Impact of Improved Rice Variety Adoption on Smallholder Farmers Rice Productivity and Gross Farm Income Enhancement in North Western Ethiopia

The research was assessed status of adopting improved rice technology as well as evaluate its impact on rice productivity and gross farm income in Ethiopia. The research showed the importance of adopting improved rice technologies using impact evaluating techniques such as propensity scoring matching (PSM). The research was used descriptive and econometric methods of data analysis to elaborate the respondents’ characteristics, farming practices, adoption status and to estimate its impact. The research used multistage sampling methods to select 180 smallholder rice producers. Amhara and Benshangul Gumuz region are the potential rice producers which targeted for this study. Zones, districts and kebles of these regions were selected random that can be represent the region as well as the rice producers in Ethiopia. The research revealed that 44.44% of the respondents were adopted improved rice technology and pawe_1 is the most frequently used by respondents. The econometric result revealed that treated groups were gained high rice output 3,019.70 quintal per hectare over the controlled groups 1,971.40 quintal per hectare as well as in terms of gross income treated groups were earned higher income which is 46,159.78 ETHB than the controlled groups which were earned 29,797.14 ETHB on average. This indicated that adopting improved rice technology was brought 34.72% and 35.45% of increment in rice productivity and gross income on smallholders’ rice producers respectively. Adopting of agricultural technologies are a means of improving the smallholder farmers crop production, productivities and income generated from that farm activities. Therefore, any governmental and non-governmental institution should be focused on the outreach of these agricultural technologies to end user over all part of the country.