements, markets, and extension services)
will have higher demand for better yielding and marketable varieties provided
that markets are available to absorb the surplus production.
Farmers who are less constrained with land shortage tend to have higher
demand for environmental adaptability. This could be because farmers who
have a large land holding (less constrained with land shortage) have larger and
heterogeneous plots and consequently look for varieties that can be adapted
to the different soil types. Whereas farmers who are less concerned with
natural problems have higher demand for yield stability. This is somehow
contradictory to our expectation. This could, however, be due to the positive
relationship between disease resistance (the attribute left out as a reference)
and yield stability.
In sum, based on the empirical evidences, the paper has shown that
farmers’ variety attribute preferences are important seed technology adoption
factors. Farmers critically assess the attributes of new technologies against
the existing ones in their adoption decisions. Even though the choice set
(crop varieties and their attributes) that farmers have is the same within a
village, it is very common to observe that some farmers give highest priority
to yield, others to disease resistance and still others to early maturity. The
empirical results we are drawing from can serve as inputs to contextual variety
development, breeding priority setting, and targeted diffusion of variety
technologies. Such results should trigger policy-makers and researchers to
consider farmers’ heterogeneity in plant breeding and extension policies.
Ultimately, this can enhance adoption of improved agricultural technologies
and consequently increase agricultural productivity and growth.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations

Agricultural research findings are of little use if farmers do not adopt them.
The brief review of the agricultural extension situation in Ethiopia reveals
that extension technologies and policies have often not been consistent with
the farmers’ objectives, constraints, strategies and expectations. There is
inherent lack of harmony between farmers’ circumstances and technol-
ogy characteristics. Development agents are evaluated by the number of
farmers they engage in the extension programme, not by the livelihood
impacts recorded. For extension agents to offer professional services to

smallholders, it is high time to change the evaluation criteria from numbers to

impacts.
In this paper, it has been argued that the discrepancy between farmers’
variety attribute preferences and the characteristics of the improved varieties
is the major reason for the poor level of agricultural technology adoption in
Ethiopia. For an agricultural technology to be successfully taken by small-
holders, it has to have attributes which address their concerns and it should
be accompanied by a policy package which would enhance the livelihood
impacts of the technology.
The empirical results of the paper show that, for farmers who have due
concern for income shocks, their priority variety attributes are yield stability
and environmental adaptation. The extension package approach in Ethiopia,
which recommends the same technology package for all farmers across the
board, overlooks their heterogeneities. The programme needs to be revisited
to recognize their heterogeneity in terms of circumstances, concerns and
expectations. This will make agricultural extension policies and variety
adoption strategies more adaptive, context specific and productive.
The research programme should also recognize and be responsive to this
heterogeneity. Accordingly, for farming communities which can satisfy their
current consumption requirement and/or those found in more accessible
areas, research and extension should come up with varieties that satisfy yield
and marketability attributes.
To improve the chance of acceptance by farmers, the crop development
research priority setting should address farmers’ attribute preferences.
Accordingly, breeders would have to build a portfolio of varieties broadly
compatible with farmers’ preferences and it should always be left to the
farmers to evaluate and decide. This avoids the dangers of heavily relying
on too few improved varieties and enables the benefits to accrue to as broad
a spectrum of farmers as possible. Otherwise, constraining farmers with a
handful of choices will reduce not only the number of beneficiaries but also
the impact of the technology.
Understanding and accounting for farmers’ variety attribute preferences
will help to identify the varieties that will have better chance of being taken by
the targeted farmers. Not only this, the technologies will have a better chance
of resulting in desirable impacts in productivity and growth. This knowledge
could be used by policy-makers to design targeting principles whereby the
huge costs of ‘ineffective’ crop variety development programmes and the
transaction costs of variety dissemination could be reduced.
The other important lesson to be drawn is that development policy
interventions can influence farmers’ demand for varieties and their attributes.
Rural development interventions can affect farmers’ utility functions,
conditions and concerns. An intervention may increase their demand for
some local variety attributes and/or it would evade such local variety

