Assessing the Potential of a Locally Adapted Conservation Agriculture Production System to Reduce Rural Poverty in Uganda's Tororo District

This paper demonstrates the utility of small area estimation (SAE) of poverty methods for researchers that wish to conduct a detailed welfare analysis as part of a larger survey of a small geographic area of interest. Researchers studying context-specific technologies or interventions can incorporate the survey-based SAE of poverty approach to conduct detailed poverty analyzes of their specific area of interest without the expense of collecting household consumption data. This study applies SAE methods as part of an impact assessment of a locally adapted conservation agriculture production system in Uganda's Tororo District. Using SAE, I assess the Tororo District's Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) rural poverty indices, estimate the effects of per acre farm profit increases to poor households on the district's rural poverty indices, and compare the findings to current estimates of the net returns from conservation agriculture in the Tororo District. The SAE results suggest that increasing the farm profits of the bottom 30% of households by two U.S. dollars per acre per season could reduce the district's rural poverty incidence by one percentage point. The available data on the net returns to conservation agriculture in the Tororo District, however, indicate that these modest increases may only be achievable for adopting households that face high land preparation costs.