IS INCREASED INSTABILITY IN CEREAL PRODUCTION IN ETHIOPIA CAUSED BY POLICY CHANGES?

In Ethiopia, growth in cereal production is accompanied by a more than proportionate increase in the standard deviation of production. This study applies descriptive and variance decomposition procedures to determine the sources of increased instability in cereal production in order to show whether they are caused by policy changes. It was found that production instability was caused more by increased yield instability. Considering the fact that use of high-powered inputs is limited to a small number of farmers, production is at subsistence level and that farmers' responsiveness to policy changes is constrained by infrastructural and institutional constraints and by the existing land policy, instability in yield is predominantly attributed to weather variability.