Measuring the Impacts of Conservation Tillage (CT) on Household Income and Wheat Consumption: A Syrian Case

Abstract

This study aims at assessing the impacts of conservation tillage (CT) on household income and wheat consumption among Syrian farmers. Analysis is based on 621 wheat producing farmers in Syria. The propensity score-matching method and the endogenous switching regression model are employed in this study to analyze the impacts of CT where the necessary check for covariate balancing with a standardized bias was conducted. Results from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggest that after controlling for all confounding factors, adoption of the ZT technology leads to about US$192/ha higher crop income. Moreover, the average gain in wheat consumption by the matched adopters over the matched non-adopters is about 26kg per adult equivalent per year (34%).