Exploring farmers’ seasonal and full year adoption of stall feeding of livestock in Tigrai region, Ethiopia

Adoption of stall feeding (SF) of livestock was assessed in northern Ethiopia based on a household survey conducted in 2015. The study covered 21 communities in Tigrai to account for differences in agroecology. The purpose of this study was to understand the driving factors of full or seasonal SF adoption and its intensity. A Heckman selection model was used to estimate adoption and extent of adoption based on a model of technology adoption within an agricultural household framework, and Poisson Model for explaining the number of SF adopting seasons. The descriptive results indicate that 36% of the farmers were actually practicing SF in a full year whereas 55.6% were seasonal adopters in the study area. Empirical results of this study showed that our result is in favor of the Boserupian hypothesis indicating that small grazing land and large exclosure are associated with a higher probability of use of SF and with a higher number of SF adopting seasons. In a similar vein, small average village farm size stimulated SF adoption and adopting seasons, Availability of labor and a number of breed cows significantly increased the probability of using SF by 0.01% and 66% respectively. While animal shock had a marginal effect of 14%, factors such as access to information and early exposure increased SF adoption by about 18% and 6%. Similarly, the positive marginal effect of real milk price is 15%. However, SF appears to be less attractive to those farmers with more herd size and less crop residue.