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Migration, Remittance, and Adoption of Conservation Practices

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Abstract

Temporary migration and the resulting flow of fund in terms of remittance has been one of the major sources of financing in developing countries. However, little is known about the role of remittance receipt by households on the adoption of environmental-friendly practices in the agricultural production system. We use the three-stage least squares (3-SLS) regression method to analyze the data obtained from face-to-face interview surveys of 338 Nepali households to understand the impact of migration and remittance on the adoption of conservation practices. Our analysis does not show the direct impact of remittance on the number of soil and water conservation practices adoption, but migration has a significant negative effect. Other variables positively affecting the adoption of conservation practices are agriculture as the main source of income, perceived notion that water quality is bad, and better utilization of existing agricultural infrastructures. Income and the perceived notion that productivity quality of soil is bad negatively affect conservation practices adoption. Farm households facing labor shortage resulting from out-migration should be assisted by providing cost-share or incentive payment to adopt readily available, effective, low labor-intensive, and low-cost conservation practices in Nepal or elsewhere in similar remittance-dependent developing countries.

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Notes

  1. Leaving land fallow is very unlikely in our study area, as Nepal faces severe decline in per capita availability of arable agricultural land, resulting in alarmingly high land prices (Massey et al. 2010).

  2. Bhandari (2019) indicates that about 3% of remittance gets diverted to farming practices in Nepal. Kapri and Ghimire (2020) indicate that remittance has a positive effect on agricultural productivity in Nepal.

  3. Small, medium, and large land holding are categorized as 0–0.5 hectares, 0.5–3 hectares, and more than 3 hectares per household, respectively (Sharma 1999). Village Development Committees (VDC) is known as “village council” since 2017.

  4. The age of 12 was selected to capture individuals who would have participated in household production had they lived at home.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal Dr Bram Noble for helpful comments, which improved the quality of the paper. Paudel’s time on this paper was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grants #94382 and #94483. Senior authorship is equally shared by two authors.

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  1. Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University (LSU) and LSU Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

    Deborah Williams & Krishna P. Paudel

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  1. Deborah Williams
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  2. Krishna P. Paudel
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Correspondence to Krishna P. Paudel.

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Williams, D., Paudel, K.P. Migration, Remittance, and Adoption of Conservation Practices. Environmental Management 66, 1072–1084 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01362-w

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