Beyond the Field: The Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Food Security and Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

Summary We estimate the impact of a Farmer Field School intervention among small-scale farmers in northern Tanzania on two main development objectives: food security and poverty. We employ a series of evaluation methodologies, including a Quasi-Difference-in-Difference setup, to account for potential selection into the project, despite lack of baseline data. We find strong positive effects on food security, but no effect on poverty. Investigating possible mechanisms for this result shows that reallocation of labor resources toward own agricultural production and improved production smoothing may have led to improved food security while poverty remained unaffected.