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Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties have relied on self-reported adoption status of the surveyed households. However, in the presence of weak variety maintenance and poorly functioning seed certification system, measurement errors in self-reported adoption status can be considerable. This paper investigates how such measurement errors can lead to biased welfare estimates. Using DNA-fingerprinting based varietal identification as a benchmark, we find that misclassification in self-reported adoption status is considerable, with significant false negative and positive response rates. We empirically show that such measurement errors lead to welfare estimates that are biased towards zero and substantially understate the poverty reduction effects of adoption. While the empirical evidence suggests attenuation bias, our theoretical exposition and simulations demonstrate that upward bias and sign reversal effects are also possible. The results point to the need for improved monitoring of the diffusion process of improved varieties through innovative adoption data collection approaches to generate robust evidence for prioritizing and justifying investments in agricultural research and extension.

SUBMITTER: Wossen T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6988438 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence.

Wossen Tesfamicheal T Alene Arega A Abdoulaye Tahirou T Feleke Shiferaw S Manyong Victor V

Food policy 20190801

Previous studies on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties have relied on self-reported adoption status of the surveyed households. However, in the presence of weak variety maintenance and poorly functioning seed certification system, measurement errors in self-reported adoption status can be considerable. This paper investigates how such measurement errors can lead to biased welfare estimates. Using DNA-fingerprinting based varietal identification as a benchmark, we find that miscl ...[more]

PMID: 32025080

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Project description:Even during the conflict, agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority has played an important role in agricultural development in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The Ministry of Agriculture of the Palestinian Authority provided the necessary agricultural extension services for Palestinian farmers affected by the Israeli settlements and Segregation Wall. Despite such importance of agricultural extension, few quantitative studies have examined its effect on Palestinian farmers. Therefore, the objective of this study was to quantify the effect of agricultural extension on technology adoption by Palestinian farmers for appropriate evaluation of the agricultural policies by the Palestinian Authority. The microdata of 79,446 agricultural holdings from the Agricultural Census 2010, which was the only microdata officially published and available at the time of this study, was used. Then, the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was employed to mitigate the endogenous bias caused by self-selection by farmers in receiving the agricultural extension. The results showed that agricultural extension has positively and significantly affected the adoption of five technologies, namely improved crop varieties, chemical fertilizers, organic fertilizers, pesticides, and biological control. The estimated increase in the adoption rate of those technologies as the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) by the nearest-neighbor matching method were by 7.1, 7.7, 5.4, 6.8, and 3.8 percentage points respectively. This study proved that agricultural extension promoted the adoption of those technologies even in the conflict. Therefore, agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority plays an important role in farming by Palestinian farmers. In order to maintain and improve farmers' livelihoods sustainably, it is necessary to continue the agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority in the future, considering the behavior of farmers.

Dataset Information

Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence.

Publications

Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence.

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