Abstract
Abstract
Food security remains a persistent challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, and sustainable agricultural intensification has been proposed as a promising strategy to improve both agricultural productivity and household welfare. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the heterogeneous welfare effects of the intensity of adopting multiple sustainable agricultural practices, particularly when these technologies are implemented individually or in combination. This study addresses this gap by examining the welfare impacts of certified seeds (CS), improved technical itineraries (ITK), and irrigation systems on annual per capita expenditure and the Food Consumption Score (FCS) among vegetable farm households in southern Benin. The analysis uses an unbalanced three-round panel dataset collected in 2018, 2020, and 2022. It estimates heterogeneous effects of multiple treatments in the presence of the endogeneity with respect to both time-constant and time-varying unobserved heterogeneity and selection on idiosyncratic gains. Accordingly, a panel-data fixed-effects endogeneity-corrected correlated random coefficients model combined with a latent factor approach is used. The main findings are that the largest effects on per capita expenditure (an average partial effect of 82%) were obtained with an increase in the area covered by the adoption of the three technologies combined, especially in the presence of an irrigation system. Similarly, an increase of area under the three combined technologies increases the probability of achieving an acceptable FCS by 0.45 points, specifically among male-headed farm households. The findings have important policy implications for designing targeted agricultural programs that promote complementary technology packages and account for household heterogeneity to maximize welfare.