Promoting banana farmers’ adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices: The role of agricultural cooperatives

Abstract

To mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on farm productivity and food security, climate-smart agricultural practices (CAPs) have become increasingly crucial in smallholder farming systems. However, the adoption rate of CAPs remains quite low. This study explores whether agricultural cooperatives can serve as an assistor in promoting farmers’ adoption of CAPs. Unlike previous studies that account for one or two practices, we consider CAP adoption intensity by capturing the number of CAPs adopted. We employ an endogenous treatment Poisson regression model to address the selection bias issue and estimate data collected from banana-producing farmers in China. The results show that cooperative membership significantly increases the adoption of CAPs. Specifically, the incidence rate ratio estimates reveal that cooperative membership incites banana farmers to adopt 1.205 times more CAPs, and the treatment effect estimation further verifies the positive impact. Among the ten CAPs considered, cooperative membership particularly increases farmers’ adoption of banana diversification, crop residual turnover, and soil testing. Our findings highlight the importance of encouraging farmers to join agricultural cooperatives in promoting adopting climate-smart agricultural practices.