The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

Men and women experience climate change differently because of differences in their conventional roles, cultural expectations, and means of sustenance. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has the potential to mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change and have a direct influence on household well-being. However, CSA concepts are still not widely applied at the farm level in poor nations. This study investigates gender differences in adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and its distributional impact on farm production and household welfare in Nigeria. We used a cross-sectional sex-disaggregated survey data collected from a random sample of 624 farm households, 138 male and 122 female of which are CSA practices adopters and the rest are non-adopters. We measure impact of adoption in term of productivity (farm yields, kg/ha) and welfare as total per capita household income(₦) and per capita food consumption expenditure (₦). The use of a conditional instrumental variable, quantile treatment effects, to account for selection bias resulting from both observed and unobserved factors is innovative in this study. Findings show that adoption statistically significant impacts the farm productivity and welfare outcomes across gender. Statistically significant gender gap exists in farm productivity and welfare outcomes as male-headed farm households fare better compare to their female-headed counterparts. Farm household decision to adopt CSA practices is influenced by education, farm size, awareness of CSA, access toextension and credit, and membership of association across gender. Also, the impact of adoption is higher at the lower end of the distributions of farm and welfare outcomes in male and female households. This finding highlights the significance CSA adoption in improving farm yield and farmers’ well-being. Policies that are aimed at bridging gender gap in CSA practices adoption among farming household heads may actually have statistically significant higher impact in narrowing gender gap in farm yield and household welfare.