IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aesc14/170351.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Building farmers’ capacity for innovation generation: what are the determining factors?

Author

Listed:
  • Tambo, Justice A.
  • Wünscher, Tobias

Abstract

Innovation is essential for agricultural and economic development, especially in today’s rapidly changing global environment. While farmers have been recognised as one of the key sources of innovation, many studies on agricultural innovations continue to consider farmers as adopters of externally-driven innovations only. Based on cross-sectional data from 409 farm households, this study, in contrast, analyses the innovation-generating behaviour among rural farmers in northern Ghana. Inspired by two innovation theories – induced innovation and innovation systems – we focus on the determinants of innovation behaviour. Employing recursive bivariate probit and endogenous treatment-regression models which control for selection bias, we find that participation in Farmer Field Fora, a participatory extension approach with elements of the innovation systems perspective, is a key determinant of innovation behaviour in farm households. Other important determinants are education, climate shocks and risk preferences. These results are robust to alternative specifications and estimation techniques. We conclude that policies for the generation of innovations among farmers should focus on education, and on building innovation capacity through institutional arrangements that permit interactions and learning between stakeholders.

Suggested Citation

  • Tambo, Justice A. & Wünscher, Tobias, 2014. "Building farmers’ capacity for innovation generation: what are the determining factors?," 88th Annual Conference, April 9-11, 2014, AgroParisTech, Paris, France 170351, Agricultural Economics Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aesc14:170351
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.170351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/170351/files/Justice%20Akpene_Tambo_J.A.Tambo_AES%202014%20contributed%20paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.170351?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Davis, K. & Nkonya, E. & Kato, E. & Mekonnen, D.A. & Odendo, M. & Miiro, R. & Nkuba, J., 2012. "Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in East Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 402-413.
    2. Biggs, Stephen D. & Clay, Edward J., 1981. "Sources of innovation in agricultural technology," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 321-336, April.
    3. Feder, Gershon & Just, Richard E & Zilberman, David, 1985. "Adoption of Agricultural Innovations in Developing Countries: A Survey," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 255-298, January.
    4. Salvatore Di Falco & Marcella Veronesi, 2014. "Managing Environmental Risk in Presence of Climate Change: The Role of Adaptation in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 57(4), pages 553-577, April.
    5. Gershon Feder & Rinku Murgai & Jaime B. Quizon, 2004. "Sending Farmers Back to School: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools in Indonesia," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 26(1), pages 45-62.
    6. Hans P. Binswanger, 1980. "Attitudes Toward Risk: Experimental Measurement in Rural India," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 62(3), pages 395-407.
    7. Friis-Hansen, Esbern & Duveskog, Deborah, 2012. "The Empowerment Route to Well-being: An Analysis of Farmer Field Schools in East Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 414-427.
    8. Tripp, Robert & Wijeratne, Mahinda & Piyadasa, V. Hiroshini, 2005. "What should we expect from farmer field schools? A Sri Lanka case study," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1705-1720, October.
    9. Salvatore Di Falco & Marcella Veronesi & Mahmud Yesuf, 2011. "Does Adaptation to Climate Change Provide Food Security? A Micro-Perspective from Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 93(3), pages 825-842.
    10. Justice Tambo & Tahirou Abdoulaye, 2012. "Climate change and agricultural technology adoption: the case of drought tolerant maize in rural Nigeria," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 277-292, March.
    11. Sunding, David & Zilberman, David, 2001. "The agricultural innovation process: Research and technology adoption in a changing agricultural sector," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 207-261, Elsevier.
    12. Gershon Feder & Rinku Murgai & Jaime B. Quizon, 2004. "The Acquisition and Diffusion of Knowledge: The Case of Pest Management Training in Farmer Field Schools, Indonesia," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 221-243, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tambo, Justice A. & Wünscher, Tobias, 2016. "Beyond adoption: welfare effects of farmer innovation behavior in Ghana," Discussion Papers 235297, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    2. Alarcón, Silverio & Sánchez, Mercedes, 2016. "Is there a virtuous circle relationship between innovation activities and exports? A comparison of food and agricultural firms," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 70-79.
