Effect of off-farm income on smallholder commercialization: panel evidence from rural households in Ethiopia

This article investigates how off-farm income affects crop output market participation decisions and marketed surplus of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. A double-hurdle model is estimated using three waves of panel data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey. Unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for using a correlated random effect procedure and potential endogeneity of explanatory variables using a control function approach. The results show that off-farm income has no significant influence on household crop output market participation. However, conditional on market participation, additional off-farm earnings negatively affect the marketed surplus. This indicates that farmers use off-farm earnings for consumption rather than for investment in agricultural production. Policy measures that promote rural investment may help increase returns to labor for land-poor households participating in off-farm work in the process of agricultural commercialization.