Farmers’ agricultural tractor preferences in Ethiopia: a choice experiment approach

Unless supported by agricultural mechanization, achieving sustainable development goals is generally challenging in sub-Saharan African countries, specifically so in Ethiopia. Animal power is the dominant mode for plowing, threshing, and transportation in Ethiopia and yet, at the same time little effort was employed to assess subsistence farmer’s tractor demand in the study area. This study was conducted to understand the preferences of wheat producer subsistence farmers for agricultural tractors in Ethiopia in 2017. A random sample of 79 households participated in either rental or purchase choice experiments. The descriptive statistics revealed that 42% of respondents chose to buy tractors, and 43% preferred to use rental services. The random parameter logit estimation result showed that plowing-and-transporting tractors were preferred by the farmers who participated in the purchase design. They are also willing to pay ETB 149,142 (USD 6516) for transporting-only tractors, ETB 218,253 (USD 9536) for plowing-only tractors, and ETB 367,957 (USD 16,077) for plowing-and-transport-only tractors. However, due to the exclusion of high wheat producers in the rent experiment, the current rental price was found to be far from the 99% confidence interval of the estimated price. The government should promote and encourage the appropriate use of agricultural tractors that are affordable for subsistence farmers through rental or purchase. Conservative agriculture should also be practiced as the over-use of tractors may disrupt biodiversity and natural biological process.