Climate-Smart Agriculture Technologies and Smallholder Farmers' Welfare: Evidence from Cashew Nuts (Anacardium occidentale) Farming System in Lindi, Tanzania

This study assessed the effect of the adoption of climate-smart cashew nut technologies on smallholder farmers' welfare in Lindi, Tanzania. Multivariate probit, endogenous switching regression, and inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment were used for analysis. Empirical results on the levels of adoption revealed that 46.53% of the farm households planted improved cashew varieties, 79.21% used pesticides/herbicides, and 21.29% used inorganic fertilizers. Significant factors that influence the probability of interrelated adoption of climate-smart cashew nut technologies were off-farm income, extension contacts, access to credit, farm size, cooperative member, years of formal education, cashew farming experience, household age, and gender. The results further revealed that the adoption of climate-smart cashew nut technologies improves the farmers' welfare. The study recommends the improvements in extension services, enlargement of the cashew farm sizes, financial support for farmers, strengthening cooperative societies unions, and improvement on technologies disseminations.