Print Email Facebook Twitter Assessing the costs and benefits of improved land management practices in three watershed areas in Ethiopia Title Assessing the costs and benefits of improved land management practices in three watershed areas in Ethiopia Author Tesfaye, Abonesh (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Brouwer, Roy (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) van der Zaag, P. (TU Delft Water Resources; IHE Delft Institute for Water Education) Negatu, Workneh (Addis Ababa University) Date 2016-03-01 Abstract Unsustainable land use management and the resulting soil erosion are among the most pervasive problems in rural Ethiopia, where most of the country's people live, jeopardizing food security. Despite various efforts to introduce soil conservation measures and assess their costs and benefits, it is unclear how efficient these measures are from an economic point of view in securing food production. This paper examines the costs and benefits of three soil conservation measures applied in the country in three different rural districts facing different degrees of soil erosion problems using survey data collected from 750 farm households. A production function is estimated to quantify the costs and benefits of more sustainable land use management practices. We show that the soil conservation measures significantly increase productivity and hence food security. Comparing the costs and benefits, the results indicate that implementing soil conservation measures would benefit farm communities in the case study areas through increased grain productivity and food security. Subject Blue NileCobb–Douglas production functionCost–benefit analysisEthiopiaSoil conservation To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fe7ff7de-5379-4e37-a7c5-55010f3e3cba DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2016.01.003 ISSN 2095-6339 Source International Soil and Water Conservation Research, 4 (1), 20-29 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2016 Abonesh Tesfaye, Roy Brouwer, P. van der Zaag, Workneh Negatu Files PDF 1_s2.0_S2095633915301015_main.pdf 937.02 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:fe7ff7de-5379-4e37-a7c5-55010f3e3cba/datastream/OBJ/view