attributes from farmers’ choice basket and induce demand for other improved
variety attributes. For instance, a course of action that improves access to
market, irrigation, and income will reduce farmers’ demand for varieties
that are preferred for income stabilizing or survival maximizing attributes.
Such intervention, will, on the other hand, induce demand for yield and
marketability attributes.
Further, the results of this study can be used to understand Ethiopian
farmers’ rationale to keep on growing local coffee trees. There are at least
two reasons which have come out clear during the course of this research.
In the first place, most coffee growing farmers are simply subsistent and
poor which increases their demand for yield stability and environmental
adaptability, attributes embedded in most local coffee trees. Risk vulnerable
farmers will go for the local varieties which are adaptable to their local
conditions providing stable yield. Secondly, farmers cannot afford to replace
the existing coffee trees by new ones as they will not be able to support their
families until the new coffee trees start to yield harvests.
Transforming the country’s agriculture and enhancing productivity will
call for developing farm technologies which can fit into the farmers’ working
environment. In this process, results of technology attribute preference
studies can be used to:
• provide agricultural researchers with information on farmers’ prob-

lems and the characteristics of technologies of priority importance to
farmers;
• allow the formulation of recommendations appropriate for poor
farmers; and
• generate useful feedback to technology development and extension
policy-makers.
This way, targeted technology development and dissemination would support

efforts to deal with the complicated problems of slow technology adoption,
lack of agricultural transformation, and perpetuation of poor agricultural
productivity (and poverty) in the country. If agricultural technologies are
conceived without considering farmers’ contextual conditions, they carry the
twin risks of being released without farmers taking them or being rejected
while farmers would have found them valuable.
Notes
1. For a critical evaluation of this strategy in the context of Ethiopia, see
Berhanu (2004).
2. This relationship is maintained unless it happens to be unpredictable.

3. An income source is said to be susceptible to risk if its outcome is

influenced by factors outside the control of farmers.
4. The choice is arbitrary.
5. The selected PAs include Harro and Kella Guda (in Mana district),
Bulbulo, Kilole Kirkir, and Yachi Urechi (in Goma district), and Gibe
Boso, Hallo Sebeka, and Sebeka Debiye (in Seka Chekorsa district).
6. This includes natural, cultural, institutional (such as land tenure, cooper-
atives, and local governance), and economic factors.
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Farmers’ Variety Attribute Preferences:

Implications for Breeding Priority Setting and

Edilegnaw Wale∗∗ and Asmare Yalew∗∗∗

Abstract: Technological progress in Ethiopian agriculture is the slowest

and less capital), the Ethiopian government is following an Agriculture

The variables employed in the econometric analysis are then described

2. An Overview of the Agricultural Extension System in

• the comprehensive package projects such as Chilalo Agricultural Devel-

Basically, each one was thought to be designed based on observed

and implemented without due considerations to the farmers’ opinion and

3.1 The Theoretical Framework

The theory presented here is drawn from Lancaster’s (1966) characteristic

to n varieties of coffee in a given village with n, less than n or more than n

3.2 The Empirical Model

where n is the number of farmers and m is the number of variety attributes.

3.3 The Data Generation Process

4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Descriptive Statistics

Table 1: Descriptive statistics

Age Age of the household head 46.3 13.7

Table 2: MNL marginal effect estimates of farmer characteristics

Age 0.0148 −0.0079 −0.0069 −0.00001

4.2 Regression Results and Discussion

attribute preferences and seed technology adoption. For instance, if irrigation

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

smallholders, it is high time to change the evaluation criteria from numbers to

• provide agricultural researchers with information on farmers’ prob-

This way, targeted technology development and dissemination would support

3. An income source is said to be susceptible to risk if its outcome is

Ethiopia’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 75, No. 5,

North-western Ethiopia’, African Crop Science Journal, Vol. 3, pp. 443–

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