Impact of adoption of push-pull technologies on smallholder maize farmers productivity in Rwanda? A Multinomial Endogenous Switching Regression Approach

The use of push-pull technologies (PPT) as a viable alternative to pesticide in the control of fall armyworm and stemborer pests has received global attention recently. However, the impact of adoption of PPT on the productivity of smallholder maize farmers in Rwanda where PPT was introduced in 2017 remains unknown. This study employed a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) to evaluate the impact of PPT on smallholder maize farmer’s productivity in Gatsibo and Nyagatare districts of Rwanda. The MESR model was estimated on sample of 398 households operating 967 maize plots selected using a stratified random sampling technique. The econometric results revealed that adopting of PPT, a combination of PPT and traditional, and a combination of pesticides and traditional had a positive significant impact on maize yield while traditional and pesticides in isolation had negative impact on maize yield. The study recommends icipe, government of Rwanda and other stakeholder’s collaborations to promote adoption of low-cost pest management technologies to improve productivity.