Mechanical Drying System’ Adoption and its Impact on Cocoa Beans Quality and Household Incomes at Farm Level: A Case Study of Central and South-West Cameroon

Abstract

Drying has been considered as a key farm-based, quality determining unit operation in the cocoa processing chain which can have an integral effect on the bean quality. In recent years, minimal attention has been directed to this process mainly because of the outdated methods and lack of technical know-how with regards to the modern technology adoption by producers. This article therefore aimed to analyze the adoption and welfare impacts of the Mechanical Drying System in Cameroon using data from a sample of 128 farm households. Using well-structured questionnaires, six villages were included in our study, and about 19 farmers from each village were approached and interviewed. The survey collected valuable information on several issues at the farm level: the data on farmer resources, drying activities, technology choices, constraints, socio-economic profiles, input markets, and cocoa beans processing markets. Using various treatment effect estimators, such as Endogenous Switching Regression, Propensity Score Matching, and Inverse Probability Weighting, our results revealed that adoption of the Mechanical Drying System leads to substantial gains in crop quality, and household incomes. For asset value, households that adopted the MDS technology had a per capita asset value of XAF2608.22 compared to those households that did not adopt the MDS who had a per capita asset value of about XAF412.83 less. Our ESR results further depicted that the adoption of MDS lowered the probability of poverty by 9.29% points for adopters compared to non-adopters. Also, ESR results indicated that the adoption of MDS increased the probability of MDS security for adopters by 37.68% points compared to non-adopters. On average, our PSM results depicted that, MDS adoption increased yield in the range of 614.74 to 679.04 kg/ha for adopters compared to non-adopters and the household income per capita from 86.21 XAF to 108.95 XAF for adopters compared to non-adopters. ATT results also demonstrated that farmers who adopted MDS had higher yields 679.04Kg/ha compared to those who did not adopt the MDS technology which resulted in higher household incomes, and decreased risk of high levels of poverty. Although the magnitude of the estimated effects varied between the three econometric models, the qualitative results were consistent and like the descriptive statistics. Hence, we concluded from our study that, the adoption of MDS by farm producers led to substantial gains in crop quality, and household incomes. Therefore, stimulating agricultural growth depends largely on policies that promote technology adoption at the farm level.