Year: 2016 | Month: June | Volume 5 | Issue 2
The Causal Impact of Farmer Field School in Indonesia
Chandan Singh
DOI:10.5958/2321-5771.2016.00017.X
Abstract:
Pesticides have many private and social costs to agriculture. To address this problem the World Bank has promoted Farmer Field School. The objective of the study was to estimate the Average treatment on Treated due to exposure of the farmer at Farmer Field School. The outcome variables were yield per acre and expenditures on pesticides. The decision to select Farmer Field School villages or farmers was not random from the point of view of policy makers. It was very important to overcome the problem of selection bias in finding a comparison group. The pre-treatment comparison of socio-economic indicators suggested that exposed farmers were systematically different from non-exposed farmers. I used propensity score matching as the possible solutions for overcoming the problem of selection bias. Indonesia had the most extensive experience with the Farmer Field School approach. The data from a panel survey of Javanese household organised by the Indonesian Center for Agro-Socioeconomic Research, available on public domain of data catalogue of World Bank. The Propensity Score Matching matched the exposed and non-exposed farmer in terms of observed socio-economic variable. The empirical findings suggested that the FFS did not result in any significant improvement in yield or reduction in the expenditure on pesticide.
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