Prospects of sustainable intensification of smallholder farming systems: A farmer typology approach

Smallholder farming systems are highly diverse, owing to differences in farmers’ resource endowments, levels of technology use, degree of market access and agro-ecological factors. Consequently, the prospects of achieving sustainable intensification of smallholder farming systems need to be examined vis-à-vis the dominant farmer typologies, so as to help craft effective and tailored interventions. The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to establish farm typologies prevalent within the smallholder farming systems and infer their implications for the drive to achieve sustainable intensification of agriculture. A cross-sectional survey was carried out, covering 600 households in four regions of Ethiopia’s Highlands. Multivariate statistical techniques of Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis (CA) were used to group farmers into four distinct clusters. The study then compared relative levels of agricultural intensification and sustainability across the different typology clusters. The study found that households who are more commercially oriented and have larger landholdings, higher levels of productive assets and livestock ownership, exhibit higher levels of both agricultural intensification and relative sustainability. The study concludes that the farm typology approach has important policy application as it helps identify the set of socioeconomic characteristics of farmers that influence their propensity to achieve sustainable intensification.