    3. Tambo, Justice & Wunscher, Tobias, 2015. "Beyond adoption: the welfare effects of farmer innovation in rural Ghana," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211682, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tambo, Justice A. & Wünscher, Tobias, 2014. "Building Farmers’ Capacity For Innovation Generation: What Are The Determining Factors?," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182810, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Jinyang Cai & Guanming Shi & Ruifa Hu, 2016. "An Impact Analysis of Farmer Field School in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-14, February.
    3. Jinyang Cai & Fengxiang Ding & Yu Hong & Ruifa Hu, 2021. "An Impact Analysis of Farmer Field Schools on Hog Productivity: Evidence from China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-14, October.
    4. Yorobe Jr., J.M. & Rejesus, R.M. & Hammig, M.D., 2011. "Insecticide use impacts of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Farmer Field Schools: Evidence from onion farmers in the Philippines," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 104(7), pages 580-587, September.
    5. Nakano, Yuko & Tsusaka, Takuji W. & Aida, Takeshi & Pede, Valerien O., 2018. "Is farmer-to-farmer extension effective? The impact of training on technology adoption and rice farming productivity in Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 336-351.
    6. Chrysanthi Charatsari & Evagelos D. Lioutas & Alex Koutsouris, 2020. "Farmer field schools and the co-creation of knowledge and innovation: the mediating role of social capital," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1139-1154, December.
    7. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman & Jeffry D. Connor, 2022. "Impact of Agricultural Extension Services on Fertilizer Use and Farmers’ Welfare: Evidence from Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-16, July.
    8. Hugh Waddington & Birte Snilstveit & Jorge Garcia Hombrados & Martina Vojtkova & Jock Anderson & Howard White, 2012. "PROTOCOL: Farmer Field Schools for Improving Farming Practices and Farmer Outcomes in Low‐ and Middle‐income Countries: A Systematic Review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 1-48.
    9. Praneetvatakul, Suwanna & Waibel, Hermann, 2006. "Impact Assessment of Farmer Field School Using A Multi-Period Panel Data Model," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25499, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Doris Läpple & Thia Hennessy & Carol Newman, 2013. "Quantifying the Economic Return to Participatory Extension Programmes in Ireland: an Endogenous Switching Regression Analysis," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(2), pages 467-482, June.
    11. Denise Hörner & Adrien Bouguen & Markus Frölich & Meike Wollni, 2019. "The Effects of Decentralized and Video-based Extension on the Adoption of Integrated Soil Fertility Management – Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia," NBER Working Papers 26052, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Ghadir Asadi & Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooei, 2022. "The Role of Learning in Adaptation to Technology: The Case of Groundwater Extraction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-37, June.
    13. Mancini, Francesca & Termorshuizen, Aad J. & Jiggins, Janice L.S. & van Bruggen, Ariena H.C., 2008. "Increasing the environmental and social sustainability of cotton farming through farmer education in Andhra Pradesh, India," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 96(1-3), pages 16-25, March.
    14. Larsen, Anna Folke & Lilleør, Helene Bie, 2014. "Beyond the Field: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Food Security and Poverty Alleviation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 843-859.
    15. Mohammad Mahfuzur Rahman Bhuiyan & Keshav Lall Maharjan, 2022. "Impact of Farmer Field School on Crop Income, Agroecology, and Farmer’s Behavior in Farming: A Case Study on Cumilla District in Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-20, April.
    16. Praneetvatakul, S. & Waibel, H., 2007. "The Impact of Farmer Field School On Pesticide Use and Environment in Thailand," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 42, March.
    17. Nakano, Yuko & Tsusaka, Takuji W. & Aida, Takeshi & Pede, Valerien O., 2015. "The Impact of Training on Technology Adoption and Productivity of Rice Farming in Tanzania: Is Farmer-to-Farmer Extension Effective?," Working Papers 90, JICA Research Institute.
    18. Davis, K. & Nkonya, E. & Kato, E. & Mekonnen, D.A. & Odendo, M. & Miiro, R. & Nkuba, J., 2012. "Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in East Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 402-413.
    19. Satoshi YAMAZAKI & Budy P. RESOSUDARMO, 2008. "Does Sending Farmers Back To School Have An Impact? Revisiting The Issue," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 46(2), pages 135-150, June.
    20. Michelson, Hope & Fairbairn, Anna & Ellison, Brenna & Maertens, Annemie & Manyong, Victor, 2021. "Misperceived quality: Fertilizer in Tanzania," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agribusiness; International Development; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; Risk and Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aesc14:170351. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aesukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.