Assessing the Impact of Participatory Extension Programme Membership on Farm Business Performance in Northern Ireland

Adewale H Adenuga,Austen Ashfield,Michael Wallace,Claire Jack

doi:10.3390/agriculture11100949

Adewale H Adenuga, Austen Ashfield + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11100949

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Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of membership of the Business Development Groups (BDG), a participatory extension programme in Northern Ireland on the economic performance of participating farmers for dairy and sheep enterprise groups. The study employs the conditional difference-in-differences approach which combines a non-parametric matching estimator with a difference-in-differences analytical technique to obtain a credible best-estimates of the causal effect of BDG membership on farmers’ economic performance assuming that BDG participation is as good as random after controlling for observable farm characteristics and that the parallel trends assumption holds between BDG participants and non-participants. The results of the analyses showed that membership in the BDG programme has a statistically significant impact on the economic performance of participating farmers. Specifically, the results showed that farmers who are members of the dairy and sheep BDGs increased their gross margin by £109.10 and £17.10 per head respectively compared to farmers that are non-members of the BDGs. The results of the study provide robust evidence to inform policy development around the area of participatory extension programmes. It also supports the design of efficient agricultural education and extension systems that incorporates the ideas of the farmers themselves through peer-to-peer learning thereby maximising the economic and social benefits accruable from such programmes.

Highlights

Effective agricultural extension programmes can increase the productivity and innovation capacity of farming businesses by helping farmers as managers to augment their skills and knowledge as well as embrace new technologies and best practices [1,2]
The analysis undertaken by making use of the baseline (2015) data reveals some interesting results relating to the determinants of membership of the Business Development Groups (BDG) groups
This study analysed the impact of membership of dairy and sheep Business Development Groups (BDGs) on-farm gross margin by employing the conditional differencein-differences methodology

Summary

Introduction

Effective agricultural extension programmes can increase the productivity and innovation capacity of farming businesses by helping farmers as managers to augment their skills and knowledge as well as embrace new technologies and best practices [1,2]. Northern Ireland has historically delivered extension services on an advisor to farm, one-to-one basis using a top-down approach [1] This approach has limitations regarding the extent of its coverage to farmers and its inability to account for the current, more complex agricultural production environment which requires more responsive and innovative approaches. In a bid to improve economic performance at the farm-level through fostering the competitiveness of agriculture and ensuring the sustainable management of resources, the Northern Ireland College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) adopted, in March 2016, a new approach to advisory service provision for farmers namely; Business Development Groups (BDG’s). The BDG is a knowledge transfer scheme that forms part of a wider programme, the Farm Business Improvement Scheme (FBIS), partfunded by the EU through Pillar II of the Northern Ireland Rural Development Programme 2014–2020 [10]

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