Evaluating Welfare Implications of Climate Smart Irrigation Technology Adoption By Smallholder Maize Farmers in Botswana: An Endogenous Switching Regression Approach

Over the last century, global water consumption has risen more than twice as fast as population growth. In Botswana, drought and declining water levels have severely affected crop production, resulting in significant losses, lower incomes, and reduced well-being among resource-poor farmers. To address this, the dissemination of Climate-Smart Irrigation Technologies (CSITs) was being pursued. This study investigates the impacts of adopting Climate-Smart Irrigation Technologies on farm households' welfare. Data was collected from 271 smallholder maize farmers and analysed using an Endogenous Switching Regression Model. The Wald chi-squared test and the likelihood ratio test yielded statistically significant results at the 5% level, indicating a good fit of the model. A significant correlation coefficient between the error terms of the selection and outcome equations indicates selection bias between adopters and non-adopters. The ATT and ATU are positive and significant for both adopters and non-adopters, indicating that CSIT adoption has had a significant positive impact on farmers' welfare. This is evidenced by higher expected values of farm income and consumption expenditure among adopters. Treatment and heterogeneity effects indicate that adopter farm holders would have had 28% lower farm income per hectare if they had not adopted, and could have afforded 69% less consumption expenditure if they had not adopted. Hence, the study confirms the importance of adoption and recommends enhancing credit access, strengthening training and education, increasing the number of extension officers, and creating farmer clusters and cooperatives to improve adoption.