Are returns from adoption of soil conservation practices heterogeneous? Evidence from Indian agriculture

Purpose - This paper finds the returns from soil conservation practices and examines whether the welfare implications of adopting the conservation practices are heterogeneous across the farming groups in Indian agriculture. Design/methodology/approach - The study uses an endogenous switching regression (ESR) method on the data collected from the 77th round of National Sample Survey (2019–21) to quantify the returns from adopting soil conservation practices. Findings - It finds that farmers adopting soil health conservation practices would have reduced their crop yield by 13% if they did not implement them. Similarly, smallholders who have not adopted soil health management practices would have increased crop yield by 16% if they had adopted the practices. The authors also observed that the returns from adopting soil health management practices vary across farming groups, where marginal and large farms tend to gain higher yields. Finally, the authors find that regardless of farm size, smallholders who did not adopt soil health management practices would benefit from adopting these with increased crop yields of 29%–31%. Research limitations/implications - More data could have been better for drawing policy implications, since the number of soil card users are relatively less. Originality/value - This research work uses nationally representative data, which is first in nature on this very aspect.