Sustainable agricultural intensification, household welfare, and the environment in South Asia

authored by: Gokul Prasad Paudel
supervised by: Trung Thanh Nguyen
Abstract: Feeding an estimated global population of approximately ten billion in the near future requires transformative solutions. Sustainable agricultural intensification is an innovative strategy to increase food production on existing land by increasing productivity while conserving resources, enhancing climate resilience, and safeguarding environmental sustainability. Sustainable intensification, therefore, involves technological innovations that increase agricultural productivity, improve rural livelihoods, and promote environmental sustainability. Over the past two decades, this approach has been actively promoted in the Global South to drive the necessary transformative change. However, limited research has examined the economic and environmental impacts of sustainable intensification from a micro (household) perspective. Studying how sustainable intensification can serve as a pathway to enhance agricultural productivity, improve rural livelihoods, and promote environmental sustainability is crucial for understanding this process of transformative change. South Asia serves as a prime example to study how sustainable agricultural intensification can drive transformative changes in the region. Of the nearly two billion inhabitants of South Asia, an estimated two-thirds are reliant upon agriculture as their primary source of income and sustenance. However, approximately 40% of the population remains food insecure, with almost one-third living below the extreme poverty line of US$ 2.15 per day. India and Nepal exemplify this dynamic, where large rural populations depend on agriculture while facing significant levels of food insecurity. To address these challenges, national and international research and development agencies have actively promoted sustainable intensification technologies in the region. Examples of these technologies include conservation agriculture, high-yielding crop varieties, water and nutrient management, scale-appropriate farm mechanization, and climate-adaptive crop management practices. In this context, this dissertation seeks to provide empirical evidence on how sustainable intensification technologies can enhance household-level productivity, profitability, and income while reducing poverty, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. The focus on the household is rooted in their role as central decision-making units in agriculture. By generating critical insights into the adoption and impacts of these technologies in Nepal and India, this dissertation offers actionable policy recommendations to guide future improvements. The first chapter of this dissertation uses data collected in 2022 from two districts in Uttar Pradesh and four districts in Bihar, India. A two-stage sampling procedure is applied, resulting in 834 randomly selected households based on high, medium, and low adoption categories, which are determined by the area covered by seed drill service providers. The second chapter uses data collected in 2018 from 40 districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India. Wheat cultivating households are randomly selected from 30 villages in each district using a probability-proportionate-to-village-size method, resulting in a sample of 7,214. The third and sixth chapters use 2016 data collected from 10 major wheat-growing districts in Nepal, where surveys are conducted in five villages per district, and 10 households are randomly selected from each village. The fourth chapter uses the data collected in 2019 from 1,179 farm households in Nepal Terai. Zero-tillage adopting and non-adopting households are randomly selected based on information provided by the zero-tillage seed drill service providers. The fifth chapter uses data from maize-based farming systems in six districts in the hilly region of Nepal, selected based on small-scale farm machinery sales. A total of 1,004 farm households from 34 sub-districts are randomly selected, with 740 maize-growing farmers included in the analysis. Rainfall, temperature, and soil-related data are obtained from remote sensing sources and integrated with household survey data using geographical coordinates of the households. This dissertation is cumulative and includes the following six chapters. The first chapter examines the impact of sustainable intensification technologies-specifically, direct-seeded rice and zero-tillage wheat, on systems level productivity, profitability, and per capita income in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. Using a multinomial endogenous switching regression model, the study finds that the joint adoption of direct-seeded rice and zero-tillage wheat enhances cropping systems productivity, reduces production costs, and increases farm profits. Adoption also raises household per capita income. However, the benefits are unevenly distributed, with poorer farms deriving less advantage from rice-wheat farming and more from off-farm income. This finding underscores the need for policies that foster off-farm employment opportunities to promote equitable rural development. The second and third chapters deal with the impact of climate adaptive crop management practices such as early sowing of wheat on productivity, cost of cultivation, and farm profits in Nepal, and the productivity and fertilizer use efficiency measures in India. Findings from Nepal reveal that early sowing increases wheat productivity and farm profits. However, early sowing does not increase the cost of production, highlighting that early sowing imposes no additional financial burden on farmers. Finding from India reveal that early sowing increases the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and overall fertilizer use efficiency measures, in addition to increasing wheat productivity. However, in India, the impacts of early wheat sowing are highly heterogeneous. Large farms and farms applying high doses of fertilizer than the states recommendations are less impacted from early wheat sowing indicating that high doses of fertilizer contributing to environmental pollution. The fourth chapter assess the drivers and impact of zero-tillage wheat on farm productivity, profitability, total energy use, and greenhouse gas emission in Nepal. The study also examines the distributional impacts of zero-tillage wheat on outcome variables to understand who benefits more from zero-tillage wheat adoption. The study finds that zero-tillage wheat significantly increases farm productivity and profitability while reducing total energy use and greenhouse gas emission. However, the study also finds that wealthier farmers benefit more economically while poorer farmers contribute to environmental sustainability by reducing more energy and greenhouse gas emission. The adoption of zero-tillage wheat appears to be driven by farmers’ risk tolerance and labor shortages. The fifth chapter assesses the drivers and impact of scale-appropriate farm mechanization on maize productivity, labor and total costs of maize production, profitability, food security, and rural poverty in Nepal. The study also assesses the heterogeneous effects of farm mechanization on outcome variables. Findings reveal that farm mechanization increases maize productivity, profitability, and food security while reducing labor costs, total costs of production, and rural poverty in Nepal. However, these results are heterogeneous, with very small farms owning less than half a hectare of land benefiting the most. Farm mechanization is driven by farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, market proximity, household assets, and the household head’s education. Finally, the sixth chapter assesses how rural household labor out-migration and shortages in Nepal affect wheat productivity and farm profits. The study also examines whether farm mechanization offsets the negative effects of labor shortages on wheat productivity. Findings show that household labor out-migration negatively affects wheat productivity and profitability, despite increasing household non-farm income through remittances. Rising labor costs due to shortages drive these negative effects. However, farm mechanization increases wheat productivity and profitability, even amidst labor shortages, indicating potential synergies between labor out-migration and agricultural productivity. This dissertation contributes to three novel impact assessments of sustainable intensification on household welfare and environmental sustainability. Firstly, in the first chapter, unlike previous empirical studies that focus on individual crops or technologies within an analytical framework, we evaluate the impact of multiple sustainable intensification technologies on systems productivity and household welfare. Secondly, in the second paper, we assess, for the first time, the impact of sustainable intensification technologies on fertilizer use efficiency using observational data and empirical econometric models. In the fourth paper, we evaluate for the first time the impact of sustainable intensification technologies on total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions using observational data. Total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions have not previously been analyzed within an empirical econometric framework. Finally, this dissertation offers several actionable policy recommendations that are valuable for policymakers and development practitioners, especially for widespread adoption of sustainable intensification technologies in the region. Some key recommendations are regulating fertilizer over use in India, especially by the large farms, revisiting farm mechanization policy mismatch in Nepal, and promoting off-farm jobs for poorer quantile farms that don’t benefit as much from technological innovations in India.
Organisation(s): Institute of Environmental Economics and World Trade
Type: Doctoral thesis
No. of pages: 178
Publication date: 07.04.2025
Publication status: Published
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 1 - No Poverty, SDG 2 - Zero Hunger, SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 - Climate Action
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.15488/18920 (Access: Open)