IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9206.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Agricultural Extension and Technology Adoption for Food Security: Evidence from Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Pan, Yao

    (Aalto University)

  • Smith, Stephen C.

    (George Washington University)

  • Sulaiman, Munshi

    (BRAC University)

Abstract

This paper evaluates causal impacts of a large-scale agricultural extension program for smallholder women farmers on food security in Uganda through a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary distance-to-branch threshold for village program eligibility. We find eligible farmers experienced significant increases in agricultural production, savings and wage income, which lead to improved food security. Given minimal changes in the adoption of relatively expensive inputs including HYV seeds, these gains are mainly attributed to increased usage of improved cultivation methods that are relatively costless. These results highlight the role of improved basic methods in boosting agricultural productivity among poor farmers.

Suggested Citation

  • Pan, Yao & Smith, Stephen C. & Sulaiman, Munshi, 2015. "Agricultural Extension and Technology Adoption for Food Security: Evidence from Uganda," IZA Discussion Papers 9206, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9206
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9206.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Esther Duflo & Michael Kremer & Jonathan Robinson, 2011. "Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2350-2390, October.
    2. Godtland, Erin M & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & De Janvry, Alain & Murgai, Rinku & Ortiz, Oscar, 2004. "The Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Knowledge and Productivity: A Study of Potato Farmers in the Peruvian Andes," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 63-92, October.
    3. 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.
    4. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    5. Pandey, R. K. & Maranville, J. W. & Chetima, M. M., 2000. "Deficit irrigation and nitrogen effects on maize in a Sahelian environment: II. Shoot growth, nitrogen uptake and water extraction," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 15-27, November.
    6. Timothy G. Conley & Christopher R. Udry, 2010. "Learning about a New Technology: Pineapple in Ghana," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 35-69, March.
    7. Sarah A Janzen & Michael R Carter, 2019. "After the Drought: The Impact of Microinsurance on Consumption Smoothing and Asset Protection," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 101(3), pages 651-671.
    8. Maxwell, Daniel G., 1996. "Measuring food insecurity: the frequency and severity of "coping strategies"," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 291-303, July.
    9. Godtland, Erin M & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & De Janvry, Alain & Murgai, Rinku & Ortiz, Oscar, 2004. "The Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Knowledge and Productivity: A Study of Potato Farmers in the Peruvian Andes," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 63-92, October.
    10. Pandey, R. K. & Maranville, J. W. & Admou, A., 2000. "Deficit irrigation and nitrogen effects on maize in a Sahelian environment: I. Grain yield and yield components," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-13, November.
    11. Carter, Michael R. & Lybbert, Travis J., 2012. "Consumption versus asset smoothing: testing the implications of poverty trap theory in Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 255-264.
    12. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2012. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 933-959.
    13. Pramila Krishnan & Manasa Patnam, 2014. "Neighbors and Extension Agents in Ethiopia: Who Matters More for Technology Adoption?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(1), pages 308-327.
    14. Kondylis, Florence & Mueller, Valerie & Zhu, Jessica, 2017. "Seeing is believing? Evidence from an extension network experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 1-20.
    15. Krishnan, Pramila & Patnam, Manasa, 2013. "Neighbours and Extension Agents in Ethiopia: Who matters more for technology diffusion?," CEPR Discussion Papers 9539, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    17. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    18. Munshi, Kaivan, 2004. "Social learning in a heterogeneous population: technology diffusion in the Indian Green Revolution," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 185-213, February.
    19. Zimmerman, Frederick J. & Carter, Michael R., 2003. "Asset smoothing, consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 233-260, August.
    20. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    21. Ariel BenYishay & A. Mushfiq Mobarak, 2014. "Social Learning and Communication," NBER Working Papers 20139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Udry, Christopher, 2010. "The economics of agriculture in Africa: Notes toward a research program," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 1-16, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ram Fishman & Stephen C. Smith & Vida Bobic & Munshi Sulaiman, 2022. "Can Agricultural Extension and Input Support Be Discontinued? Evidence from a Randomized Phaseout in Uganda," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1273-1288, November.
    2. Stephen C. Smith & Ram Fishman & Vida BobicÌ & Munshi Sulaiman, 2017. "How Sustainable Are Benefits from Extension for Smallholder Farmers? Evidence from a Randomised Phase-Out of the BRAC Program in Uganda," Working Papers 2017-1, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    3. Ivan A Canay & Vishal Kamat, 2018. "Approximate Permutation Tests and Induced Order Statistics in the Regression Discontinuity Design," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1577-1608.
    4. Volker Schöer & Debra Shepherd, 2013. "Compulsory tutorial programmes and performance in undergraduate microeconomics: A regression discontinuity design," Working Papers 27/2013, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    5. Ari Hyytinen & Jaakko Meriläinen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Otto Toivanen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 1019-1051, July.
    6. Legge, Stefan & Schmid, Lukas, 2013. "Rankings, Random Successes, and Individual Performance," Economics Working Paper Series 1340, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    7. Montoya, Ana Maria & Noton, Carlos & Solis, Alex, 2018. "The Returns to College Choice: Loans, Scholarships and Labor Outcomes," Working Paper Series 2018:12, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    8. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    9. Decio Coviello & Andrea Guglielmo & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2015. "The Effect of Discretion on Procurement Performance," CEIS Research Paper 361, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 17 Nov 2015.
    10. Steven F. Koch & Jeffrey S. Racine, 2016. "Healthcare facility choice and user fee abolition: regression discontinuity in a multinomial choice setting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(4), pages 927-950, October.
    11. Yoko Kijima, 2022. "Long-term and spillover effects of rice production training in Uganda," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 395-415, October.
    12. Jiang, Wei & Lu, Yi & Xie, Huihua, 2020. "Education and mental health: Evidence and mechanisms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 407-437.
    13. Niu, Chiyu & Ragasa, Catherine, 2018. "Selective attention and information loss in the lab-to-farm knowledge chain: The case of Malawian agricultural extension programs," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 147-163.
    14. Adjognon,Guigonan Serge & Nguyen Huy,Tung & Guthoff,Jonas Christoph & van Soest,Daan, 2022. "Incentivizing Social Learning for the Diffusion of Climate-Smart Agricultural Techniques," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10041, The World Bank.
    15. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    16. Porter, Jack & Yu, Ping, 2015. "Regression discontinuity designs with unknown discontinuity points: Testing and estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 132-147.
    17. Prakash, Nishith & Rockmore, Marc & Uppal, Yogesh, 2019. "Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    18. Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2013. "Do political parties matter for local land use policies?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-56.
    19. Steven F. Koch, 2017. "User Fee Abolition and the Demand for Public Health Care," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 85(2), pages 242-258, June.
    20. Lori Beaman & Ariel BenYishay & Jeremy Magruder & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, 2021. "Can Network Theory-Based Targeting Increase Technology Adoption?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(6), pages 1918-1943, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    agriculture; extension; agricultural technology adoption; food security; regression discontinuity; Uganda; labor markets in developing economies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General

    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:iza:izadps:dp9206. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.