Effects of tree lucerne adoption on livestock endowment in South Wollo, Ethiopia

Abstract Livestock production has a crucial role for smallholder livelihoods in Ethiopia but remains constrained by chronic feed shortages. Tree lucerne has been promoted as a climate-resilient forage technology, yet evidence on its adoption and effects on livestock endowment remains limited. This study examines the determinants of tree lucerne adoption and its effects on livestock endowment using 400 smallholder farmers. We used an Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model to address endogeneity arising from non-random adoption decisions, complemented by a Double Machine Learning (DML) estimator. The adoption model shows that distance to plots suitable for tree-lucerne establishment, family size, landholding size, frequency of extension contacts, access to training, peer effects through farmers’ association membership, and access to information significantly influence farmers’ adoption decisions. The ESR results indicate that adopters increase their livestock endowments by about 28.1% compared to non-adopters. Conversely, the average treatment effect on the untreated (ATU) suggests that current non-adopters could increase their livestock endowment by about 65.0% if they adopted tree lucerne. The larger ATU implies substantial unrealized gains among non-adopting households. The DML estimates confirm a positive and statistically significant effect of tree lucerne adoption on livestock endowment, supporting the robustness of the ESR findings. The results suggest that low adoption is more likely associated with adoption constraints than low economic returns. Policy efforts should strengthen extension services, farmer training, access to information, and plot-targeted promotional strategies to increase adoption of tree lucerne and support sustainable livestock development in mixed crop-livestock farming systems.